Tall Grass and High Waves Tall Grass and High Waves

Tall Grass & High Waves

PoemsBy Gary B. Fitzgerald

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2009 Gary B. Fitzgerald
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4389-8031-7

Contents

Principia.........................................1Change............................................3Floating in a Brightful Place.....................5Produce...........................................7Careless..........................................9Understanding.....................................11Evil..............................................13I Know You Hate Weeds.............................15Cyclone...........................................17Stormy Thursday on the Farm.......................19Important Things..................................21Things Will Fail..................................23Small Temples.....................................25Old Anger.........................................27Point.............................................29Free Will.........................................31Irish.............................................33Downgrade.........................................35Duplicity.........................................37White Fences at Dusk..............................39Bad Luck..........................................41Tax...............................................43Dragonfly.........................................45Grace.............................................47Fields............................................49Halloween.........................................51High Waves........................................53Late Spring.......................................55Living Specie.....................................57Trees.............................................59(Human) Nature....................................61Tall Grass........................................63Change............................................65The Climbing Party................................67Last Poem Today at Sunset.........................69Moving forward....................................71Sleep.............................................73The Antiques Store................................75The Plan..........................................77Senility..........................................79Initiation........................................81Last Light........................................83Long Slow Family..................................85Don't You See?....................................87Good Day..........................................89Revolutions.......................................91Shame.............................................93Old Fight.........................................95Writing at Night..................................97Older.............................................99Expecting.........................................101Wolf Moon.........................................103Lonely Fossils....................................105Time..............................................107Roller Coaster....................................109Funeral...........................................111For You Not Yet...................................113

Chapter One

Principia Big things never just suddenly appear! Only that instantly conceived, the small, is suddenly here, a flash in the pan soon to disappear. Big things approach slowly, rise ominously over hills, are seen from far away. They forewarn their arrival. Hide if you think you can. Big things come into view with deliberate intention changing everything.

Big things change big things. Small things are rolled over by the new. Small things surprise, milk that spills. Big things give us time to run. Always look toward the hills.

Change

That nasty old bastard who moved in next door cut down all the trees! Cleared that beautiful little woods along the fence between us, ruined my view, stole my privacy! Chased all the birds away.

Harvest moon rising tonight. Balanced on horizon, huge and bright, it illuminates the damage even more. But full and red, a magnificent sight, filling the pasture with ethereal light.

Never noticed it before for all of the trees in the way.

Floating in a Brightful Place

I feel like a little molecule of paint floating in a brightful place, painted, perhaps, by a master because I'm basically blue with a little red on the edges, a splash of green and a touch of gold applied with great care and with love. And I feel so alive here floating around, spread on the canvas of life, but the surface is beginning to dry. I float like a tiny atom of color, trapped between the canvas and that no longer liquid drying hard above.

Produce

Mushrooms and lemons, the bland and the bitter. Apples and artichokes, the easy and hard.

Cherries and peppers, the sweet and the hot. Corn stalks and melons, the tall and the short.

Mandrake and squash, the occult and the plain. Roses and roses, the beauty and pain.

Careless

So overwhelming these mundane things, these relentless daily problems that torment. Sometimes they seem almost cruel, even intentional, and with life and death at stake it requires, should we survive, that we not be careless.

But not really so significant, all these things, these wasteful, pointless things once seeming so important, for the most essential things are never guaranteed and, after all, we may pay our debts, to our ownselves be true but still we end up dead.

I suppose I've become somewhat careless. So maybe today I won't pay the bills, won't get a haircut or go to work and go to the beach instead.

Understanding

When just a child I sat in shock, in fear in the corner in the hall, hiding with my brother from what we heard, we saw, the violent, hateful anger of our own parents, screaming, fighting and I didn't understand. Growing older I forgave them, for they were only human, after all, and it appears that all of us are damned. But still I did not really understand.

And now I feel like a child again when I hear about the Congo and Sudan, Iraq, Columbia, Afghanistan and still I do not really ...

Well, maybe I can. We're only human, after all. So only human, I grant You, but still this question for You: after tigers and eagles and whales, the wolves and the kangaroo, after elephants, porpoises and swallowtails, is this really the best You could do?

Evil

Of sunlight and moonlight what can I say? One shines in the night, one brings us the day. One reflects in the darkness but the one in the deeper dark brings the light.

Of electrons and protons, what said of their way? One positive, one not, one shall follow, one stay. One spins toward the yes but that spun towards the no brings the balance.

A strange symmetry here on the planet of life, for easily, if no moon, only dark in the night. But if no night and no moon to rise in the sky, then no day to divide the when from the why.

If no danger, no struggle, no reason to fight. If no equal opposing, no wrong to make right.

I Know You Hate Weeds

I know you hate those rabbits that sneak into in your yard, leave pellets all over the lawn. But they'll eat your damned weeds!

I know you hate the coyotes slinking...