Remember This Place All Days Of The Year

Among the faces, we claim a sun to light a path and mark the run -

That holds us tight in fitful prayer; a guardian to stand steadfast there.

To keep the planets and stars on might
Our orbit together this sacred night.

Remember this place all days of the year

Remember this face in sight of your fear -

For all that has been remains with us still

In eyes and hands and vigilant will.

Make noise of your spirit, take care of your flight -

Laugh when you hear it - make merry your sight.

- bellini

They'll Be No Fishing Today

In the light of Sunday morning before the cars from the church
Pull onto the street and forget the word --
Before horns and hurry replace the breathing of leaves
Where thoughts float to the waking.

I wanted to say what it was at first that now lofts like sails
On a boat beached in the rush of foul weather.

Unexpected, like a jewel or shell picked while walking,
Shimmering with mercury and pure light.
Burning a hole in my pocket, waking hunger in all its beastly forms -
I followed its path to your door.

There, in the swirl of a receding wave,
In your kitchen, scrambling eggs-
Snaking through a crack in your gate the gleaming memory of idle summers,
The fresh water of discovery cool to the vein.

The dead reckoning of fog horns marking the spot where just maybe someone else heard it too.

There, in the deep sea of conversation James Earl Jones reaches his hand across chest high corn to the other side of a field of dreams.

Cruelly arrives your summer squall, in sight of land and measure -
The boat rocks steady and the sea shifts to the locking of shutters
And the turning of keys. They'll be no fishing today.

-bellini

How It Is Day After Day

All That Is Green And Blue

Walking through this cave of harkness
Stumbling over rocks and root --
Joseph Conrad and his Heart of Darkness
Was I so wrong about you?

Fumbling on the hieroglyphics
Strike a reed and flame the wall -
It matters little the specifics,
You climb, you slip,
You take the fall.

Did you think you would be different?
Find yourself another route...
God knows I was certain of it --
An apostle in scouts clothing mapping the truth!

'Til it had shown me squarely back to where I had started
Empty handed in the center of town,
On my knees disbelieving
Having lost such precious ground.

There I joined in the procession
The shoulders of my brethren round
Feet shuffling and hearts cleaving
As they knowing
Burnt their houses down.
It was my turn, I was no different -
The only way out was through
A hole in my heart seeping
Every sadness, every sorrow, every thought of you.

Until the sweetness I had swallowed
Filled this cavity in my soul -
Down to zero, down to nothing!
Down to whole.

Now I paddle the flooded river
In a dug out canoe --
Centuries at the gates of morning
Keep me steadily in their view.
Staking claim to forgiveness
And the dawning,
I stand firm on higher ground --
Speak your name, they stare
back blankly, stoke their lanterns, make no sound.

This our daily ritual, not much of it is new --
Along the misty edge of all that is green and blue.

-bellini

Seeing The Moon Tonight And Thinking Of You

Seeing the moon tonight and thinking of you -
The stars and planets say nothing is new;

The river meanders its way back to the sea

Telling stories of the dragon fly, honey and bee.

Gone for long, though far you have come
Carrying your nap sack, beating a drum.
A penny for your thoughts in a jar by the door.
A candle stick left burning after it all.











Call me crazy or daffy, silly or sweet --
I saw you returning one time in my sleep.
Ask the electricians working on the next block;
Love lasts forever, beware of the shock.

The dream sleeping quietly at the foot of your bed
Makes busy itself while whirling round your head.
Til one day it stands beside you -- mirror in the hall
Readies your rain coat, makes the phone call.

I have stood on the dock in the fog of the night,
Paddled my boat round the Isle of Wright,
Returned home and put up water for tea --
Forgotten everything you've ever said to me.

Thinking that would make it all right --
Until, of course, the moon last night.

-bellini

To See And To Not

Ours is a funny lot to see and to not.

II.
A long shadow lingers in the late afternoon
Saying more than even we about the outer boundaries there
In the distant fog grumbling.



















You step into the field and hope for rain to wash free
these clumps of un-tilled soil clinging to the wheat
and wisdom that was planted so long ago when you were small

and the world was smaller still.

I have walked the road myself and wondered where the next tree will fall.

Some things are certain need we recall - every six hours the tide
does rise and fall; morning follows even the blackest of nights;
we have watched the cormorants together take flight.
The fish circle in the bays whether we are there or are not.
Ours is a funny lot, to see and to not.

- bellini

Under This Earthly Sky

Wandering my way passed custom house and whaler's pew
Lives long forgotten from earthly love, 'tis true.
Across Main a car pulls into line
Among whiff of honeysuckle and vine.

What thoughts say you as you climb your stair
And enter a room that I fashioned there --
By hand when love knew not a care.

















Oh so keenly we go walking gently into night
For fear of shedding nary a sight
On things left behind, water under a bridge - returning
North by south, by definition, learning.

You and I so shyly bide under this here earthly sky.

-bellini

This is the painting

How many days will trip by before you find me
thick in my thoughts, sleeves rolled pacing the floorboards
in search of a word or meaning?

How many brilliant ideas
will have flashed over me in a wake of
cosmic certainty - hours of jaunty disbelief
idle conversation, Sunday afternoons
before you stand square-jawed knowing at my door?

Thumbed magazines, walks in the neighborhood
undeveloped rolls of film -- these pile up.

- bellini

Mocassins In The Grass

I have snuck down to the edge of your camp

and watched, crouched in the high grass, breathing
just past your gaze as you stoke a dying fire and search a searing sky.

Walking between the perimeter between night and dawn -
you kick your thoughts about like a discarded Reingold can
found on the roadside happy for the sound it makes
as it skirts across the macadam and stops.

Certain no one sees you there amid the gravel and gravity
doubting your doubts, crouched like monsters in a distant field.

Your legs fatigue and then freeze unable to stride forward
or pull back from this not knowing -
Your camp smoldering in a seamless dawn.

-bellini

This Full August Moon

A young man
eyes the hands
that fold beneath him
spellbound by the breath
of her consent.

A lone striped bass breaks

the swell of a mercury cool eddy
as dinner guests across town
raise a glass in compliment
to the chef.

A woman stands squarely
in the small hours
shuffling from counter to pantry
A hot rhubarb pie cools
on a warn kitchen table.
The newly blushed
slip out the side door
kissing full-mouthed
by the honeysuckle vine.

Sigh, you old dog
in contemplation behind
the flapping screen door.
See a car turn to enter the drive
and then on second thought
pull away.

These, this evening and next
before and certainly after we
in our infinite wisdom rise to say it is new.

-bellini

Something New Under The Sun

Rain.
Turn over this dry ground, soften the edges
Of these forgotten fields; furrows of intention carved deep-

Landlocked for some time now.

Come.
Seep into this reluctant soil, laying fallow --
Unfazed by the moon
and all her suitors.
On starless nights sleeping indifferent to March's wary howl.



Stay.
Waken this woolen earth.
Non-expectant and turned, full of  its own spit --
Yet, secretly holding out for something new under the sun.

-bellini

Jupiter

You have re-entered my atmosphere perfectly in tact -

The jeweled planet beaming its way across a cavernous, motionless sky.















Snuffing the light from lesser stars caught orbiting your wake.

In a most saint-like fashion, apologetic in your mission.
It it not your crime to have emerged the gem of a galaxy
Recently reconstructed in the northern sky.



















Maneuvering at warp speed now through this temporary arrangement
Of moons and ladders scattered across my back yard.
A galaxy left featureless after the great implosions of ‘89.

You survey the landscape and then retreat.
The sky grows dark with worry.
What are the odds you will pass round again--
And why would you after years of collecting your own moons?

Oh Casseopia, Cepheus come!
Commission my hand to rearrange the planets, paint a new sun!
‘Fore I dare to scour the night sky –
Turn each constellation on its side calling out her name.

Jupiter!

- bellini

Wake Little Baby

Wake little baby

No time for bed -
Don't listen to them
Live in your head.

Make a lot of noise
Cry if you must
Take notes along the way
Before it all turns to rust.

Blow your own horn, trumpet and flute
Up the ante, hide the loot.
Tell them you can't remember
The faces and names,
Partners in love -
Who is to blame?

Sooner or later they'll believe you
Leave you alone,
Repair the hatchet, bury the bone.
Whatever works is fine with me -

Remember a different story, disagree.
In the end is the beginning
I've seen it before -
Bats in the attic, cracks in the floor.
No one gets out easy, you pay every day
Bills on the table, doctor's away.

Hail in a wind storm -
Swim up a creek,
Grab the hand that feeds you
Take a big leap!

Keep on breathing, in and out
Don't believe what they tell you
And for god's sake look out
For best intentions, those who do good --
A conspiracy growing in the neighborhood.

Walk your own path, not his or mine.
Stop in the woods, take your damn time.

Wake little baby-
No time to sleep
Keep your eyes open
Make nary a peep! -
Until you are ready
And then let her blow
Wail your own song
Give 'em a show.

Tell them its your time
To make the mistakes
Start a new fashion
Point out the fakes.

Push them aside
They've had their run
To get it all wrong
Ruin all the fun.

Don't listen to them,

Live in your head.
Wake little baby, no time for bed.

- bellini

Baby Blue Upstate New York

Strike another match, go start anew...

Water Mill Sixty Four

Counting cars on the Montauk Highway
Summer nights in our
Thirties gambrel
Headlights on my bedroom wall and the story they will tell -
Of one mercedes, two mercedes, three mercedes, four
Water Mill, Nineteen Sixty Four.

Raw potatoes on Rose Hill Road, Kicking cans along the way
To the black sand at Flying Point, bicycles in the hay;
Lifeguards at their posts, mothers at the shore -
Mayors make a toast to Water Mill Sixty Four.

Convertible Mustang Fords, transister radios -
Toasted almond Good Humor bars, getting caught in the undertow;
Peaches from Peachy Halsey, penny candy from the Penny Candy Store
One mercedes, two mercedes, three mercedes, four.

The fish man on Friday nights, flounder on ice
Cold milk in glass bottles, playing hoops under the lights;
June bugs and praying mantis,
Ice skating the Seven Ponds
Bamboo poles and night crawlers,  frozen carp sounding alarm.

Sledding the high tension wires,  campfires in the snow
Boys duck hunting in handmade blinds, where did they all go?
Black labs in crystal waters, retrieving black ducks
Baymen in their dories, fathers in their trucks.

Bass, blues, weakfish, fluke - flopping on the shore
Gasping for our lives, I pray, need we ignore-
Headlights on the highway, mothers at the shore
Still I hear them coming,
pedals to the floor
One mercedes, two mercedes, three mercedes, four
Say so long and fare-thee-well
old friend, Water Mill
Nineteen Sixty Four.

-bellini

Turning Over Rocks

Turning over rocks, tumbling down trees

Crouching in the high grass,
Crawling on our knees
Searching for a pattern
All this bloody time -
You on your side spouting at me On mine.

What does it matter
And who would care -
After years of straightening, curling your hair?
Pack up the sidewalk, auction off the street
Luck to the highest bidder boycotting red meat!
Pack the station wagon, circle once around the block
Hear the days passing whether you go or not.

The world gets smaller as we grow old
Better still ignore the cold.

Convince the dog
Of greener pastures
Health on a distant shore,
The things you've always wanted -
Divinity and more elude us,
Fog on a wintry night
The small print gets clearer
As you lose your eyesight.


Turning over rocks, your place or mine?
The view rarely changes in space this time
All that we know comes round again
Time after rising tide my friend.

Now - the fish are jumping!
Reset the hook!
Let the moment change you, Take another look.
Move the boat closer,
Belly full of pride -
See an island emerging
From deep inside.

Send smoke signals to the non-believers circling in the dark
Bullies in the school yard, gamblers in the park.
It's been the same old story ever since we met
Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall -they all regret.

How many Sunday dinners before the feast is through?
Count them on bended knee is all we do.

-bellini

Beyond Here There Are Dragons

Beyond here the are dragons

The old map makers cry

Uncharted seas, measureless sky.

All that you know and all that you not

Piling like sand dunes and molten rock.

This you have done -
This you have become

Speaking and breathing and beating your drum.

Preaching to the converted on Saturday nights

Lower the high-fi, soften the lights;

Counting your blessings, sure they will come

Snug in your vodka, whiskey and rum.

Now comes the hard stuff, tighten the line

Cut off the dead wood, return to the vine

Tend what you've planted, believe in time -

The fruits of your labor grow bitter some time.

Get up tomorrow and the day after that.

Teach the best dog to feed the worst cat.

Burn down the old barn, start anew.

Beyond here there are dragons, go slay a few.

-bellini