COUNTDOWN

Ten seconds are but a brief measure of time

to end the year with crystal balls and fireworks,

for merry-making crowds awash in winter’s cold,

their fortune-teller omens drowned out by noisemakers,

as the year’s boundary reaches a hair’s breadth away.

The rise in fever pitch slows down the descent,

flashes meteoric memories behind the eyes,

blinds any view beyond star-struck gazes,

as dinosaurs must have stared

before the K-T boundary was laid. 

The countdown gets closer to one,

the doomsday clock looms above the bacchanal,

unseen, it beats out a metric drum roll,

unheard by multitudes who believe in and

count down to

tomorrow.

© cmheuer, 2017

COLD WINDS

Cold winds sweep away fallen leaves and pine needles;

Make trees shiver and shake off loose foliage;

Enfeeble the last of the flower stalks.

Cold, gusty, air webs drop flies to the ground,

Send lady bugs scrambling for the south side,

Kill wasp colonies, and starve their queens.

Cold winds search and destroy;

Find and erase any trace of summer’s blush;                                               

Wield harsh sentences and slip away.

Cold winds plant headlines in the fields;

Grow minus signs, sharp thorns, and tears;

Harvest seeds of bad humor and knitted brows.

Cold winds make heads burrow in scarves and collars;

Hide hands and faces from winter suns and moons.

Cold winds skim the water and freeze into ashen waves.

© cmheuer, 2017  

WITCHES’ BREWS AND PUMPKIN SPICES

(This is just a light-hearted piece for Halloween.  It is supposed to be funny.)

Witches’ brews and pumpkin spices;

Costumes, masks, and black cat arches;

William’s ghosts and Haitian zombies;

Vampire teeth and dancing bones. 

They glide through fallen leaves and branches;

Breathe out cold air and diabolic vapors;

Gather into mobs on sidewalks and lawns;

Shriek from broomsticks and dark corners.

They knock on windows and front doors;

Haunt the night with evil howls and scary faces;

Sound like screeching owls and clanking chains;

As frightful as foul ghouls and screaming banshees.

Jack-o-lanterns stand and face them;

Stave off the fiends with scowls and indignation;

Light the night with candle glare and flickers;

Give the fiends an evil eye and carved-out snickers.

In retreat, the mischief makers and hell hounds

Leave tissue on quaking trees and bushes;

Curl back into a rising dawn and setting moon;

Disappear into faint shadows and fading gloom.

©cmheuer, 2017

NIGHT OF THUNDER

After the rapid-fire, flashing light gushes through the windows,

Olympic drums shake the double-hung frames like rattles;

Pound on the walls as if they were doors.

There is no sleep during the brute force of electric rage,

Insatiable and relentless, incessant, recurrent light and sound

Steal the darkness and the silence.

Even as the fierce wrath grows faint and moves away,

Another round appears to cancel the night,

To reassert the meteoric flames, shrieks, and howls.

While the window flickers like an old movie projector

With floods and winds that drown, with fires that burn,

With earthquakes that crush and trap, and

With guns that mow down crowds.

©cmheuer, October, 2017

ZEROS AND ONES

Zeros and ones swarm outside their overcrowded hives.

Some can be found in tree branches;

their humdrum buzz carried away on the wind.

Some can be found in the open eaves of old houses;

their telltale drone passing through attic doors.

Some can be found in old books and newspapers,

broadcast live on large and small screens, or

recorded on discs and hurled into space.

Some cluster in restless minds;

set upon ears like ringing bells

or summer-night insect cries.

Zeros and ones flood river banks and ocean beaches;

surge over flood-gates, dams, walls, and barriers;

seep under doors and through broken windows;

soak all porous things and rust away thin metals. 

Some travel in air waves;

Others make their way along cables and wires.

Some cover mountains, ridges, and trenches like

ocean waters rising higher and higher.

Some pour into restless minds;

Paint scenes of day and night

with bold electrical strokes of lightning hues and dark shadows.

Zeros and ones scramble messages, turn into static,

break apart and scatter into seeds like scraps of an alphabet.

Some divide themselves into two bits

where there was one bit and divide again.

Multitudes of them sing, vibrate like strings;

cover old nouns, blank pages, and hollow spaces.

Some gild all surfaces with gold leaf;

trap and suffocate with thin non-porous shells.

Some coat restless minds. 

Day by day, honey combs ooze zeros and ones.

Colony collapse disorder prevails.  Bees die off. 

©cmheuer, 9/2017

GRASSHOPPERS

Catching grasshoppers was my chore on

Sunday afternoon fishing trips.

Tobacco juice, my father called it,

When I held out my stained fingers and grimaced,

Because I thought the brown liquid was grasshopper guts.

He smiled and took the green-brown insect from my hands,

Speared it with a hook and threw it into the shallow water of

The Little Pond, the red and white bobber floating

Without moving on that August, windless day because

Rainwater ponds don’t have currents until

Frogs, fish, or storms break the surface.

I went back to work, walked about the hay field;

Watched the grasshoppers’ high, broad jumps;

Watched to see where they landed in the tall grass,

Tried to catch another one in the palms of my hands;

My eyes strained against the glare of the sun,

Strained against the insects’ camouflage,

Strained to see the slightest motion in the grass.

Not knowing that tobacco juice is a defense,

Not knowing they wait for nine months to hatch,

Not knowing they can catapult into the air, but

Thinking that they could jump farther than I could ever reach.

© cmheuer, 2017

HISTORY UNBOUND

Thick history books sit on the table,

Cardboard covers worn thin,

Pages stained with dirty fingers or

Torn out and tucked back in, unbound,

As if names, dates, places, and events

Had escaped their encrypted forms. 

Re-creations abound.   Living museums,

reenactments, and preservation sites

bring the dead back to life;

costumes and scenery resurrect the old days,

as if there were a lesson to be learned,

as if we might decipher what had passed.

Despite faded photographs, broken artifacts,

fragile films, and second-hand memories;

Despite images of blood and suffering,

We think we celebrate the heroic,

We think we expose and defeat the fiends,

We think we bury them in heavy tomes.

Until they rise again, crawl out of the woodwork,

Seep like wet ink onto new pages of history,

Appear as new faces, chant the same siren songs,

Speak the same words slightly shuffled,

Employ the same hobbled strategies

Reenacted along the same lines,

Unbound, new chapters

Read the same as all the ones before. 

©cmheuer, July, 2017

KALEIDOSCOPES AND WHIRLIGIGS

Country roads twist and turn

Juggling bits of trees and clouds

Like pieces of glass in a cardboard tube

Whirled around—

Spirit rapping views

Evaporate and reconfigure,

In a gentle rain and a breath of wind,

Spinning wheels grip the pavement.

Above the rolled, drummed din,

Wet whispers, quaked leaves, and billowed vapors,

Wait for the belligerent roar of a lion’s den,

Wait for the rasp of anti-heroes and villains,

Jagged glass edges, windmills with broken vanes,

And thunderous blasts of light

That leave earthly tremors

Among the fleet-footed patterns of

Tumbled fragments,

Within the air of swirling blades,

Docile flights of fancy

Burrow through stormy gusts and headwinds,

Ride out tempestuous wheels of fortune

Spun because of a roll of the dice. 

© cmheuer, 7/17    

THE BATH

Archimedes noticed it centuries ago.

I slide beneath the surface.

The bath water rises.

I hope for a Eureka moment.

My head rests against the back of the tub,

Waits for a profound revelation,

Remembers Degas’s bathers.

Time-honored ideas and images

Flood the naked mind,

Wash away incongruous thoughts,

Lift off crusty scars left by the banal,

Create strong currents to carry off debris,

Crumble unstable edifices, and

Slowly seep into cerebral folds and crevices.

My submerged brain displaces the reflections

As my body displaces water,

Yet the volume of rising contemplation

Is greater than any gray matter

I can measure after the bath

With a towel wrapped around my hair

And another drying my left foot. 

©cmheuer, 2017

TRAVELOGUE

At the end of the projector’s cone of light

Wraparound panoramas and scenic drives

Whirr or click in a darkened room

Transfixing and beguiling minds with

Places our feet have touched.

We were hunter-gatherers before farmers;

Our cavernous minds followed the trails,

Gathered images and footsteps,

Placed them in our cerebral vaults,

As if they were root cellars for storing

Enough seeds, nuts, fruits, and berries,  

To generate sleep and spry animation.

Night and day revolving in

Unquestioned, perpetual motion,

Fed by endless streams of old and new

Savannahs, seashores, and mountains.

Zeal is what I remember.  Frenzied preparation.

Last minute effervescence. 

Brisk steps to secure provisions.

Unbearable anticipation of

New lands at first sight hold my breath.

Until I look farther still into

Where my feet cannot touch.

Until I see on big, wide screens

Cassini photographs of Saturn,

Curiosity’s Dunes at Ogunquit Beach, and

Juno’s Jupiter Flybys:  places that

stun my eyes and beckon my feet.

©cmheuer, 2017

BARN CATS

Barn cats scatter in all directions

After silos and stalls are empty

And fields lie fallow.  Scrambled alarms

Crisscross the ground and air.  Loud and shrill

Through clouds of pollen that drift like smoke

As calicoes and tabbies approach with

Quiet, sure-footed stealth, ribs outlined in fur.

Food chains break into paper chains

Strung about, as epochs wind down

Cows don’t graze or break through fences;

Lowing sounds disappear among engines revved.

Barking dogs and hunters’ guns scour gridlocked land

For meat and sport.

There were distant horizons, deep skies and

Dark clouds heavy with wind and rain

To wash away earth’s grit and spring’s pollen,

To quake the thirst of grain and corn

Sowed just in time.  Harvested just in time.

There were the milkers’ calls rousing

Faded starlight like bird songs

Amplified by morning dew.

Pond ripples rode out the frogs’ plunges.

Rising suns and moons eclipsed the

Alarm clock’s ticking.

Stone foundations of cow barns and

Chicken houses are covered

In moss and dirt.  Relics and tools unearthed.

Parts of plows and tractor hitches,

Rusted, are kicked up by lawn mowers.

Cow bones rest in mounds among the trees.

Dams are breached. 

And the barn cats? 

Thin, hungry offspring wander in the streets. 

Horizons vanish in the sun’s glare and

Bold night lights blot out the stars.

Alarm clocks toll.

© cmheuer, 2017   

PASSAGEWAYS

Crowded corridors funnel herds,

Queue the roguish and the errant,

Transition the docile, and steer wayfarers.

Narrow hallways, dark alleys, and

Subterranean tunnels echo

Times marked by wanderlust and

The aimless search for rooms or exits.

Passageways, random

Sequels of blank walls, rails,

Or roadside brush

Hooked together with a single thread,

Looped around rooms,

Carried onto the

Next stairway or fire escape,

Onto the next foot path

Through briars and trees

Towards imagined ponds.

Each day is spent more in passage

Than in reflection or contemplation.

Rooms and destinations are obstacles that

Bend, reflect, or absorb the thread

Dragged along wherever footprints have

Fallen and been erased by others corralled

Into the same meat packer’s pen.

© cmheuer, 2017

  

FREEZING RAIN

Wind gusts from the northwest cut around the eaves,

Split open sleeping eyelids, and

Cast a ghost light over canopies of branches

Weighted down to the height of the windows.

Pear blossoms are sheathed in glaze ice;

Blasts of air arch the top-heavy, loblolly trunks;

Tuffs of ice-coated, green needles fall and

Scatter like pine cones at the base of the trees;

Ice scraps pelt the ground;

Supercooled raindrops freeze

At the touch of a blade of grass.

There is mystery in mid-March winter storms,

Ill-timed for spring’s first buds and petals.

Unforeseen interruptions in lines of thought and sight

Become cloaked fragments,

Frozen and suspended in mid-air,

Transformed and generated into icy apparitions that

Break from their boughs, melt and disappear.

©  cmheuer, March, 2017 

A MOUNTAIN LION’S WAIL

I heard the cry of a child deep in the woods.

Some say it is a mountain lion’s wail, a mating call. 

I don’t know and plunge into the underbrush,

Heading towards the desperate sound.

I see an image of a child curled up on a beach, drowned,

abandoned in the woods, trapped beneath a bomb’s debris;

a child whose parents have been deported, whose parents have died;

a child lost, afraid, and starving.

My footsteps rush across the forest floor,

Speeding into what I cannot know or see.

Fear runs behind me; heartache runs ahead of me;

And as I reach the place that I hear,

The sound stops, and I find nothing in the forest gloom;

Not a footprint or a broken branch.

Silence surrounds me as I search among the leaves and vines,

Silence until my voice cries out for those who cannot be found. 

©cmheuer, February, 2017

ANOTHER ENDING

Brush aside illusions with swift hand motions,

Dig into soft layers of contentment and hope,

Ignore fine-tuned narratives of time and place,

Throw out well turned questions and answers,

Clear dirt from artifacts and dinosaur bones,

Search for jumbled, incongruous masses

Beneath sensible layers of construction.

Look for chaotic bogs of amalgamated left overs,

Remnants of what has been stirred, 

Stewed and brewed into embryonic soups;

Sniff out sweltering cauldrons of odds and ends,

Punctuated bits, parsed, and fused;

Listen for gurgling mud pots, too hot to touch,

And quaking lava domes ready to erupt.

Endings are there, smelted and hammered,

Forged into shadows of themselves. 

Every book’s last words are scrawled and illegible;

Every calendar’s end days are scrambled in a heap;

Every clock’s midnight hours are sprung and unwound;

Every last word spoken is swallowed in silence.

Another ending will abide here.

Being is found here.

©cmheuer, January 1, 2017