Song for Sam & Tom

Dedication

For you, Oh my Soul, My Heart,
For you, Kind keepers of faith and truth,
For you, My Beloved, My Lover,
For you, For you, and For you.
Accept these lines, these words, I pray
Offer no praise, but please, please stay!

As long as you hear these verse
there is hope: Some girl should weep,
some lovesick boy, shall sing,
these songs will guide our hearts to leap!
For you, I offer this very page
in hope that joy might spring from our age


Prologue
Above the shores of northern lakes
amidst green towers, and late spring snow
the golden chains of sunlight forsake
the freedom of the thither we might go.
A lettered cat slides slight in brush
like shadowed thoughts that lurk
along a slow walk round and push
for prey; a painful dirty silent work
To right she stalks, and sees the shade;
To left she creeps, and knows the tale.

What Miracle! An meaty Angel's Wings
High o'er red pine, a feast, a foe
Too Large, Too Live, Too strong to sing
the ritual ignorance of a beast unknown.
A lettered man's callous empty eyes,
build a hut without a door or window,
For him the prey is not too big or wise
thus he plans, and plots and preens although
In the wooded valley where, above, an eagle waits,
below, a turkey strolls, and either may be dire fate

Wild tall Scholar, Holy Hunter or
a gentile Mannered Mystic swat of dawn
from gray blue mottled want of sky before
the hunt for our symbols can go on.
Oh Bitter Miracle! The endless squawk,
the wishbones uncracked and ready
as they feed by rough ice worn rock,
the feast of Stephan, as he
feints right, and yelps, and cries out, "See!"
feints left, alas, for a moment's assymetry.

All winds breathe of hope,fair change
Once friends, and the new friends a twitter
with symbols high and low both seeming strange
seeds like words from oak fall and flitter
to a groundless ground I can't recall
to a soundless song, of one and all.

Canto 1
The pains and deeds of days gone by,
as feathered ghost from a tomb, arise

Soar, princely, watching from the sky
we sons and daughters, guests surrounded
on all sides by the smirked sunlight
of our least best voices as they flounder
for the path back to a stately state.
Oh he watches o'er the faux-pious land
that once dreamt the greatness of her fate
to save freedom and help all fools understand
A miracle of salvation over ensorcelled sin
Gospels, received, recited, 'We the people'
an auspicious start, though enslaved again
by who dare not fly, above a gilded steeple

His Golden Feathers, by the crux of cross
over one strong, brave, courageous heart
speak silently of symbols to wind tossed
vanity of people unsure and torn apart.
His regal wings embrace the fluff of clouds
to hold every soul accountable to this truth:
No nation can stand if it be not proud
with anger, love, hope and boundless ruth.

"Rejoice," he screams. Rejoice! I am king.
From below, I watch him circle and bow my head
Alleluia, I weep. I weep, for everything
America, now I know, you are truly dead.

Canto 2

The pains and deeds of days gone past,
as amble lonely in the glade, alas

Wait, stoically, with gobbled muttered voice
for we sons and daughters, guests all lost
in the green forest where each simple choice
of path is the certainty of the highest cost.
I state nothing to them in their stateless state
and let them peck about for seed and leaf
that is the binding nature of their sad fate
that freedom is not fact, but faith and belief
What miracle is that revelation of virtue?
Dogma given and recited, 'for the general welfare'
an inauspicious start of the reasoned to be true
the holiest of holies - not good or evil only fair.

Ruffled feathers mute his serious majesty
to hide who he might be upon the table
to offer no symbol of the strange travesty
of missed moment, fallen into Franklin's fable.
His stout wings push him to his lowly perch
hold our souls accountable to thanksgiving
for the nation that stood but now lurches
toward a loveless, hopeless, empty forgiving.

"Repent," he screams. Repent! I am king.
From above, I watch him sit and bow my head
Hosanna, blessed was she. Now lordless leaping
America, now I know, you are truly dead.

Canto 3

But hark! Here in paradise!
Here, that heaven I call my home,
Beside northern seas that entice
sweet cod to fisherman as alone
he practices the magic art of hope
upon the shadeless wreck of gray
and wave, until by trick of rope
he finds with glee his hapless prey.
To the right, the eagle soars and cries
To the left, turkey waits with fixed eyes

Hark, behold the cool rocky neighbor,
the fir-hooded hills of New Hampshire,
whom after autumn's harvest labor
sleeps deeply under snow interred.
Symbols crashing cymbals held
A banner waves, though none are sure
What reason does each color tell?
What deep-held truth might still endure?
A feathered fretting on silvered tongue
Words on leash, near hearts unrung

Lofty wisdom, awesome power hid
by the weirdest kind of madness.
Knowledge of love and a desperate bid
to feast upon the rotting sadness,
I see that bald eagle dive, then eat.
And I, the maddest seeker wail,
my despair for Winnipesaukees waves,
magic means by which the turkeys fail
to teach me the song of newly enslaved.
Once again by fate I am defeated
by symbolic fowl, I'm broke and cheated.

The tone of summer will be declared,
though I beg and bleed the tragic
hunger, no plate to break or napkin tear,
How the feast is served is magic.

Canto 4

Meanwhile, each dear old soul
awaits the warmth of dinner roll.

'Twas, politick, to tether my tale,
to sleep away the mornings without a poll,
then feed each course with room warm ale
devoted egg of turkey's past, and empty bowl
like a thin promise of crisped bacon.
Now noon's sideways rays coddle taste,
a brook wanders past a bit mistaken
that he is himself in forgetful haste.
The dishes, the utensils, the cabinets bare
even the memories are gone from there.

Ah, to dine and thus to slay
some horseman, with gentle dread
charging crime, with no word to say
he mounts stallion with uncommon speed.
His time is all the lack of food
and soon, the leaves will turn again.
Remember every bite is a mortal fued,
a backward glance at a bird and then
a swallowed apocalypse of verse revealed
as the treasure of prosperity is sealed

Canto 5
Thus the meal is gone and spent,
a benediction of bird and man,
a demon come, an angel went.
As stillborn dreams built to span
the gulf of freedom's emptiness
each devoured by dear old Sam,
Old Tom, will watch and not confess.
Triple Triple, waste and spew
water boil, and passion too

Twice the symbolic fowl flew
Twice and once, with broken bone
Happier times, were not as true
as this vomit on this altar'd stone.
Oh Lord, his wings are daring wide
a sweet romantic flight of fancy.
I forgive the way he boldly lied,
but what could he do less chancy?
To the right, cries a starving child
To the left, mankind can be so wild

To shred the swallow, and my heart
and scatter all the merry mice
it seems to me there was from the start
no time to consider twice.
The turkey might be more holy lines
but the eagle is the honest poem
though it is fiction on which he dines
gray mourning of morality is turkeys home
So it is bones and symbols on the ground
the songless song that is freedom's sound

Epilogue
An eagle wings to silent aerie where
there are no kings of men to bear
A turkey perched on lowly tree
has no perspective with which to see

Blood and guts, and food's the same
You're not the fowl, or the feast,
and though you think it's just a game
you are like me -- the very least

From birth to birth from grave to grave
You're not the king, you are the slave.