"Another Two Poems From Fred Houpt, Again"

Another Two Poems From Fred Houpt, Again

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Gettysburg
(for Shelby Foote)

It could be Gettysburg tonight
The wheat field and peach orchard
Have exhaled the business of the day.
Night ascends the long stairway

The chain of sorrows rattles
Just a little now
Many thousand bones turn to the wind
As the owl takes flight

The simple sickle moon rises
Like a bright remote scythe
Cutting paths through the black
Silent ceiling, and flecks of stars
Have tumbled into view

The harvest is almost upon us
The sickle moon glides with
Measured strides over the
Blades and grass and names

Men were here, once
And civilization imploded
If tonight this be in Gettysburg
Fields of pieces, pastures of peace.

Change Your Mind
(For Bert Hellinger, with love)

Change your mind, is like looking
Through the eyes you keep telling
Yourself are there, somewhere
In the back of your head

Re-write the tablet, so heavily
Etched by the light that pours
In through your eyes, a river
Runs over it and leaves no trace

Think differently, is a spotless leopard
And toothless lion roaring rage that
Can no more escape traps in the mind than
Can the heart move aside from hate

Have faith, is a fathom that has no bottom
To those who will bend to the idea,
That better are those who stand in the light
Than those who prepare a single defence

Beliefs are the caskets that bury our will,
At first light of pain, in favour of sanity.
Dogmas, the black ink that litter the liturgy,
That states the orders that manage the masses

What you see, is as private a moment
And as shareable as the very first breath
That a baby gasps as it is forced to awake:
Defining the experience a total folly

Convincing others that it is all true,
Like winning an election you never entered
Futility and madness there is no greater.
Though we fail, we never cease to try

Confirming someone else's reality is
To wear their sweaty undershirt
And breathe their breaths and adopt
Words from a thunderstruck nightmare

What part does the Deity play, just lurking
Beyond the horizon of where the mind
Connects to the horizontal and the heart
To the bottom, alone in the crawling mud?

Whole hosts of lesser gods laugh at our
Plans as they register at their station.
Much further along, the Higher Reality
Is less amused at the lengths we take

Not noticing, not noticing, we pace
The walls, back and forth, cursing and
Blessing with an even pendulum swing
That has risen from the fields of imprints

Either the soul is here and has shoulder
To the wheel or it is There and as usual
Is having the last laugh at it's own comedy,
Still examining it's own fragments, it pauses.

The path to know these matters is long
Only when we are located as the pilgrim;
Short when we arrive back with no passage
Of time and nothing to show for the journey

And circles are closed with formulas that
Exclude a beginning, an end or a measure
And changes to the mind are rivers that run
Straight up the mountain and into the sky

Poems © 2003 Fred Houpt, all rights reserved
appear here by permission

Author Notes

"Gettysburg"
Reading the book Gettysburg, by Noah Andre Trudeau, knocked a few bits off the sides of my being. I'm very touched by Civil War studies these days, which have reached me very deeply.
"Change Your Mind"
I had been thinking quite a bit about all of the different things I've tried, you know, to change the way my mind operated. To change the thoughts that functioned up here on the surface and even more the one's that always hide. Alas, I had decided, perhaps a bit harshly, that it has been in vain. The notion of changing one's mind suddenly seemed quite absurd; so with this theme very present, I just sat down and finding myself in a quiet state, I heard all those words come from somewhere. The poem felt like I was taking down dictation.

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