The voice of an owl perforates night air.

I hear it, feel it while Miles Davis plays
indoors, and I think of two sounds,
two dimensions – out there, in here.

I am between
what I remember
what I had forgotten.

Death hovers in night air: sulking
alive, breathing, penetrating –

the artist is always cringing under
the weight of death – a song
that everyone knows, tunes
we keep hoping to forget.

There is music we often fail to discern.
There must be, there must be.

recently published in whaleroadreview.com

In October dew
curved horns spiral down
to the giving earth,
gentle heads munching
soggy glowing grass
shimmering in sun.

These are not the days
of spooky cattle
driven cross-country
to some unseen place
where cowboys get drunk
and waste their money

after outlasting
the stereotypes
that made epic films
the myth we desire
affirming our taste
for making heroes

from splintered dust
and desperate pilgrims.
On this gentle slope
these quiet giants
graze a life that some
cowboys would envy.

Mount Scott

A man sits riverside
every morning in the early breeze
in the first strokes of sunlight,
the latent moon.

He watches the water flow by him
as if he’s watching nothing,
the water never ceasing
moving past him

quiet except for the occasional splash
or rise along the rocks.
The man, this water, this ritual
of non-doing, this act

of non-being, erasing
a lifetime of senseless toil,
removing a world where all things
rob us, take us away

so nothing is left
except the patient desire to see
what he has never before seen
what he has never allowed to be.

Ken Hada – August 2016
for my friends
Delaware Valley Arts Alliance
Narrowsburg, NY

Even this old sailor is tired of water.
Down from his lofty perch, sadly
pecking his way through soggy grass,
he shakes off muddy clay clinging
to his claws. The black sheen of his coat
is dulled in drizzle this moist morning
when all earth seems compromised,
its texture mushy, its color blanding
to gray. His cloudy, downcast eyes
betray his limitations, while a fateful
sea rises, drenching, saturating us
with mortality – his cocky voice now
quiet. This is no time for crowing.

I’m excited to be reading at Imanoli Writers Conference, Thursday, June 2 at 10 am, at Chickasaw Arts Building 201 N. Broadway, Ada, OK>

As darkness descends, this time
in-between, when stars are not yet lit,
the moon lingering far away, I sit
like stone, hear whippoorwills,
some in woods north of me, some
to the south, and for the moment,
look up into soft sky, feel how good
it is to be on this planet, on this piece
of earth, this place in Oklahoma,
and for this time, at least, I will not
allow thoughts of a greedy governor
or a corrupt congress – betrayers
of the commonwealth, of common
sense – an eviscerated education,
emaciated common good, enter me.

For these moments I will quietly sit,
practice the old art of wu wei, let
night birds fill me. I welcome night,
ducking too much light, a squinting
fool seeking guidance from stealthy
birds. Their song blending with geese
honking high overhead, a distant dog
barks, cattle lowing, tremoring tree
frogs, cicadas, crickets – bats diving
and darting and I am comforted.
For this time, at least, I am nothing
but an empty cup waiting to be full again.

I wonder what time the gates of hell
began to shake. When exactly
did the Son of Man realize divine
power enough to rise, to resurrect,
and how long did he sit in darkness,
entombed before the rock rolled away?

I’ve always imagined sunrise
but tonight as March clouds build
slowly from the north bringing a last
bit of snow before spring, then summer
settle in among us, I feel the holy
aloneness, in the still of night, stars
disappearing as the breeze picks up
ever-so-slightly, a chill coming.
I think of all the entombed emotions,
rock-walled feelings of anger due
to senseless waste. Corporate greed
is not just a slogan the Left likes
to throw around. People are jobless.
We rush hell-bent toward a 30’s-style
economic crisis. Loopy, lead-headed,
disloyal legislators have played
Poe’s terrorism. They have walled
their fellow citizens – buried alive
by lawful betrayal. God deliver us
confusing legality with morality.

One more cold snap is coming.
The early flowers will feel its bite.
The turkeys gobbling this afternoon
will shiver before daylight. I am alone
except somber violins on the radio.
Dark sky curtains this little drama.

Dinner was pleasant, but any more
I never know if I should kiss her
goodnight. Am I afraid of what I want?
It seems the right one never comes
along. Maybe I am not the right one.
Maybe I have become too accustomed
to myself. Maybe the violin strings
are bending another direction. Maybe
I mistake melancholy for music,
neurosis for solitude. Maybe.

I believe. Help Thou my unbelief.
I am a distant star, at best.
Reluctantly I observe the empty tomb,
one of those dull boys who take a peek
inside long after the sun is up,
and women, faithful as mice, persistent
as springtime wasps, already are
constructing the story. Men gave us death.
Women see the tomb empty, the womb
delivered, but I am not sure I can run
in that crowded pasture. We’ve all
been castrated. We all wait the glory
of the Lord, or slaughterhouse, or
maybe, just maybe, it is both.
Pre-determined death and divinity
may not be mutually exclusive.
Who knows?

All I know is that I am oddly at peace
even as night sky fills with spring snow,
even as the life we prefer is set back
once again – Republican dummies perched
on laps of CEO’s, pronounce the dictum
of big oil, usher in a depression, then move,
the western horizon full of untaxed
derricks, our towns full of understaffed
children in schools cracking like worn
out leather, and the masses satiated
on football, fried food and fear.
Football, fried food and fear – a recipe
for a dictator to come along and bake us all
in a pie too sweet for consumption.

Sometime, in the morning light,
I am pretty sure I will rise to survey
all that I have been. Sometime, in morning
light I’m pretty sure I will rise, make coffee,
look to the hillside into leafless trees,
across a field just beginning to green.
A crow or two will bark at morning silence.
The churches will be full of good
people tempted to go bad and bad people
too hollow to know the difference.
I do not begrudge their faith. I only wish
faith worked for the common good.
Wished preaching weren’t so implosive.
No holiness without social holiness
Wesley used to say. But who has ears
to hear such anachronistic preaching,
a heart big enough to feel that pulse?

But who am I to judge?
I am a distant star, at best.
In light of day I am unseen, futilely
burning somewhere in a universe only God
could inhabit. Nothing is everything.
And I am part of that grand silence,
those mocking, mucking luddites
envious of birds, tiny angels winging
in the cedars, underrated yet
undeterred in their singing, in living,
in their dying.

Tonight, lovers snuggle close.
Bad marriages, full of confused children
pause to profess in silence. Our
bellies full, our hearts burning flames
inaccurate, hot and mismanaged.

Tonight, even the owls are silent
though a pack of coyotes, maybe out of
habit, squalled as the moon disappeared.
Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus.
Come quickly, I pray. Restore common
sense, the common good. Teach us again
to number our days and to balance
our check books and to marry well
the first time or at least have enough sense
to listen to the story women are telling.
Tell it again sister. Tell it again.
Let there be peace. Let there be learning.
Let there be a future for our kids.
Let the dark night prove purposeful.

Life, as we prefer it, is not always ours
to hold. We are at the mercy
of mercenaries, and like the myopic
armadillo we think our skin is tough.
We think our skin will save us.
There is no deception like self-deception.
No ignorance like willful ignorance.
Bad ideas have bad consequences
and like the first disciples huddled
in fear, we are weakest when someone
else is sacrificed, feel brave when a mob
screams insults at the sky.

I remember when girls wore bright
new dresses, carried baskets and smiled
sheepishly at old men. In college,
three buddies and I spent our last dollar
at the men’s store purchasing dress hats.
How proud we were, trending
into the sanctuary, like stud ducks
we wished to be. It was Easter Sunday
and vanity be damned, we loved
how we looked, how we felt in the glow
of Christ upright, proud, preening.
No hell could hold us back then.
Lovely ladies smiled. I think a couple
winked. Maybe it was the glint
in our own eye.

When I was a boy, mother placed
chocolate bunnies in the fridge
to surprise us that sacred dawn.
I usually ate the whole thing before
breakfast. The singing congregation
was our ritual, but our bellies, our reality.
I believe. Help Thou my unbelief.
I am a distant star, at best.
Tonight, even the owls are quiet
though a pack of coyotes, maybe
out of habit, squalled as the moon
disappeared. Even so, come quickly
Lord Jesus. Come quickly, I pray.

In honor of Grandma Ione Hada’s memory (96 years, and counting)

Grandma dressed catfish,
that’s how she said it.
Her large calloused hands gripped
pliers and the head
and pulled hard in opposite directions
until the skin grudgingly yielded
to her strength.

Then she grabbed her butcher knife,
the one she used to dress chickens,
that’s how she said it,
and slit the belly
and circumspectly fingered out entrails
under a running spigot
before she finally chopped off the head.

Those virile death-hands holding
firm the soft slippery victims,
those same hands that touched
my fevered forehead,
patted my sunburned shoulders.

from The Way of the Wind
Village Books Press, 2008

I find them beneath my persimmon tree.

They quickly turn to go though
I don’t feel the need to be rough with them.
Fences are necessary, I suppose.
They can be meddlesome too.

These gentle folks pass every Sunday
to visit their boy in prison, they
only want to make a pie. I only want
to be asked first – a fence divides us.

She promises to bring me tarts
and that seems fair, and I think about
fairness and their son these days.
I am glad they go see him Sundays

and I tell them so. Their calm, courtesy
strikes me. Persimmon pie is part of her
Autumn ritual, something I cannot deny
her. I don’t know, don’t need to know

how it is they got off the main road.
They are seeking the sweetness that comes
after the bitterness has ripened.
Standing under a tree none of us really own

I see her boy back home years ago
gleefully eating a piece of pie. I see
her husband proud, happy, the gleam
in her eye, sweet sticky juice sliding

down the boy’s dimpled cheeks,
dark eyes aglow as he wipes his mouth
with the sleeve of a flannel shirt
and I want it to be that way again,

want sour taste expunged. Afternoon
gathers and we talk about a hard,
killing frost that makes the sweetness,
a cold harsh night that ripens

this rustic fruit. We shake hands
and I don’t look back as I return
through fields where yellow leaves,
orange, dusty, scarlet and intense

lay about me, toss around me
in the breeze that carries ladybugs
unsuspecting toward their graves,
timber standing in reverent silence

as before a judge, as if to judge.
Truly autumn is the most dramatic
of days. It is a time to remember
but it is also a time to console.

©Ken Hada, 2014
first published in Red River Review
then in Persimmon Sunday (VAC, 2015)