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