ON THE OTHER HAND
In Haifa
we visited a home
with original paintings by Chagall
(You know how he can always
make you feel like you can fly)
and a bomb shelter
under the stairs
Stopped at a wall by a bus stop
with one stone for each child
killed in the explosion
And looked down on the harbor
across the order the beauty
of the gardens of the Bahai
Looked out across the water
to Lebanon where the last
rockets flew
A MOBIUS TRIP
Always an emigrant, never an immigrant
one foot in each country for thirty years
more running from than running to
more neither nor than either or
Always abandoning in some way
family, friends and dependable plans
and any constancy demands
Half desperate, always in search
for new ones who will give enough
and not demand too much
I keep my Canadian in Canada
and am careful when I pack
I stow my Texas twang at the border
and pick it up on the way back
Flying from Calgary to Toronto, Eda asks
“How come you’ve started to talk in a drawl?”
Just as the captain comes on the blower to say
“In order to avoid a big storm on our left
we are now flying over North Dakota”
Staircase – Faculty of Architecture at Warsaw University of Technology, Poland
A TREE IN THE FOREST
(for the grandchildren too)
If you travel
to the far ends of the earth
And do not send her a postcard
were you really there at all
A PICTURE POEM
Mid afternoon, mid December
American Airlines from Dallas
drops into Calgary with the snow
Soft flakes fall as we rent the car
stop as we drive north into
an Ansel Adams world
Sky pillowed gray on gray
Houses and barns and bales
covered in white powder
Trees all a-bloom with hoary frost
both sides of the coal black road
For the next hour
any picture we take with color film
would still come out black and white
Until we top the overpass and see from a
horizon that was not a horizon
the rising of a Mandarin Orange moon
THEY KAMA THEY SAW
All day the tourists walk
through ancient temples
of the East
Hour after streaming hour
viewing image after image
of erotic grace and coupling
Taking it in – Taking it in
By evening statues carved of stone
have become soft flesh in them
With the women
the transformation is total
with the men – almost
O’KEEFE’S NEW MEXICO
In just this light
in about this place
The cliffs are brighter
because she painted them
AUSTIN AGAIN
Whenever I’m in Austin
I’m in a skin that feels like home
scratch me anywhere you’ll find a poem
JERUSALEM AND OTHER TRAVELS
I wake in the night
in a prison of my making
rattling the bars of might have been
and should and should not have done
Unable to escape I pace and I wait
For Buddha to melt the illusion
Or for Jesus to open the door
with sweet forgiveness
Or God to at least send along
a minor prophet with
a file in a cake
BACK IN AMERICA – NEWS OF BOMBING
Before we came to Israel
this was happening in our world
now it is happening on our street
A TOAST TO OUR HOSTS
People of Israel
thank you for opening
we have fallen into your hearts