tasting

The taste of longing lingers in the mouth.

Can a quiet house return a human whisper?

 

Where do we go when death has made its call?

 

This air’s so sweet and fresh as dusk arrives.

The path on which we run, lined with flowers,

thriving.

first kiss

After you showed me the hilltop monastery taken over first by the Nazis
who transformed the spacious chapel filled with gleaming Icons of Christ
and the saints into a horse stable of desecration, a few years’ later the
Soviets had their chance, turned it into a psychiatric hospital for dissidents
and their political re-calibration if not emotional castration, doing their best
to scrub all remaining traces of god and human holiness from the stone
walls,
and after lunch in the cozy hotel near a lake where I joked about the old
balding guy with a puny pony tail and his sour faced friend seated across
from our table being Russian gangsters, they’d driven up to the place in an
old gray Mercedes spewing smoke out the rear, you ordered a Chinese
dish with fish and rice --I had a delicious pancake with flavorful mushrooms
and gravy, a traditional meal you’d told me,
we drove a few miles across the city to your favorite cemetery where your
beloved uncle and your grandmother are buried, you parked near the
entrance and we sat silently at first in the front seat on that cold day in
November. I was scared to tell you how much I’d wanted to kiss you sitting
alone in the pews of the old church an hour or two before, but jet-lagged
and lonely I gathered courage somehow and began to speak about this
desire to touch you, to begin to bridge this distance between us. It didn’t go
well for some minutes as you seemed startled, your blue eyes receded
farther away and I wondered if I’d made a huge mistake by traveling all
these hours and miles for us to meet in your country.
You sat still, a little stunned, at the steering wheel as we watched people
with heavy coats, somber their eyes on the ground, walk out
of the cemetery on that cold day in November in ones and in twos. I don’t
know if I’d ever felt so lonely, so strange, almost homeless there in the
passenger seat of your Volvo.
How it then happened I still cannot exactly remember, but suddenly out of
this uncomfortable quiet your moist lips met mine and our tongues found
each other in a hunger so strong, this delicious urgency like a pleasurable
lightning strike, and there in front of the Kaunas cemetery on that gray day
in late Autumn our lives began a lovely bewildering dance of two persons
coming together at the boundary of living and dying, the known and the
unknown new, and the mystery of what yet we may become.

               Morning Visitation

 

In the middle of meditation this morning

a  vibrantly colored hummingbird smaller

than a man’s thumb comes to hover

 

over the tiled backyard birdbath in my mind,

vibrating joy and love

like a splendid seahorse floating

freely  in the sky.

Thicket

Alone in deep snow in this northern country, it’s January and
I’m miles and months from anyone else, (or so it seems….)
A thicket of slender birch twigs and thin head-high branches cross
my field of vision.  I remember mom saying how grandpa Ray
planted birches in their front yard in Portland as soon as they moved
to the city from the Wisconsin farm. He was a timber cruiser first
in the forests of the upper Midwest, then western Oregon. How I wish
I could have known my part Swede, part Chippewa , red-haired
Grandfather.  Mom heard him curse only once when he hit his thumb
with a hammer, she was shocked.
Crunch crunch!
                               Crunch crunch!                Crunch crunch! 
Blue sky listening without one word.
Clapping mitts together to stay warm, these wet boots quickly frigid
do their best to step through heavy snow dumped late last night.
Feet become rigid, toes numb, one by one. Mind’s clearing, more
awake in this brisk air.  A tiny bird with a blue breast flutters
then takes off--
I jump, let out a whoop, one boot almost flops loose!—she’s flying from
this tangle of birches in a frenzy, just misses my red nose, a flurry          
of small wings whip upwards into frozen sky, suddenly I see nothing,
everything is adrenaline and visceral, even those silent monologues
that the wearied mind conjures somehow cease.  Being startled brings relief,
thank you little bird!
       
      Crunch crunch! 
                                      Crunch crunch!
                                                                         Crunch  crunch!
Eyes water, tingle from all this beauty, nose welcomes earthy smells
of fertile green things growing (somehow) in winter, my restored sight’s slow
to register what’s actually here, and ears can’t know for certain if that’s a wild boar
roaring  behind that stand of trees, or what’s friend or foe or family, less or more, under
or over, far or near, thawing or frozen, what may be purely phantasma-goric in
the thicket of my thoughts or whether your death last October is real, like this cold
an unseen penetrating force, no matter where I might look or hide, walk, careen or fly.

Keen Clear Spirit

“But there was a fragrant scent of herbs, the low humming of bees
And he fell asleep with his cheek on the sun-warmed earth.”   Czeslaw Milosz


Feeling the keen clear spirit of our goodness during
that wandering talk on Skype today is like you and
I stepping nakedly, slowly and with a quiet elation


into a cool lake at dusk in August’s swelter after
a meandering 8 hour car trip to Krakow, San Francisco,
or the Croatian Adriatic.  After a lazy swim, we’ll emerge


refreshed, rest side-by-side on the fragrant shore, welcomed
by redolent wild herbs you love to munch so much.  Your
hair shines, dries slowly in the warmth surrounding us.


Replenished in a sensuous fullness, our tanned bodies
gleam like polished amber underneath night’s
caressing silence.     


Can you hear the cicadas calling as I hold you close my dear?
Now, all is complete within summer’s vibrant air.

Feeling the Keen Clear

 

Feeling the keen clear spirit of our shared goodness

during that long wandering talk today on skype,

 

is like you and i stepping forth slowly, nakedly, and

with quiet elation, into a cool blue lake at dusk

in late August after a meandering eight hour car trip

 

to Krakow, (or perhaps, with luck,

San Francisco, or ample pluck,

the Croatian Adriatic).

 

Later, we’ll emerge from this refreshing

water, rest side-by- side on a welcoming

fragrant shore,

 

redolent with herbs and rose hips, these wild greens and berries you love so much,

 

where our hair, shining so fresh and clean,

dries quite nicely, slowly in the warmth around us.

 

Then with love replenished in such ease and fullness,

 our bodies gleam like polished amber

in nightime’s long sweet quiet,

 

(can you hear the cicadas calling

as I hold you close my dear?)

 

as all’s well and right within

summer’s vibrant air.

 

 

Peter J Lautz

December 29, 2014/March 9, 2015

untitled

It's not that I've ever been

to St Petersburg, Russia but if

you decide to meet me at the Vilnius airport

in late May after the bitter Winter when amber lies

scattered across the gray Baltic shore,

then I might or might not sip or skip

the vodka offered in small cafes

on the hidden alleyways,

but won't ignore our tears streaming down

these pink, expectant cheeks

as we stand in Spring sunshine facing

the Hermitage, all those paintings by

Matisse waiting on walls inside--walls

drenched with every color of the rainbow

flag, centuries of sorrows unnamed and

known, and the soundless cries of unfinished

revolutions.

                     Thicket

Alone in the deep snow of January in this northern country
and miles from anyone else, (or so it seems….)

a thicket of slender birch twigs and thin head-high
branches cross my field of vision. Crunch crunch!
Crunch crunch! Crunch crunch! 

Blue sky listening.

Wet boots quickly frigid do their best to step through
heavy snow dumped just last night.

Numb feet become rigid. Startled,

a bird with blue feathers takes off above, a flurry  a frenzy
of small wings whip through thick air into sky so cold

it’s frozen, conversations stop, they're stacked on ice chips. Unmelting....
       

Crunch crunch!  Eyes water, burn with irritation,

nose welcomes the fragrance of fertile things growing green in
winter (somehow), my returning sight (tired, brown or hazel eyes?) 

slow to register what’s here and what’s purely phantasma-goric.

Monotone with Red and Black


The gray sea is silent, its spectral surface
a metallic sheen of zinc.


The gray sand dunes, peppered with stands
of leafless lanky birches, stretch as far as
eyes can see--north to Latvia and Estonia,
south to Russia and beyond.


The gray sky, a lamentation within
a foreboding whisper of endless Winter
across these mythic countries.


You, lost and wistful, stand patiently at
water’s edge facing the mystic Baltic,
soft blue eyes erased by this obscure reticence,
mouth closed tightly against
an immense, biting cold.


Your red wool cap and thick black parka,
the only colors that exist
for one hundred gray-stained miles.

Monotone with Red and Black

 

The gray sea, silent, its spectral surface

a metallic sheen of zinc.

The gray sand dunes, peppered

with stands of leafless lanky birches,
stretch as far as eyes can see, north
to Latvia, south to Russia and beyond.

The gray sky, a foreboding whisper

of endless Winter across these
mythic countries.

You wait patiently at water’s edge and

face the mystic Baltic, lost and wistful
in this obscure reticence, mouth closed
tightly against the immense, biting cold.

Your red wool cap and thick black parka,

the only colors that exist
for one hundred miles.

                         The Arrival

 

Grandma’s wool coat, navy blue, long and plush,

covered her ample bust and slender calf muscles

completely.

 

And when she stepped off the train in Portland

for her annual month-long visit,

 

(she placed not one lick of trust in a flimsy aeroplane)

 

first, her sweet radiant smile coaxed the four of us  

to race across the rail station’s massive polished

floor, then that coat’s strange beguiling smell, so

wondrously intoxicating, quenched our childhood

 thirst like a thousand pink rose petals stashed away

upstairs, hidden underneath a folded quilt in her

Wisconsin farmhouse attic for all those many years.

Delight at the End of the Tunnel

Two or three seahorses shimmer and

float above us in the crystalline

cerulean sky.

 

We two who have lost our mothers to

cancer sit close for comfort on

a lone picnic table, waiting.

 

The greenest grass I’ve ever seen is all around.

 

Quiet joy ripples through our alert bodies

at the sight of these small animals and

such perfect, simple athleticism.

 

Their elegance, their sudden dazzling high

flying in this foreign element surprises and

delights us more than silent grief can speak.

 

I wake up laughing, the happiest camper

in the whole damn house.

GARAGE

 

Sometimes it takes a tall sexy blonde visiting from

Lithuania, your slender new friend with the cute accent,

to magically clear out 5 years of mess in the scary(“skeery”

 

to her) chaos of your garage and recover 12 years of wild

paintings buried under greasy accumulations of what seems

like several severed lifetimes.

 

Even the forgotten flaming Mexican volcano Popocatépetl

was resurrected yesterday, so good to see her erupting again

on the rickety easel in the backyard! Yes, Loreta rolled up her

 

sleeves in such an efficient explosion of desire to help as she

cut through and organized immense piles of cardboard boxes

of every size and shape, sorted scores of acrylic and oil paint

 

tubes leaking crimson and cerulean and burnt amber onto

the damp slick cement floor, constructed piles of rocks and shells

from god-knows-where--the Sierras, Oregon, the zinc-grey Baltic

coast, Michoacan, Paricutin, Volcan de Colima, the Grand Canyon’s

 

layered depths, and then those infinite flocks of yellowed bank

statements, old phone bills, partially ripped medical visit receipts and several embarrassing spiral bound journals from the last century,

dog-eared confessionals I’d never want my kids to read when I’m dead,

 

stranded in slightly soggy unmarked cartons, even your brother’s ashes were re-discovered today—they’d been waiting these 2 years to be

returned to the wet earth of Portland—his home during the decades’ long estrangement from our family.

 

Later this weekend, in the new-found spacious appendage to my house,

I’ll beckon her and in yellow light streaming through the open garage door we shall pick up these two paddles, happy to no longer be ignored

 

where they were buried for months under wrinkled Christmas

wrapping, old ornaments and my recently deceased dear friend’s

gorgeous paintings of Buddha, Krishna, Christ and their sacred ilk.

 

We’ll smile easily, tap and bounce an ivory white ping-pong ball between us on the empty green table top made in Germany, the one

 

shining piece of furniture which always transforms a house into home, this impractical gift to myself purchased 5 years’ ago with the last of the

money instead of a cream colored washer and dryer, so boringly

 

pragmatic, the so-called laundry room a jumble of stacked Trader Joe bags, baseball caps, screwdrivers, haphazard hammers and wrenches, those ubiquitous plastic sacks, nuts and bolts galore, and yes, devoid still of all stacked or unstacked automatic appliances.

                                               Soon, Winter        

 

The gray sea gleams strangely, it is tired tonight, tired of lies told

in air so cold and quiet underneath a surly pair of birches, trees that

stand as still as old arthritic monks, these unholy crusted obfuscators,

more despised than inspiring, lurking scoundrels who swear and steer

 

the Curonian Spit’s single ferry like failed businessmen across a murky span

of saltwater to nearby Klaipede where time is more a snail than earthworm

or sleekish snake, and you, my dear, squirm warily with silver spoon well

 

in hand, as hot beetroot soup in a porcelain bowl stares at your languid,

beery eyes.

 

Oh, how these brownish oval orbs but record and report the rigid facts before conspiring to rightly seal their partnered fate and shut tightly against
the metallic Baltic’s frigid, encroaching tide!