On the Wayside, for Owenuma Blue Sky

On the Wayside What's a weed but the unwanted noise of another man's music. But beyond the margin, that little strip of uncultivated life to the side of a well-traveled road, rank growth is my splendor.

Everything needs a
place to be, and here,
even the weeds feel at home,

a free space where the trouble-
some have gathered together, un-

folding their own songs,
f l o w e r i n g

   in peace.

from On the Wayside,
a cycle of 11 poems

(2) Street Dogs

Two small dogs without
a domain...

(3) African Drummer

...the push and pull of distant places . . .
but here, now, some stop, listening,
this attraction of centers...

(4) Spina Christi

...a true gathering
together of / divine errors / all.



(5) A Gathering Place

...those used-up, empty, broken accessories,
containers of a farmer's life;

(6) The Dance of Chance

...the indeterminate survival, selection,
of small dotted poems / in a sequenced array...

(7) Tramontane

Bits of
labor, left // behind,...



(8) A Woman Alone

Time in the city
flows differently at night...

(9)  The Literal Man

Stretched between the most distant of
stars and the / sparks which fly from the
candle's match...

Street Dogs

Two small dogs without
a domain, the open street a
home. No hard walls, no
master,
nothing to protect.

A duo barking
on dog star days, the music last-
ing till deep into the summer night.
Our w a s t e is their joy, their freedom,
our neglect.

African Drummer

A face full of sun,
a wall made of bricks,
a black man,
eyes dancing
with fingers on bubbles of air;

The bucket's plastic
is the skin of his drum,
while an empty cup gathers coins
of recognition, of rhythms,
not made of the counted bits of city glass

but felt, grown,
from water and earth.
Travelers walk by,

their steps beating a different kind
of time, the
push and pull of distant places . . .
but here, now, some stop, listening,
this attraction of centers, points
where
energies converge.
the strangely familiar flowers

from some far
away land, a land
once ours, but which we left behind.

No one knows the language he sings,
yet the body knows,
sensing some other order of movement,
a movement which turns
around the source of his smile,
which is not of this
place, not,
of this clime.

(For an anonymous street musician,
Central Station,
Amsterdam,the Netherlands,
winter of 1991)

Spina Christi

As the earth leans back into
the sun,
little christ-bodies
are aban-
doned, left
out to die in the acid mists of
northern nights. green trees, dirty streets,
no hope.

Roots

cut short in brown burlap bags, a
cover for an ancient trust now
broken. New friendship found in the
ornaments
of alleyways, black bag mountains,
old TVs. Before
sunsight, the sound of strange tongues, but
who could understand

these men in their trucks who come to
remove
the thorns of a city's
eyes? Yes, a true gathering
together of
divine
errors
all. And in our sleep, tug boats going

out

to sea.

(For many years, I worked as a conductor of a small orchestra
n the city of Amsterdam. Although
one of the nicest places in the world to live,
I never got used to the mountains of trash the city produces,
especially when topped off with the sad sight of throwaway
Christmas trees around New Year.)

A Gathering Place

In a far
corner, glass
opaque and crusty with old manure,

the messy backyard
of the barn's windowsill. Dark. Still,
a gathering place
of the preterite,
for those

used-up
empty, broken accessories,
containers
of a farmer's life;
During

cleaning time, a place
passed over,
a bit out of reach,
but still too close, to put out of
mind.

The Dance of Chance

A toss
of the dice...

The machine has no problem with
randomness,
abstracting order from chaos,
whole songs computed at will. But

     the beauty of the butterfly's wings?

just blind permutations, the in-
determinate
survival, selection, of small

dotted poems

in an
sequenced array, or
the sure sign

of the
open road, the future's pathless
land

unprecedented
possibilities

a l l ?

(Along the way, what was once a gift of chance
sometimes becomes necessity's
next step into the unknown.)

Tramontane

Bits of
labor, left

behind, tasks now foreign to straight
speaking tongues.
Closed doors reluctantly open
as that which is unfamiliar
is brought
into the outside within....
   The necessary work
     of inessential people, guests

held

hostage,
a ransom
s e l f - paid, the

outlandish
price of membership to these strange

worlds

of
aliens

a l l.

(In much of Europe, foreign workers
are called euphemistically 'guest workers'.
Tramonate is the Italian name for a cold North wind
which sweeps down from the Alps into the plains. The Alps
and beyond are traditionally where the poorer people of the South have gone
to seek the promise of work and higher wages.)

A Woman Alone

Late.

After a concert,
walking home.
An evening shared with
music and
friends.

The city's
night sky, dimly gray, the moon and
stars, muted, hiding behind

tall brick buildings, bright lights.
Time in the city
flows differently at night; not the
measured beat of the day's lock-step,
but an

unpredictable, many-voiced
movement
like the water of a narrow
ocean pass, cliffs on either side
hyaline sheets, dark, motionless, one
upon the
other, suddenly swallowed whole
by

eddies
so vicious they ravage themselves.

She senses
this, in
the body, that tender place, just

below the navel
which itself turns and
sometimes reverses directions,
as the heart beats the
changes of an unsure safe passage...

No task for
the timid, to call this place home,
to live with

this necessary
ambiguity
of movement at night --
the shadow can go both ways,
slipping back into its silent

light post,
or lashing out at you, with a . . .

The Literal Man

Stretched between the most distant of
stars and the
sparks which fly from the
candle's match
is the silver string of
young intelligence,
a vibrant face among the flowers,
resonant with the music of all

springs.

Still close
to the ground
where perception begins, before
thought's cells grow thick and woody walls,
and where meanings still
flow and freely merge,
where triangles and squares become
rounded in rhyme, and where the moon
is an apple on the
tree which has its roots in the sky.

Break the string
and the apple falls
into the lap of an unhappy

grown-up, eyes dull with
years of TV,
the life of one channel only
which does not change, which does not change;
where sense stays at home, alone, a-
fraid to venture out,
and becomes
precisely, neatly, bounded in

time.

Break the string
and the stars
at night will fail to cohere and

start to fall,
no longer turning
around their centers,

no longer,
threaded together,
in song.