Columbus Day 1994

(In honor of Father’s Day, I’m reposting this piece that I wrote 20 years ago but first published here in February.)

Poesy plus Polemics

(An old item that comes to mind when I find myself missing Papa. I wrote this for him at the time. In this 1924 photo, my father Ettore is center, uncle Salvatore left, uncle Francesco right.)

I write on the eve of Columbus Day, a day with personal meaning unlike mere national holidays, a day for reflection on more than salutary celebration of a new world conceived, a day I respectfully decline to debate of political correctness and revisionist Columbian history. You see, it is the anniversary of my father’s arrival in America, the day he transplanted my own roots in this most fortunate soil of freedom.

It was seventy years ago when Ettore Paolo Lenzi, a tall, robust, thirteen-year-old boy, looking much like my handsome son does today, brushed the harbor blown hair from his large brown eyes and gazed anxiously through the cold, gray New York mist at Lady…

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Wolf Moon

(Reblogging this wintry poem I originally posted in January.)

Poesy plus Polemics

Pearlescent circle
Scribe-cut into black
Shooting punishing rays
Of blued luminescence
Through pieces of me
Making memories vibrate
And coldly collide
Dripping shame from their wounds
Drenching new-fallen snows
Wildly shadowed with lines
Thrown by skyscraper pines
Across quantum acres
In mid-winter fallow

The shadows in close
Patterns skillfully knit
Past and future together
With disabled present
Injured and pained
From grave losses recalled
And the doubts that rot hope
Fear and failure find frames
In random shaped spaces
Where moonglow steals through
Casting dangerous detail
Repugnant vignettes
That the night should conceal

The landscape bears fresh
Feral ominous tracks
Marks that verge upon
Muscular gray-coated beasts
Silhouettes on the ridgeline
Disarmingly still, baying
Plaintive and primitive
Vestigial speech
Like a howling of angels
Kicked down from the clouds
No longer in favor
Breath steaming in swirls
Around yellow-gold eyes

Interchangeable creatures
Men, angels and wolves
Selfsame suffering
Pulled from…

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All in God’s Time

(This is a reblog of a poem I posted in January, my inaugural month here on WordPress.)

Poesy plus Polemics

Time in its flight employs an imperative
puzzle to guard against grasp of its pattern.
We know of beginnings, we speculate ends,
but can’t ascertain how or why time transcends
Time in its flight enjoys arcane relative
shapelessness, yet shapes the form of all matter.
Aristotle and Ptolemy guessed the orbs moved.
Copernican spheres Galileo then proved.

Time in its place sequentially orders
the manifest firmament of our existence.
Kepler’s ellipse gave mathematical base
for Newtonian physics to quantify space.
Time in its place essentially borders
vague regions of metaphysical distance.
Then the General Theory came forth and declared
That energy is mass at speed of light squared.

Time in its march momentarily paused
when Einstein inferred that reality curved.
His space-time continuum in fourth dimension
gave glimpse of God’s pluperfect whole comprehension
Time in its march then so radically caused
upheaval of laws all high physics had served,
when

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City of Pawns

(Reblog of an earlier posted poem – it’s also the working title of the book I plan to publish eventually.)

Poesy plus Polemics

 

in the city of pawns

only bareheaded kings

enjoy concourse

pretending to common pursuits

from shared civic bloodlines

as markers of empathy

all while conducting

invisible reign

over subjects convinced

they are ruling themselves

in the city of pawns

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The Waiting Room

(Reblog of an earlier poem – one of my personal favorites)

Poesy plus Polemics

A Poetic Tale in 3 Parts (Part 2 is quite longer than my usual work)

Part 1 – The Room

Some rooms are haphazard, encluttered, no plan,
Most rooms, laid out simply, let function prevail,
But certain rare rooms will embody a man
With his essence installed in its every detail

A hexagonal tower of fifty-foot height
Carries thirty-foot span above timber-laid floors,
Walls thick-built with stone quarried near to its site
On a twelve-acre ledge between gray granite tors

This room is but one of two towers that flank
A home in command of spectacular views,
The other is active, with full household rank,
But this one’s reserved for the master to use

So long has this room had to wait with a yearn
To provide the man’s ease, relieve decades of stress,
Now, finally retired, the man waits, in turn,
His eyes taking stock of his signal success

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My Other Self

(Reblog of an earlier poem)

Poesy plus Polemics

menace has yellow eyes
I know because I’ve seen them
staring through my sleep
unnerving
my other self

subconscious sweat
stains the pillow
I don’t know if this thing
wears catlike form
it just feels that way

I somehow can sense
it seems ready to pounce
one terrible leap
from lean black hunter’s haunches
across breathless fear

through ominous air
extending malicious sharp claws
toward the unaware peace
that I brought to bed
from a day that was such a good day

what precipitates
ungodly terror
into calm asylum
why do yellow-eyed creatures
stalk peace of mind

perhaps a good day
confers surreal guilt
on that other self who
awake while I sleep
is at mercy of metaphors

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Reflecting on the Wane

“Contentment”
Painting by Anthony Noa
At fineartamerica.com

My mother lived to the age of ninety-three. She had siblings who surpassed the century mark. Despite being bedridden by multiple sclerosis for nearly fifty years, my dad made it to eighty-seven. I won’t even come close.
 
My life has exasperated legions of physicians. From an emotionally stressed youth, in which I developed teenaged bleeding ulcers, I moved through a hypertense career path, forty years long, that left me with a pharmacopeia of prescriptions at retirement. That was ten years ago, and my meds have only increased since then.
 
Through the decades of constant tension, interspersed with episodes of depression and anxiety, I carried too much weight, ate unwisely and smoked fiendishly.  My only real exercise consisted of frequent dashes through airports. Those conditions, minus the business travel and stress, persist to this day. I’ve had open heart surgery twice. Due to a nasty post-op infection that destroyed my sternum, a perfect storm of ensuing maladies has disabled me.
 
Having said all that, my purpose here is to make clear that my life is a fortunate one. I thank God every day for the gifts I’ve received. My family is large, loving, and sustains me in every sense of that word. My career, stress notwithstanding, allowed me to achieve gratifying levels of personal fulfillment. My conscience is only lightly soiled, mostly by sins of pride, and my regrets are negligible. I’ve acclimated to sedentary pursuits that give me joy, writing this new poetry blog chief among them.

Photo at theflowersavenue.com

 
Contentment is a powerful and often misunderstood concept. A man of estimable insight and intellect, the moral philosopher Bernard Williams once wrote, “We may pass violets looking for roses. We may pass contentment looking for victory.” I have learned to stop passing and looking. I have found my violets and contentment, and I cherish them.
 
Whatever my future holds, for however long it holds, I intend to enjoy it.
 

Stonewood Soliloquy

(With spring approaching full array, I’m moved to repost these previously written sentiments about my little piece of heaven.)

Poesy plus Polemics

Ancient walls of dry-laid stone angle oddly across my lovely piece of New Hampshire land, tracing long gone meadows where I’m told herds of sheep, cows and goats once grazed. Today, these ingenious rustic structures course their way up, down and across the gently sloping floor of my now mature north woods forest. Here and there mighty bull hemlocks, century trees of impressive girth, rise to skyscraping heights. Grove upon grove of improbably tall and slender white pine and jack pine predominate the property. Deciduous varieties also weave their leafy signatures throughout the vibrant canopy that shelters most of my walls in perpetual shade.

The walls are solid built, measuring four to five feet wide at their base, embedded in soft deep accretions of pine needles and natural compost, laid down by countless repetitions of the striking New England cycle of seasons. The wall sides taper unevenly upward to a…

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Stats

I’m a man who loves words, with a fascination for numbers. WordPress seems to make a priority of statistics, and at this juncture, they clearly convey a most pleasant obligation on my part.

I want to thank all of you, my readers and commenters. I started this blog four-and-a-half months ago with no great expectations. So, I am indeed surprised and quite delighted to have attracted your interest in my writings.

Thus far, “Poesy plus Polemics” has garnered more than 800 followers, 2,000 comments, 7,000 likes and 10,000 visits. I neither know nor care how these stats might stack up to WordPress norms, but for me they are humbling and precious.

I am deeply grateful for your interest, and I promise to keep writing my poetry here for as long as God and the medical profession may allow. This experience has also brought me joy in discovering your writings. I’ve read more poetry in these few months than I have in many years, and your fine work serves to inspire my own.

Here and Now

(A reblog of an earlier poem of mine.)

Poesy plus Polemics

The smaller moments of each day
May well belie their underplay

Some unexpected words of praise
An overheard wry turn of phrase

White clouds that scud beneath blue sky
Contentment in a lover’s sigh

Wide wonder in a child’s look
An oak that bends an artful crook

The smell of coffee freshly ground
Hushed whispers in a sprinkler’s sound

The feel of new-sawn well-grained wood
Her glance so clearly understood

Fat raindrops slipping down the glass
An old hound lolling in the grass

The lack of tracks on new-laid snow
Aroma of a nice bordeaux

A letter from a long lost chum
Gray barnboards hung in ragged plumb

Unbidden tears that well the eyes
A deer astride the forest rise

Sometimes we get caught up again
Reliving in our there and then

We’d all be better to allow
That life is always here and now

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