'At Sunrise' and 'Sunset Stripped', by D.R. James
At Sunrise
(First published by Poetrybay)
The cat at my elbow is like a rising—and falling—loaf of bread.
She will become cinnamon-raisin swirl.
Across the way, white shutters over dark red brick glow in the early light.
In long intervals, cars swoosh by through a sprinkling of spring.
This fine first cup of coffee is not bitter-sweet, just bitter.
It smells like the morning I knew I’d move away to the lake.
These computer keys are smooth and reflexive and move me into today.
Their dainty clicking prompts the flickering I’ve been seeking.
Another time it was Thoreau re-counting his beans from Walden Pond.
Meanwhile, the cat has become a multi-grain muffin,
her batter expanding over the paper cup, malignant
mushroom looming over a city soon to be our ally.
Though the friendly fire is frightening,
it will bring us the happy ending as always.
Happy is as happy does.
The pealing bell of freedom will deafen any outrage,
for we are as open as a Good-Friday tomb.
We will mend the crack and roll away the stone.
The prophet schlepping his satchel and silly redundancies
will forever find his satisfaction in cynicism,
his cynicism to be satisfactory, his satchel alone to be sacred.
No matter—in this he is going to get what he’s going to deserve.
Il va obtenir ce qu’il va mériter,
whether the cat tips her top or the shutters mutter a percussive tune.
Look: as the sun blooms, the bricks bleed.
Sunset Stripped
An orange sun descends like a slow-mo yo-yo
toward where this Great Lake’s turned purple.
I’d wanted it to sing back-up to a love song
but as it dripped from its last slip of cloud
like a tear from a bloody lid I knew
meager romance was doomed. Nature,
her two-faced refrain—one moment
a hawk, of all things, startles, wings
across your wondrous path and the next
you’re can-canning around the carcass
she was deconstructing. And as wave after
unwavering wave unwinds its white loop
of soothe the grinding motion’s undermining
the stilts you snooze on. Snide circle of life,
something about the conservation of all energy
that enervates the grand delusion. Just as well:
reality’s better, if bitter. Buttering you up
with how no two sunsets… just leaves you
greasy. It’s data: the more molecules, the more
oranges, yellows, and reds. Especially the reds—
their longest wavelengths, their blossoms
like gruesome wounds, their crimson dreams
aboard the steady surf that sings me to sleep.
D. R. James, retired from nearly 40 years of teaching college writing, literature, and peace studies, lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest of ten collections is Mobius Trip (Dos Madres Press).
Photography provided by D.R. James