Winter 2006 Companion:

CE Chaffin

         Christ's Lighthouse

Freud thought it was a phallus

but it is forbidden to talk about it,

this column of light above a harbor

whose water is denser than any water,

where waves swallow their foam

in sapphire blue that fades to fog at the periphery,

or whatever obstructs your view.

I used to lose sight of it, thinking

the ocean's furious slam dance the thing,

me roped to the mast

through the salt walls of death—

or other ships would block it,

horns and radios distract me,

barely a slip of light in the marbled sky

to remind me of its insistent foghorn,

a dog whistle for the deaf.

Do I dare now?

Do I dare say I see it always,

through sand storms and cell bars

as if the great stone of the world were rolled away? 

What terrible temptations do I then tempt?

What unexpected holy thing

will then morph into another,

baiting my inner eye with self-congratulation,

me a blind man beating his dog with a white stick? 

       At the Carnival II

Nature’s first green is gold...

But only so an hour.

--Robert Frost

High in the plastic pendulum

of the yellow dragon boat

at the far arc of zero gravity

a child' laugh erupts from me

but it is not Sarah’s.

I wave a velour frog

with a gold satin crown

I won at Whack-A-Mole

to the screaming rows laddered below—

The young in one another's arms.

“Your picture with a tiger!”

A blonde in tight low riders

tenders a bottle to a nursing cub.

Would Sarah have wanted a snapshot?

I eat a foot-long corndog dipped in mustard.

Sarah prefers ketchup.

Without my baby daughter

the Tilt-A-Whirl doesn’t tilt;

Scissors are for my beard,

the Ferris Wheel only excuse

for melancholy at changing altitudes.

This house of mirrors reflects

a gray-bearded gorilla

dangling his “Kiss Me” frog

in distorting mirrors.

How stringy its green legs grow

below my exaggerated paunch! 

Why jockey in air beneath the manic night

without my Sarah at my side?

This is no country for old men

We lose our children to the future.

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