Any Good Place

In the woods, silently rambling
(y’know, face seriously expressed
yet not one worry dropping with the leaves)
I come to a clearing all bright as everything
I really came down for to stretch
my ugly town thoughts.

Any good place to sit, this, here
on crackling homely leaves
all piled arbitrarily as it is ~ I ponder on
where in the world we place ourselves
how easy so ~ too beautiful
to be carried, well far to be anyone
in this real cruel world.

It is much to come up to
the harmonious ~ to find is to look
freely swimming if it’s not, by now
(head flowing, gaze upward lifting)
I into the silver shimmer
scattered by so many dark leaves go
nicht to heaven (that I once glimpsed within
in love and loneliness)
but to that other place, down on earth
town to work, home and friends
with sadness hard and beautiful:

Where my baby’s never my baby,
no matter how I sing for it;
where time and novels drop between us like moths;
where romantic notions of youth flit and swap
across records and bookshelves of dust
to (shudder) dwindle
like reckless friends no longer riding
in the night.

The same force that sweeps out the bookleaves
shall sweep me off the pavement, off everyday work
sawing through even you, when new life thrills you
now made all your own.

*

I glimpsed all up in the leaves,
I’ve seen it swirl in your dusty street
an’ my life’s gone that way much already,
so guess now where heading off I’ll be?
praps 1 day C U there?

“All that, and still a vague afterlife to come . . . yip ~
I’m talkin’ life up in the clouds ~ yippee, man!”


My feet are on the ground really planted:
see me stretched, sort of rooted in
like as part of mother’s nature child . . .

We oughta be smiling bright as the sun
into the future

coming over the top.





© 2023 Pete Gioconda & Black Cat Communications
All rights reserved

Pete Gioconda