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PERIGEE
POEMS
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JEAN-CHARLES
JEFFREY
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Cover Art: Éctor Sandoval |
ISBN: 978-1-937030-43-8 |
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Porcelain Duck
Early spring, somewhere in the thickly settled midst Of this Tidal River and Jersey Shore bordered Bedroom Community village, a nesting pair Of mallard ducks may be found foraging unescorted For seed and ducky snacks on a neighbor’s lawn, Or resting in the sun, waiting, for the equinox to pawn Their avian humanity for egg-warming weather: Then to be seen accompanied by their brood Of fluffy, tumbling hatchlings, recently emerged, Of unregimented Chinese order, from the secret wood Of shrubbery; their roosting, good and dry, threading Their way back to the streams and habitat of their wedding.
In a week after the hatch, the ducks and hatch are gone. My neighbor, to compensate for this unannounced And undisclosed non-public loss of his mates, Has purchased a mother and two ducklings silenced In porcelain materiél, to take their place in the sun: A memory, their ritual nature, a priest and his nun. Despite the obvious intrusion of the wild presence, Few neighbors took notice by spoken comment, save The substitute memento of porcelain duck: the mallards Arrived and departed within spring’s flowery wave. Yet no-one preserved their contribution or the precious Hatch. The ducks, endangered by the civil and tenacious, Both mattered greatly or of the lack mattered not at all. The seasons of years of rejuvenation pass unnoticed, Unless recorded within by some local, written history. The merits memorializing thereon the ducky topic said, Is silent, and debate for the next aqueous brood bred. Ignoring the gap, the civil, of the wild, married: Divides duck and man: as a brown-capped chickadee Takes up his “human” perch on the ceramic duck’s head, So contrasted the immutability of nature’s antidæen sea.
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To Helen ---
Summer’s civilized, afternoon flotilla, of clouds, A ceiling as an inverted surface of an ocean, Flatiron grey, or, U.S. Navy’s paint, resolution, Beneath irregularly stacked fistfuls of cotton, Raw and unseeded, their alleged bridges in shrouds!
Musing on this coasting seascape over land, One might ponder, in Irak, in théâtre, Do these ships reflect the warrior metre, “The face that launched a thousand ships,” and see her Goddess’s visage, motive, in our Army’s command,
Operation Enduring Freedom? Theatrical training, Does report back parameters, some perceptible, Seeing this flotilla’s clouds, classically intelligible, Reflecting a Persian Gulf relatively peaceable, The action, only past onshore, not a sonnet remaining!
Deus Ex
Machina The Star of David appeared east of Bethleem, In the direction of Mesopotamia, Persia, Above Baghdad; so, the American Army, de l’Asie, Returns to God’s Little Acre antique sem; ’75, World War II, the injuries, le terroir, cim[1], The treaty, the mail-bag white, à la nasse[2], Twenty-eight years, since ’03, thirty-three, The Gulf States, uncertain, scriptural scene:
Now, two centuries past Peace, Napoleon l’I And Anthony Frank’s Post Office, Iran-Contra, Comes Tommy Franks’ sortie to follow Christ; The Star of David, the rival Firmament’s Sun; Appears in its withdrawn orbit, Galaxia Intra: Barabbas’ clamor, praising the interregnum’s heist!
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Mid-Morning in Mid-November
Pedestrian in a daylight fog Heading back to my haunts in a sortie for news A white moon sunlight breaking through The shore mist, a cloud of colorless hue Touching down to the ground, wafts Between houses, and towering trees Colored in Champagne shades of oranges, Red berries, and pears, shifting, imbues
The scene with mood as a woman, striking, Intelligent, educated, tossing her ample hair Captures every artist’s eye at the show; And a shadow as a cloud, scudding, where, Fleeting across the paths of the sun, The colors of autumn trees are caught, When in the curve the shadow swoops And blackens the spectrum wave of thought,
The blackest of black hawks magnificently Hunts, darts and waves, and coasts On the current, wing-fingers, feathers Spread, five feet, the spectacle, he hosts Almost silently before below An uncounted number of spectators Maybe none but the pedestrian Autumn scene’s seasonal vectors.
Variation of Azalea of White Lilac
Classic red and hugging it in surround, Unusual peach, magenta, violet and white, The lower azalea bush, such a natural Spray rarely seen, and flush above it
The glory of white lilac’s heavenly scent. So, the pedestrian passes by the season. Knowing he has passed lilacs and azaleas Before; but no spectra of light, ever, so lent.
The next time the pedestrian passes the design Will be gone. Green the azalea, dormant The lilac, aquamarine. He will not notice As he will not estimate other sites that want
Color or composition, in perspective, at location Across the field, of this capable view, of variation.
Landscape with Ducks
A pair of nesting mallard ducks Heads twisted and tucked Between feathers; bills Behind wing’s sleeping quills;
The affluvial pink of dogwood petals In spring. Pastel petals, unfolded Of winter wood; space of no metals But metallic color: wood unblindfolded.
In a background of trees, another, blood red! Thicker of leaf than the March dogwood; More of a screen; of the decorative bed In this landscaped garden common good.
Then, next, and above, burnt red and red-brown, A taller, rounder, brown maple deeper Shaded the leafy lamination’s unsown gown; Landscape with ducks, the architect, usurper!
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Pelican Visitation
Socioeconomic frustrations: that dwell and promote Reaction to impressments, success, career individual Professional, tranquility and domestic violence, Alliance, amity or provocation, in The man-dominated, “built environment” Culture, or, constructed social territories; Are greeted at the shore-line, beach-front, With a pre-historic visitor, the brown pelican.
This truly ante-diluvian, larger cousin Of the cormorant, has not been seen Hereabouts for fourteen years. A true brown, The pelican dives like an osprey, also brown And white, but is not a hawk. Its fierceness Lies in the texture, in the ocean it hunts, And the dark end of the spectrum it contracts.
More of another direction before the mast Than a hiatus in the system of the habitat. As a bird of prey, think of a prayer of justice, As a definer of true color of plumage; Think of its putting-in a rare appearance On the banks as arbiter of the Deal; The scandalous “Justice” deal that compromises All truth, by the one who gets the fish!
The brown pelican timelessly defines the wave line Between the red and blue and ocean and sky. Its plumage marks the visitations that establish The light spectrum separating blue and black And red, of sunlight yellow or white gold. Without the pelican prismatic appearance, a color That would not be, of the difference, a physical reality.
À la différence. As its own entity, The pelican’s plumage deploys a timed color Only its own, transcending deluge and scripture. Its infrequency of appearance punctuates its frequency, Not seen for years; when seen, the pelican, redefines The verifiable understanding of the time segment In which the pelican was, not seen, no participant, In the daytime sunlight continuum of measuring, … .
The nominative brown suggestion is an history. Today, of ocean’s Iraq to Nam’s George Brown, President of NATO, and General George S. Brown Of Korea’s Herbert Brownell, Attorneys General. An hemi-century, more, that evolved Out of social justice the Justice “Deal.” A notorious, an infamous, lit de justice,
The brown pelican punctuates, hunting and fishing. One dive penetrates the span of littoral time. Whitaker Hiss, Munich Games, Al Fatah: The infinite ennemie, German Israeli, series: George Hanover, Saxe-Coburg, Profumo: Marie Avignon of Viet Viennese Terror. The Justice “Deal” for Gassy Knoll money. The pelican strikes the ocean surface for fish.
In place of the pelican presence of visitation With its sense of balance brought to the scene, The Justice Deal is cut and made and nailed Shut to second opinions of conscience and review; Brownell and fifty years of Brown Music; Nixon, Bork, the Ave Maria Law School Of Law, the absent pelican, and the lawless sea.
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JEAN-CHARLES JEFFREY WOHKITTEL
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JEAN-CHARLES JEFFREY WOHKITTEL
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NEW TITLES BY SERIES FICTION PROPOSAL WELCOME TO OUR CHILDREN'S BOOKS DEPARTMENT WELCOME TO OUR FICTION DEPARTMENT
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