Lament for Jean

 

      What I Liked About Rex

      He devised the airlift that fed Berlin  

      There’s now a street   Rex Waite Straße  in his honor  

      Wing Commander Reginald Waite

      What I liked about Rex was his quiet manner

      his interest in archeology

      he’d flown biplanes over Mesopotamia

      over England’s shires

      noting old pathways

      meandering routes unseen at ground level

      how such paths came together
      at places often sacred

                         places once pagan 

      but whatever culture's there

      still performs its rites

      Rex had an ease with authority about him

      as when he got me to help him

      re-install wooden shutters

      one fine late Autumn day

      shutters that winterized French windows

      opening out onto the lawn at Foyers

     where New Forest ponies sometimes grazed

      such a fine day it was

      with the breeze lifting fallen leaves

      into a momentary vortex

      as  dry leaves spiraled up into a helix

      then fell back to the patio as calm prevailed

      there were no dark clouds in the sky

      except his good Lady

      who hated onset of winter

      Foyers where ponies brought their foals

      geese pecked at fallen quince

      wood was stacked by the front door

      ready for winter fires

      was Foyers such a place where old paths met?

      it seemed actors   actresses   often stayed there

      while playing Southampton Rep

      & poets came and went

      never paying rent

      © Dick Russell, 2013, 2016

 December 15th 2021

 Your Ideal Man

Mourning

 Too Old, Too Young

When I'm too old to toil too young to die

I'll write some lines while my brain's still spry

not say in English gone fishing but Greek

a private joke only scholars find wry

Sing to me muses in tongues I can't speak

tone poems in languages I can't name

crystallize images happy or bleak

so my words can attribute blame or fame

Translate your meaning so I get your drift

Let me hear your music framing your chords

picture your meaning in words I can shift

into metrical patterns weaving your words

Sing to me muse with voice universal

each time I recite without rehearsal.

                                            Dick Russell, September 2021

 For Yvonne

 In August

 

 

Sing to me muse

as once you sang before.

Illumine and inspire waning armies of blood cells

worn out by attrition beyond years three score and ten

open my eyes to sequences never before given

while I edit them with my fingers

backspacing often with one hand hindered another still spry

chiseling words on a tombstone digitally printed 

taken from writing imaged on a screen

my brother’s name in big bold words

sounding this knell.

 

Illumine and inspire my genes

to signal I’m fit as a fiddle

I’ll make it to eighty uphill

which my brother would have been

 

steady as she goes no need for jazz 

no need for discordancy

just ambling along 

noticing

more than before

except when my eyes turn inward 

into DNA space

where highlights of past life are archived

how is a mystery to me?

 

Illumine and inspire me 

so I can keep making these songs

build me back from your archive better 

than ever I was before 

sing to me muse

as once you sang before.

 

 

 

Dick Russell

August 23^rd, 2021