Love is a Fool Star

I am guilty of interjecting (constantly interjecting) quotations and metaphors into conversations. More than a few friends will confirm this. Here’s one from the internationally celebrated saxophonist-composer-bandleader-poet And playwright Archie Shepp . I think it captures both my inner (you know, the mill where poems often struggle to find their way to the end of the assembly line) and outer lives perfectly.

“I passed through the insipid panorama of Americana with an enormous romanticism. It has never left me.”

If I could fit that on a headstone, baby- I would. My biggest struggle as a poet has been finding the courage to pull what another saxophonist – The late Albert Ayler – called “feelins’”- out of the shadows and onto the page. I’d say I am getting a little better at it, as the newer pieces in “Scattered Clouds” prove, but mastering the art of courage is a full time job. I have always admired those artists who just stood, sat, what have you, and beautifully, tenderly and memorably –laid their feelins’ out like a carpet…The following Carl Sandburg poem rocked my adolescent world –and continues to move me

Offering And Rebuff

I could love you
as dry roots love rain.
I could hold you
as branches in the wind
brandish petals.
Forgive me for speaking so soon.

Let your heart look
on white sea spray
and be lonely.

Love is a fool star.

You and a ring of stars
may mention my name
and then forget me.

Love is a fool star.