The Later Harvest

1.
We spent those days
at a crossing place in time,
and only we
knew what could be,
and what was left
behind.

The prairie wheat blew
gold and soft
on Illinois-planted fields of fall.
Then later on, the whitened snow
lay gentler still
on a campus
where we lived and laughed,
and lied.

2.
Who was I then?
Or any of us?
Sometimes, I can’t tell, even now,
because I only
thought I knew.
I played the role
and joined approved-of crowds,
but inside
stayed alone.

I met so many folks there,
those who helped me grow
and maybe a few
I’m better off
forgetting.
But I remember them all,
wondering
what might have been
if I had changed
to whom they wanted.
Because I never could.
At length,
with silent disappointment,
I left.

Yet the years betrayed
those heartland days.
They all stayed
stored away within.
Vagrant thoughts still recollect
the many tears and smiles.
I see faces I knew,
girls who dreamed
of husbands to be
and guys
who thought they would win
the world.

3.
Remembrances of northern seasons
stay with me most.
Stark, flat-plain winter nights
blew in hard-frozen,
dark and taught enough
to ring like high-pitched strings
before my face.
Ice looked made
of shattered glass
and stayed
for seeming eons,
becoming iron-earth’s crusted chrysalis.
Pied and withered leaves
quietly dried
and later rustled somber over
starting classes in September.
Flowery, swamp-smelling spring,
and then muggy,
summer stormy months,
all marched in time.
Their onrushing tide
fast-raced me
on their whited waves,
forward to change.

4.
Teachers told us
to look for truth,
but my verity, to them,
was gross disgrace.
Yet, during those days,
I found a better place.
I’ll tell you of it now,
if only as a
whisper:

If a grain of wheat fall
into a furrow’s crevice,
it first must wither
and sleep in earth.
Before the new and infant seed
can come alive,
the older shell
must pass away.

5.
On a glory-hued, autumnal day,
I left my grave.
The price of rising
is having to die.
But by that end,
a newness steals
upon your self, as morning heals
the darker place
of night.

“How could it be wrong,” he asked,
“for a man to love another man?”
His question ripped away
a brittle husk
drawn close about my life.
Those words exploded, pinecone-like,
as a forest fire burns off
scarred deadwood trees.
Those brittle syllables,
covered me with ashes.
Years later on,
I, a pipping Phoenix,
crawled from ruins,
remembering those yesterdays,
to make myself
anew.

6.
So, in looking back,
I stopped to grieve a moment brief,
and now
I never turn at all.
Still gazing ahead,
I only let myself recall
the icy morning
I woke remade.
Upon that dawn, my soul sprang up
like winter wheat,
treasured still today
and harvested
in my heart.

December 1995: For Wheaton College’s many Gay/Lesbian Alumni – who we were, are and yet shall be.

Killing Antigone Anew

She steps out of ancient myth
created from time’s
dark stillness.
Her long black hair
surrounds
an empty face.
She tells her own story
without effort or guile,
and we know the ending.
Her character is bleak
and bare.
Sophocles loved her all too well,
so he rendered such a beauty
in bold blacks and whites.
Creon was the villain,
she the heroine,
and death in the end,
inevitable.

“I know how it turns out,”
my friend said,
“Why bother seeing the play at all?
The characters aren’t even original,
nor the story,” he went on.
“All of it happens in two dimensions,
and nothing is interesting
in the least.
Sophocles should have written
convoluted, unpredictable plots
with complex, deeply tortured characters.
Instead, the Greeks borrowed
on folk tales.”

So for us today,
why bother with Antigone
at all?

A Greek-style drama
is a Rorsach frame.
You get out of it
what you bring.
To the shallow, the story bores,
but it takes those who truly see
into a another realm.
Myth and vision repulse the dead,
but give life
to those with spirit and breath.
Their souls can thrive
on a single, simple act.

Who killed Antigone?
Was it Creon,
that dark-hearted king,
or did we?
Do we refuse to see her winsome smile
even now?
We’re spoiled and angry children,
always crying,
demanding something new,
a plastic or software package
made for today.
Some well-contrived little bauble
will surely fascinate
us all.

But the classic, the stark,
dark and spare
remain
sleeping there.
They frighten us away.
We don’t want Antigone any more,
so let’s bury her forever
beneath our
torrent
of empty words.

For a Friend, Innocent, in Chains

He stumbled into my life
like he didn’t know where he was
and finding no fault, asked few questions.
Child-like, all he wished for was a hand to hold
and wistfully, a way to wrest himself
from hell.

So shy, he kept to his own device.
I wondered why he sat there,
wanting, saying, asking
only
so little.
He simply wanted a friend,
so I said “I’ll send you something granted,”
and gave him my hand.

Such a strong grip soon he had on me,
I scarcely could let go,
even when I wanted to, he’d
beg me “Never allow it.”
Because I had no heart to let him be,
I stayed behind with him,
not by his fault,
but by my own.

Sadness was his way
and tears his daily
absolution.
I wanted to wipe them away,
to make him laugh.
Yet walls separated us,
Walls like mountian ridges covered with cold,
craggy limitless ice.
Boulders of hatred
bound him in.

He sat behind bars,
innocent of any crime
yet condemned
for who he was, naught else.
The reluctant criminal
of someone else’s making, they
raked him
with guilt, suffocation, torture,
and rendered him
unceasing pain.

So much I felt his soul within me
that soon I wept for the way,
with stoic strength
he accepted this fate
of locked, bolted doors,
despair,
no life,
and darkened walls.

When he touched me, I felt his frozen fate,
as if caught in another world,
like a universe different from mine
where light did not pervade
nor laughter live.
On times when, terrified, I entered there,
I hardly breathed
and heaved sighs of anger,
as if crucified myself
upon the sight
of his undeserved chains.
They wrapped tight all ’round his neck,
his legs,
his hands,
his head,
his heart.

Death was his only Friend.

I longed to break this steel,
yes, shatter the bars
and kill this awful Friend. I wished to be the one
who kept him company
in his lonely
solitary soulless stark confinement.
Secretly, there were days I lived there in my heart,
with him,
not daring to reveal the terror caught within my soul.
But I could not help,
except by prayer,
nor penetrate the power of those
who kept him there.

So in the end, desperate myself, I conspired with destiny
to wreck the racks of iron and chains
that chilled and bound him so.
Destiny can can be a door
Blown open surely as a soldier shows his might
and shoves a solid weapon bright
into deepest darkness.

A grenade can blow this black-iron
seemingly impenetrable barrier so strong.
Such shock can come on
sudden, setting loose the solid steel’s confining grip,
to save my precious prisoner’s life
from blood and death.

My soldier’s aid to give is only this:
love, honor, sacrifice, and stealth,
Faithfulness to a friend.
And yes,
my soft grenade is truth.

Embrace

At dawn, I took your arms
and covered you – embraced –
as yellow wildflowers, sweet,
caress the hills in spring.
Our touching bloomed and danced,
rustling against me,
brushing my breast
like unseen breezes.

I held you to my heart.
It beat, while I listened to your breath
come in quiet rhythm between us,
a music given
for one another.

If only this stillness,
a soft-grasped time
could last yet longer
than only a tiny, rushing moment.
For now, I hold enough
to fill an ocean,
resting glassy calm
at windless sunset.

Let me bear you up
through all my mornings
of a thousand million promises
and their tomorrows.
I’ve watched for, wanted,
with such leaping restless
seeking, now feeling
this trace of light
upon your face.

Closed, your eyes yet
sleep as death
but still I get
your warmth about me.
Rise to morn,
my precious one
and be the day
for me.

As the skylark,
songful greets the risen sun,
I offer all I have, or am,
or will be
always
to you.

Far Away

You’ve opened for me vistas of peace
like a mountain valley across a quiet glacial lake.
I take of your heart such color
as a tapestry spread large across an ocean,
tranquil enough at best
to be called Pacific.

Elegy for David Falconer

A simple, winsome song,
cut off
in mid-phrase.
Left
for us to finish.
We mourn
the morning innocence
and wide-eyed joy his parting
took
from us.

Curious chorister boys&girls
grieve
an empty place up front.
Dark or tow-haired once-fresh faces
weep.
We hear their yearning and want
to respond
yet hold our tongues.
We have no words.

Newspapers cop another
cold statistic.
“Yes,” reporters terse intone,
“It’s just a tale of senseless L.A. terror.”
But does that say his story,
even half?
“Why?” in sharp-edged stillness,
others ask.

His endless, soaring, praising preludes
reached
for pinnacles
few of us can even dream.
His gentle touch and loving song
surround us still.

The keyboard’s ever-rising cantilena
no one here can silence.
It never mattered why he left.
One thing is sure:
We won’t forget.
Now and forever
David sings anew.

Undiscouraged,
we who stay behind,
remembering,
lift
our hearts in hope.
We raise clear voices
bold
to sing with him.

NOTE: This poem was written during the early 1990s in honor of a locally famous Episcopal church organist in Los Angeles who died in a tragic gay-bashing event. Davido, vivas in Deo!   -R.

Friend (1950 – 1978)

I kneel,
cry out
for soothing touch
sure to heal
like summer’s rain,
but get nothing.

Friends’ faces
move in memory
like frightened mice.
They scurry away.

He gave up life
for a handful of dope.
His street buddies must have
jeered his passing
into earth.

In near-forgotten years,
we talked of dreams, plans,
wonders,
with laughing girls.
Other guys lounged about,
we young bucks,
blind for time.

He traveled his own tunnel
into a black-fringed news story
left weeping.

With You

Your softest touch,
the close entwining cradle
of your sleep-entrusted limbs,
wrap around me
in full-tight embrace.
You hold me close
through untold hours together.
Yet I know this time must fade
like mists of morning air,
warmed with day’s renascence,
damp to touch.
Soon it’s driven off
by sunlight’s harshest glare
and never seen again.

Still, in your face I glimpse
such spirit,
that I know some mystery must
bind us both
and keep us safely close
for time and now, and yet another time.
Your breath on me
in aftermath of sleep together
exhales the only rhythmic sound
to break the cathedral quiet
of this place.
I feel as if awaking to some far-off
mountain sunrise
over mythic lands of unicorns and questing knights
I dreamed of as a child.

We embrace in still devotion here,
like holy martyrs’ prayers,
to live each sacred moment
on our pilgrim way
as both for one.

So our tiny raft
will bear us forward
on life’s rough-surging rapid waters.
Where?
We journey fast through wind-torn
mountain passes,
to the rock-held, highest places,
over darkest seas.
For how long?

I’ll never care
as long as we remain
transfixed
in one another’s arms like this.
I’d rather give away
the riches of a hundred thousand
passing nations,
than lose the peace I feel each day
with you.

Two Forged

I have your secret name
inscribed within.
It lies where none can see save me
like a cherished anniversary engraved
on the hidden side
of a golden ring.
It’s in a place far taken, way beyond
any space human minds
may inhabit, see, or know.

I’ve shaped you there and wake
in mornings with that name
whispered reverent-silenced by my lips.
Falling asleep, the cant of it
resounds in darkness round my room.
In noonday quiet, I hear its sound
as if prayer-chanted
by holy wise men thralling sleep
for ancient serpent dragons
in their lair.

Mystery is the name
of this unknown sure enchantment,
old as untold human time.
The puzzle remains,
how two precious-made metals fired together
in some divine-created foundry
flow into one.
Sparks scatter-spray under hammers
of giants who meld
alloyed hearts together.

Crafted in fiery forges and pounding,
heat strives with cold
as annealed gold emerges,
now initialed.
In steam-sizzling flames of furnace and ash,
a new ring stronger than before
enters grave blackness.
Then flowing blindly upward,
its circle seizes
the light.