Four poems by Dick Allen

James Dean Walking Along a Wet Street in New York in 1955

He doesn't kick anything. He's so into himself 
he roils, head down in that James Dean way, 
shoulders flexing. Look out, pigeons. 
Look out beauty shop owners. Look out governments. 
Every store window will explode to mark his passing.




The Puzzling Beauty of the Here and Now.

The puzzling beauty of the here and now 
affected him strangely, 
like names for Chinese watercolor brushes: 
Smoky Cloud, Keeps The Best Point, 
Crane Neck, Giraffe Neck, Red Pine, White Goose, 
and a certain rise of the Merritt Parkway 
when all you can see ahead of you 
is the sky going on. How puzzling 
that “stone breaks open the stone in stones,” 
and “peaks link up with peaks that dominate peaks,” 
as Shin Tao Chi Shon—sung wrote 
in his beautiful painting one morning 
while waiting for a friend to come across the mountain 
to stay only an hour 
after an arduous trip of three days and two nights, 
and it would be two days and three nights back. They had tea, 
a heron stood in the lake that stretched before them. 
There was the even-spaced ringing of a bell. . . .  
How puzzling to come across such stories 
in a book that's lain around the house for years, 
or on a message board tucked far down inside the Internet 
on an out-of-way Website you can only reach 
by drifting through meadows. . . . Once there, 
he also found links to The Cherry Orchard, 
a little Sarabande by Bach, 
and into one of those sunlight and brocade interiors 
beloved by Dutch painters.  Jigsaw puzzles. 
Word games. Mazes. Detective stories. 
Crossword puzzles. Anagrams. Hidden Things. 
Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Where's the donkey? 
The video game search across the universe. 
Puzzles made from bent nails. The puzzle of Atlantis. 
Who was Jack the Ripper? Where's the lost gold? 
When shall I be found?  “The Here and Now- 
that sounds like a Bed and Breakfast place,” said a friend, 
“or the name of a minor rock group, 
the kind that begins and ends playing high school proms 
and in town hall gazebos.” Enigma. 
Quandary. Toss of the dice. 
Riddle. Conundrum. Charade. “How beautiful 
for spacious skies, 
for amber waves of grain”                      
always went through his head as he crisscrossed America 
east to west, driving the Interstates. “. . . for purple mountain majesties 
above the fruited plain,” 
although he'd never actually seen a purple mountain 
but once, in New York City, 
he saw a sculpture of a purple cow. 
It had its head down 
and was munching on the kind of green cellophane grass 
you find in Easter baskets and in baseball stadiums. 
“. . . America, America.”  Picture a house in Kansas or Oklahoma 
with an infinite number of doors that lead to rooms 
that lead to other doors. Each door is a sideways lightswitch 
illuminating what's inside each further room. You're searching, 
but every time you think you've found the answer 
another door opens. . . . We built this city. 
Come here, Watson, I need you. . . . If the soul 
is a pattern of information, no wonder 
there are complex souls and simple souls, 
but why does every soul weigh precisely 21 grams 
as it flies into the air beyond the body's death?  
“You don't know what's happening here, do you, Mr. Jones?” 
He opened another door, 
and there was a field of sunflowers. It was September, 
two days from 9/11. He opened another 
and there was no Iraq War, no Abu Ghraib prison.  
          He opened a third 
and there was a New Mexico pueblo, 
a black and white rainvase on a window ledge, 
sand and the noonday sun. . . .  Dimension after dimension, 
life after life, each separate and the same, 
folds in a Chinese fan, 
Fingerprints. Footprints.Revolver in the gutter. 
A letter hidden in a secret drawer. 
The broken pearl necklace. DNA. 
The Case of the Chinese Boxes that was never solved. 
. . . . They spoke maybe two dozen words before they parted, 
which have not come down to us, 
but he liked to think Harry Belafonte echoed them 
in Sylvie:  “Bring me little water, Sylvie, Sylvie, 
Bring me little water out. 
Bring me little water, Sylvie, 
Every little once in a while”  
and the lost amphimacer of the Here and Now, 
the puzzlement of it, 
and the heron, the lake, and the bell.




Patches of Sunlight

Whenever they occur in a shaded garden,
an art photograph, a painter's memory,
almost helplessly the eyes go to them,
into the more vivid colors,
the yellow not really yellow nor golden,
but a glowing that tips everything close by
into near-onyx. On a Winslow Homer wave,
they're completely the clouds' gift,
momentary partings from on high,
highlighting crests of dark breaking curves
that rise from all that roils beneath them.
At a meadow's edge they flicker like lost romances,
lingering unexpectedly beneath maples and poplars,
until a meadow breeze or just the planet's rotation
mottles each patch of sunlight with leaf shadows
so translucent, so filling in jigsaw puzzles,
all that remains are fringes, light embracings.




Dwelling in the Moment

It's made of a few brushstrokes,
the roof a downward sweep, the walls
two swift verticals of thick dark ink,
no smoke from the chimney, no face in the window,
but in the yard a single cherry tree
and in the hills beyond, blue mountain mist
floating over blue mountains.  Almost no one
dwells here.  Almost no one
has crossed the little bridge that leads to here,
looking over the railing
to see her own reflection staring back.