New Shadows    

    Lucky as a Night Barista at Teaism

    (After Waiting for Godot)

    Hot brews shatter my muteness,
    dispersing drinks from the bar,
    scooping dry teas from glass bottles
    like captured Amoy ships,
    I hear everything again.

    But habit is a great deadener, he told Gogo
    after I led my blind master away
    to take up my night job.

    Under track lights, bald pate glistens
    mirroring pewter pots, porcelain cups,
    hands dance across samovar and faucet,
    smile shellacs tables where
    people bend sipping heat.

    If they ask, I counsel:
    Young Hyson tempts nakedness,
    Lung Ching Dragonwell burns lips.
    I sell solace in Silvertop Yin Hao,
    romance in Jasmine,
    oblivion, memory in the Sencha.

    Still they take their chances
    with the Hao Yo Keemun,
    gab as I filter the Lapsing Souchang,
    giggle over old maid shots—
    Earl Grey, Orange Pekoe.

    Few reflect on English treachery
    flooding Chinese markets with Indian Opium
    addicting the poor to fill home-savored teacups.

    Time passes:
    no older then contemplated leaves,
    a pot full of residue,

    or the rope that burns in the man's hand
    for whom I bear the bags
    all my days.


    Lost and Found

    We've come to the wrong place.
    -Becket: Waiting for Godot

    We've come to the wrong place
    to this injured shade's stunted branches
    a crucified pirouette holding
    chained blue jays and cardinals.

    We've waited years for a tree to come down
    to bridge the banks at the foot of our hill
    laying its poplar barked longitude
    across latitudes of cold creek.

    We've toe-heeled through mud
    to loquacious mutes and blind seers
    in rooms where dollars cushioned
    the torn cradles of buried children.

    We've attended raucous rains,
    pelting downpours, owl-hooting,
    crow-calling winds, fierce sun shouts,
    midnight stark star silence.

    We've dressed in rough silks
    donned stoneware berets
    danced in ballet slippers cased in granite
    limped through each marathon.

    We've bent ourselves hesitant and clean
    at dawn birdsong choruses,
    traced bones and lips when
    timbers' hairy chests heaved and swayed.

    We've stippled the green lawn,
    galloped over stenciled fences
    to sing our own diseased homage,
    to sip thimbles of fog.

    We've wakened to discordant lullabies
    sensed tangled roots, splay shoots
    unearthing from feeble clay ravine.

    We've come, emptied,
    seeking burnt memories:
    but the place is wrong

    Now, this trunk leans down,
    a gentle giant clasping each bank
    calling us to cross, one to the other again.

    Pilgrim and soldier,
    we chew the thick air,
    the circle squared.


    Ode to the Elder

    "Let us not waste our times in idle discourse ...
    Let us do something while we have the chance.
    -Becket: Waiting for Godot. Act. II

    We are Moorish Arab, Sephardi Jew,
    Prague gypsy, Irish bard
    teasing the sitar, lute, fiddle, cello:
    all hollow-bellied stringed creatures sighing.

    Pale silver eyebrows arch
    over caramel-pebbled eyes,
    shiny as newly washed stones:
    they pelt my face at eye-level.

    As you tease, I imagine
    a tiny boy pulling back a rubber band:
    lobbing wadded arithmetic paper
    into a coy girl's inkwell.

    You conjure cardinals
    yellow chickadees out of season
    flutter red maple branches:
    night's crest-tipping raven wings,

    string beads to light the wooden houses
    mirrored in inky Lake Anna,
    mull a sweet German wine:
    under fluid-eyed Walter Russell sculptures.

    Your kibitzing warms better
    than the daily hot oatmeal
    my Texas grandfather swore brought immorality,
    carries me across Europe's stone-laced villas on your handlebars.

    Meeting you is like swaying in a pub sing
    bold voices belting out sea shanties:
    willowy plaids entwining,
    when I'd only known dark café corners.

    Or being seated beside a stranger
    who's reading the same book
    we two parallel, silent:
    your tale referenced in the volume before me.

    Memory, an acquired taste,
    we touch its texture,
    leave years,
    the bones and threads,...