Woman In A White Dress

Wallace Stevens cries under cherry blossoms
south of the insurance office in Hartford, Connecticut.
Picasso stands in the rain in the middle of Chicago
& the city rumbles past on wheels ignoring him.
His stern steel face does not bend into a smile as the rain pounds him.
I watch the lame politicians dine on spaghetti & meatballs
& garlic bread & red wine in Ocean Park, California.
There is nothing to be done.
And if not what are the meanings of non-grammatical utterances?
Are they dismissed from the world of reality?
"Questions," says replicant Rutger Hauer in the movie "Blade Runner."
Elvis Presley sits on the lawn next to the driveway in Memphis,
Tennessee yawning.
He is tired & bored to death.
'Call no man happy until he is dead,' writes novelist John Coetzee
as he reflects on happiness & his seemingly happy
love affair with a hooker.
Joni Mitchell is running in the back alley in Brentwood, California
waving a paint brush at old love ghosts.
One couldn't help but laugh to see the lovely blonde loping.
I wrote a poem in Venice once about love in the cupboard.
It disappeared among the winos in the 4 a.m. mist
of The Pacific Ocean.
I have always wondered about the kindness of political parties.
Harvard Philosophy Professor G. Santayana an Unbeliever
moved to Spain to spend his lengthy latter years in a Catholic monastary.
He loved the quiet methodological rigor of the monks.
I suppose he also loved the quality of the light in Spain.
Who wouldn't.
Last night I watched the austere Robert Bresson movie
'DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST.'
It is Pure. Cryptic. Art. Silent.
Now I'm lonely as a post in the desert
aching for the woman in a white dress:
The Bride & her beautiful eyes.


RLG copyright 2006