To he who has begotten a pollen-fall

To he who has begotten a pollen-fall

I

Your words are sea breeze in jelly jars.

But at the well, a girl who wants only water. 

Your grief is that she doesn’t know or care

about the salty air that moves on poems’ current. 

You may have seen the sun rising from the

flooded rocks. And you may prove anything

as the conclusion. But how you kept the

voice alive!  I could give you paper, ask you

to draw my worn Flamenco boots. We have

loitered in so many galleries. You sit on

the bar as the grainy 8mm runs, breaking

on a frame like a smashed refractor on

a streetlight. In the Express Checkout Lane,

you read the titles on paperbacks of

a thousand pages, wondering what it all means.

It is here you are about to buy tulips,

swipe your card and push red for debit.

Let the celluloid be your fever

who films the iodine of a morning kiss,

or frames the tense love where a fugitive

carves the Christmas turkey.  I confess,

I am one of these men whose Stratocaster

is blue, with fitful dreams of Eliot and his

monocle as he argues on and on.

                        II

Dear Henry Kissinger of Poetry:

Thank you for finding better things to

write about. Like the long war dead

lying in the grasses, the photojournalists

evacuated in choppers, leaving the rest

to you.

A soundtrack must be written of the

salt mounds. On every corner,

a control box ticks, changing the

traffic lights to colors of the bluest

meaning, suggesting we drive on

seaward under lily-centered moons. 

But as for you who loves the conjecture

of the sun rising from the well,

not only do I endorse you,

but I will let you divide by zero

to make your case.  And, this is only a

friendly reminder: As you walk out the

automatic doors of the supermarket,

holding the wet receipt and the tulips in

cellophane, their yellow powder ready to

diffuse, please remember to hand them

like spring to the clasping fingers of

your lover.

                                    Robin Reda

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To he who has begotten a pollen-fall

To he who has begotten a pollen-fall

I

Your words are sea breeze in jelly jars.

But at the well, a girl who wants only water. 

Your grief is that she doesn’t know or care

about the salty air that moves on poems’ current. 

You may have seen the sun rising from the

flooded rocks. And you may prove anything

as the conclusion. But how you kept the

voice alive!  I could give you paper, ask you

to draw my worn Flamenco boots. We have

loitered in so many galleries. You sit on

the bar as the grainy 8mm runs, breaking

on a frame like a smashed refractor on

a streetlight. In the Express Checkout Lane,

you read the titles on paperbacks of

a thousand pages, wondering what it all means.

It is here you are about to buy tulips,

swipe your card and push red for debit.

Let the celluloid be your fever

who films the iodine of a morning kiss,

or frames the tense love where a fugitive

carves the Christmas turkey.  I confess,

I am one of these men whose Stratocaster

is blue, with fitful dreams of Eliot and his

monocle as he argues on and on.

                        II

Dear Henry Kissinger of Poetry:

Thank you for finding better things to

write about. Like the long war dead

lying in the grasses, the photojournalists

evacuated in choppers, leaving the rest

to you.

A soundtrack must be written of the

salt mounds. On every corner,

a control box ticks, changing the

traffic lights to colors of the bluest

meaning, suggesting we drive on

seaward under lily-centered moons. 

But as for you who loves the conjecture

of the sun rising from the well,

not only do I endorse you,

but I will let you divide by zero

to make your case.  And, this is only a

friendly reminder: As you walk out the

automatic doors of the supermarket,

holding the wet receipt and the tulips in

cellophane, their yellow powder ready to

diffuse, please remember to hand them

like spring to the clasping fingers of

your lover.

                                 Robin Reda

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At the Arboretum

At the Arboretum 

The koi glide in a

swell, where the

water is calm beyond

the veil of falls.

We hold fingers into

ripples to catch

the orange and

white. The smell of

bottlebrush pollen

is sweet yet hay-like on

the hanging air.

The cosmos stand purple

on their stems,

an aestivation 

crowning the powdery

yellow in their centers. 

I flick an ant off the

blanket’s fraying edge.

you said your grandma

bought it at Gimble’s

during the depression,

a floral print with a

black-rimmed hole on my

side where your grandpa

had fallen asleep smoking.

                            Robin Reda 

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Finding the Null Set

Finding the Null Set

Emptiness is the most peaceful feeling

and I lie beneath the oil painting of

abstract spines.  My door is closed and

the purple lily has started bending on

its stem.  My dresser bears a cheap Christmas

tin that holds change left on a latte or a can

of shaving gel.  When I roll coins,

there’s always a copper slug and a

peso that I don’t know what to do with.

For some reason, I can’t bring myself to

toss them.  My inheritance from my Grandfather

stands beside the tin, a plastic burgundy box with

cracked hinges containing a broken watch

from the ‘50s.  It was never actually

willed to me.  It was sitting in a drawer

and I thought to take it, use it for display.

It’s the only thing I got, while cousins ended

up with diamonds and real estate.  But

Nothingness is pleasant too.  The local oldies

station keeps the Doo-wop rolling and I can

hear the tears of Levi Stubbs, his back bent slightly

with burden.  I stare at a plaque from the school

where I worked as a janitor.  “10 Years Loyal Service”

I drift, my ears below old pillows, dreaming

a woman whose face is unperceivable,

Her posture is soft.  She does not look at me or speak.

This dream fades and I sink into unconsciousness,

the kind that comes from finally letting go.

                                             Robin Reda

“Finding the Null Set” was first published in Lynx Eye, Vol. 9, No.4, 2002, Scribblefest Literary Group 

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Where You Are –Contemporaray Poetry

Where you are 

Something about the feeling

of being suddenly complete,

the last thing Heather said and dragged

her bow through puddles of dusk,

the dank melody that answered Venus

with reflections of bone. To candles

she played the night, moaning arc

across an open string, the rich wood

asking rosin which way to oscillate–

undecidedly.

She played the orange slag

dumped into the dead river.

Played the steam rising off the banks,

lifting until it barely

fogged the stars.

And then there was the moon

that couldn’t turn the night around,

the sirens whose loudest squelch couldn’t

suffocate disaster and you teetering

between certitude and confession.

You are–

the revolving doors of the Harmony Arms,

the pure math of melody,

and then –the marginal equation.

You are in the shadow. I find you

shrugging-off your stoic grief that

Shostakovich saw-cut the cello.

Your cradle;  the cup in which you lie,

window-walking downtown,

hair-blown in the brisk Melrose flurry,

wearing last night like a snood.

                                         Robin Reda

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Snow Blind –Beat Poems

Snow Blind

Is there nothing, not Ice as it

beholds itself? And herself in snow

who listens?  The place is barren. Air

which is silence and across the sterile

hill, the heavy sleeping frost. 

But few leaves, a maple one crumpled

then soggy from water left behind.

The wind is any misery, sun too weak

to light the glitter, yet distant pines in

twinkling snow.  And this, January sees. 

The jagged Ice, the long cold on junipers

from which the gin of basements ring.

And, January barren herself since birth of Snow,

weighted maple’s branches and made the mind

of daggers.  The cold glint of stars that shimmer

through the frozen oxygen.  Across the dead

sky you cried to on your exile from the womb.

                                                  Robin Reda

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Before the Longest Cloud

Before the Longest Cloud

The clowns have gone psychotic, tying

themselves to the sides of elephants,

smoking. –except the one like Emmett Kelly. 

He shaves closely before daubing on a day’s

growth. He sweeps in circles as the spotlight

illuminates old fears. This circus

is on the grass on the edge of Malibu.

The ocean’s curvature creates a rightful dusk. 

But men with 50 foot pant legs sway on metal

stilts– almost robots yet, goofy as an old cartoon. 

The tallest one bounces as if to see what’s on

the other side of the sea’s horizon. And

we, the regular people, have gathered in these

staggered bleachers as if we are about to receive

an answer.

                        Robin Reda

First published, CiderPress Review, Vol 6, 2005, Cider Press  

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