Botticelli of the Amazon

A painter once lived in Amazonia,
in Bahia, Minas Gerais, Rio, Sao Paulo –
in the rainforests and on the wild seacoast of Brazil,
seeking the image of goodness, wisdom,
of grace, of perfect beauty –

he would not paint again until he found it.

He sought it for many years,
wandering the streets, the jungles, the rivers,
the slums and favelas, the marshes, the beaches,
wandering across the land he loved,
but never found what he sought, and grew to believe
his ideal did not exist, had never existed,
and he had been a fool to waste his life in a fantastic search.
And yet the ideal sat radiantly in his mind,
smiling kindly at him, and always lured him on.
His canvases cracked, his paints dried up,
his brushes grew bristly and stiff.
And still he pushed on
and grew old in his wanderings.

One day, in his great age,
near despair now,
he took ship to an island
off the coast of Santa Catarina
and went quietly across the island.
Turning a corner, or crossing a park, or walking aimlessly down a beach in the sound of the waves,

he saw you,

and, his hands weak and trembling with astonishment,
he reached for his almost ruined paints.

Blue Angel

But of course no such beautiful woman
could love an old man like him!
Even the idea was an imposition,
an impertinence, even in thought.

And yet he could not stop dreaming
of her face, her chiseled profile,
her rum-dark eyes, her lips,
her rare, heart-breaking smile.

It was sweet and completely ridiculous
to be reduced to such a cliché:
“another old man lusts for beauty”!
Only just is his humiliation.

But is it ever wrong to love?
(The angels – I hear them sing.)
Though love is only a mask of desire.
(The demons, they dance in a ring
......................................................... of fire.)

Late Saturday Night


… a saxophone’s mournful wail …

… young people amble by, not quite lit, not quite shadowy, in the storefront lights under old-fashioned street lamps that have seen dudes and dandies, clipper-ship sailors and Great War veterans bragging about Paris to their lady of the night…

… the red backlights of cars down the hill, swank limousines, an earnestness of buses, a single embarrassed truck …

… the sounds of sandpapery footsteps, if you close your eyes, a gurgling of voices like an underground spring, sneaky machine moans, the prim silence of a Prius …

… cables running under the street, a swishy whine of metal against metal, curiously consoling …

… laughter, the quick voices of chattery Czech and New Zealand and French and Mandarin and who knows what else, an arm waving as a street car passes …

… the smell of eggrolls, ice cream, beer …

… the starless night above, the black street below, a clicking of heels, the unseen bay and the sea …

How I Met the Curious Blackbird

I was walking in the Presidio, among the graves
of a thousand soldiers dead –
veterans (the ones whose tombstones I read)
of Vietnam, Korea, two world wars –

some including their wives (“Together
again” one said), most alone,
when something fluttering, bold and black,
landed, abruptly, on my head.

Surprised, I brushed the wild thing off,
but it fluttered and landed again.
Again I swept the thing off, laughing,
and stubbornly down again it came.

It was a blackbird, and I was under attack!
No matter how hard I swept
the obstinate bird off of my head,
he just would not stay swept.

I gave up at last, and he rode in triumph
my crown for a yard or a bit,
then flapped down to a nearby grave,
in his beak a light brown clump.

A clump of my hair. For his nest?
I only could surmise.
I smiled at the silly blackbird
as he, for a moment, stared back

with a bright, a cunning, a golden eye,
then he rasped, and he rose
across the acres of graves that surrounded me,
rows on rows on rows.