As On Them, Of Beyond

---

Held hostage in the sea of autumn’s splash,
The deeper pull of its retreating tides,
I linger now, as on them glimmers flash
Of snow and ice beyond, of March’s ides.

So do these seasons start again anew,
Each plodding step; it cannot slip away,
That heavy fate and one unransomed too--
When elsewhere, you! on such a lovely day.


© 2013 Dave Blanchard…..to Francesca Neri

Canopy

---

No guests your ladyship may deign enable--
Upon the dais, with some favorite dish,
The canvas of a banquet hall and table
Encanopied in gold--could claim a wish

More realized than I, who still awaiting
The invitation, find in every crumb:
Each glimpse of you, a lady celebrating
The sharing, and the happy fate of some.


--in appreciation of Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott

© 2013 Dave Blanchard….to Francesca Neri

This Much of Heaven

---

Though I should die of joy at the exchange
To learn of your return, that you are well;
When I may pray whoever did arrange
This much of heaven, hardly freed from hell--

That they remain attending to the one,
The one aglow in beauty at their side…
Then let me in the coming task abide--
Your journey finished, and my thanks begun.

© 2013 Dave Blanchard………..to Francesca Neri

A Triumph, Resounding

---

What single spark of summer lunacy!
That leaves the last horizons now aglow--
It seems, indeed, more of a victory
Than fell to those besieging Jericho

...to see your face, the lunacy began
Your face, that moonlit dream the break of dawn
Would not let slip to humor any man,
If little humor, once the lines were drawn

My walls have finished trying to impede,
What’s left of them but mantle for the sun
That in your standard shines as I concede—
And happily, in knowing I have won.

© 2013 Dave Blanchard…....to Francesca Neri




Beyond The Pale

---

The styling and the posing left behind,
Left far behind, upon this morning trail--
Or so I thought, yet now surprised to find
My luck, at least today, beyond the pale

For now another poser comes to view
Parading what was borrowed from your eye,
A simple shade of light and shallow blue
That in its greatest depths now fills the sky

© 2013 Dave Blanchard……to Francesca Neri

La Giaconda

---

Old Leonardo’s lady with a smile,
La Giaconda challenges the eye:
What attributes of hers that so beguile?
What promise in those lips that made him try?

An inner beauty there, nor one to rush
And thus painstaking, something of a chore;
Of course were you the subject of his brush,
Her smile would be the artist’s, evermore.

© 2013 Dave Blanchard……to Francesca Neri

STS – 107:
In Memory, the Space Shuttle Columbia

---

You said if you'd been born in space,
Then you'd have tried to reach this place
Now paused to keep a later rendezvous…
The first one scrubbed--a wash, across the blue.

What moment you were satisfied?
Twelve kids with heroes but denied
Their promise, turn their heads to see
Your face again, if naturally--
You'd promised you'd return; you'd never lied

Though lift-off compromised your plan
The worst-case calculus began
When you were young;
Your doubts you grew to hide.
You knew the risks, of going slow
You knew the odds--the odds you would not find
A greater meaning than you leave behind

Near certain--if the sum of what we know
Is now increased, however far below
Of what you called the heavens, in each line
You brightly wrote, and writing there, refine.

For Rick, William, Laurel and Ilam; David, Kalpana and Michael.

Note: Ten years ago, like millions of others, I woke up to see nothing but
live video of the traces, lingering, in the bright, now-empty skies above Texas.

David C. Blanchard © 2003


The Night Sky

---

Here in an arid night whose roots now bend
To choke whatever light yet makes it green,
I find myself less anxious to pretend
I had not heard it, or had never seen

What of it? So another one before me—
A nothing ever; just another stair
You walked upon in coming to adore me
Nor in his absence, I, beyond compare:

And yet the others, let them burn as cinders
Upon what sky of yours dwarf stars may burn,
While in my own no supernova hinders
The far-flung crystal,
At the world’s turn.

© 2013 Dave Blanchard……to Francesca Neri

The Cliff

---

Again, some eagle, lifting from this peak--
My guest departing, crimson, now, its beak...

Earth, air and water; water, air and earth.
These were the only ones, as I recall;
And so the question, from my very birth
But human nature's--what would top them all?

Well, now there is a fourth, to crown the rest,
If stolen from the gods, each now ablaze--
Their fury leaving me still more impressed
With what I'm here for now: your merest gaze.

(c) 2013 David Blanchard.....to Francesca Neri

What Fate Demanding

---

Were I to want you, then what else must wane?
What else, that is, would have to disappear
Within that landslide--what small breath remain
That you, so far away, could even hear

What I—now quite undone—had tried to say?
What else but fate demanding then its trade:
My wanting you at all could be the day
Your own desire, at last, must start to fade.


© 2013 Dave Blanchard…………to Francesca Neri

Where Daylight--The Statue

---

O false beauty! that can never fade...
As beauty should, to find its place
As though much attention paid,
Could ever be, beyond this face--
Yours, frozen, freezing…

These lines, fast glint that stopped the blade
That chiseled them, to find some air
Hold silent now our own parade;
Must hold the next still waiting there

As you must do—
As you, for some small reason,
Are made to.

© 2013 David Blanchard……to Francesca Neri

The Director’s Pitch

---

Your beauty makes the others sigh
But I don’t care--a movie star?
Those looks, you ought to be
Those looks that catch the roving eye
And then go running free
Like Jerry Rice, or Google’s car--
The prototype-with-bugs...
We could meet for drinks, or tea
Whatever, kisses, hugs
A movie star? Of course you are:
So angel--act for me.

©2013 David Blanchard……to Francesca Neri

Forth One Spring

---

You were a lovely chord, I think, at first
Held lovingly until the melody
Burst forth one spring, as spring itself will burst
And soon with soaring verse, and lovingly
As near a hymn as God would do--

As high each final note as ever soared,
And now indeed a soaring anthem, you...
And so an overture to me--
A hint, that is, of what you move me toward.

© 2013 Dave Blanchard…………..to Francesca Neri

The Visitation

---

My heart is calm; and yet at fever-pitch
My mind, to look at you and wonder so:
What message from an angel could enrich
One’s life that also deals such a blow?

You are a visitor, from far beyond,
Yet heavy-laden are your words, and few:
That we must part, the sun now having dawned—
The morning rush! and Eden lost, anew.

© 2013 David Blanchard………to FN

The Dreadnoughts

---

Now slowly passing by in winter gray,
The clouds maintain their cold and steady way
Like dreadnoughts, on this sea of arctic air.
I catch my breath now, on the sea-bed where
The nettles all around remind
To walk, and look above, is walking blind.
Yet somewhere there, so we are told,

Our angels wait. And so, sometimes, we try,
So far below, for all the cold,
To break that heavy ice beneath the sky—
As had a child; and massive prows, of old—
…at least to offer up a silent ‘hi’.


© 2013 David Blanchard……to Francesca Neri

The Commission

---

What heavy tax upon my eyes and soul...
Each time I look at you assessed a toll,
So much the beauty, and the wonder, so--
Until the greater cost, when you must go.

What high commission that collects each sum!
Above the fray, as though a touch divine…
And likely just, each portion coming from
This wealth beyond imagining that’s mine.



© 2013 David Blanchard......to Francesca Neri

The Law of Conservation

---

I’m not as old now, lately, thanks to you
As typhoons in a roiled latitude…
Or in the surge that cracks the frozen shore
Of Iceland, or the tortured slopes before
That goddess of poor attitude,
Mt Pele, in her pouring rage, is through...
You come to bid each clock I see rewind,
You hold off time’s advance, where others fail;
Each slightest touch transformed somehow beyond
The measure of a man, of all mankind.
Somewhere the costs, what newer age has dawned:
A soft and fearsome thing, what they regale.

© 2013 Dave Blanchard…………..to FN

The Clearing

---

As dense the brush that hindered these,
Each silent stride among the trees,
So was the impact of that cloud
That somehow fewer still allowed
That somehow raised a single care
Ascending to the promised view,
The fog, descendant of the blue
Now lifting--there a meadow, you,
The clearing in this mountain air,
And in these trees; the singing, too.


© 2013 Dave Blanchard………to FN

Where Daylight (xxiv.-—The Academy for the Blind (ii.))

---

The sun retreating now again, she raised
Her face, as if some longer term arranged;
I stopped beside her, paused, and now I gazed
Above as well; now also felt short-changed,
Less so, perhaps.
“She was my closest friend”
My guide began, a gleam still in her hair
Despite the clouds.
“Sometimes she would pretend
For me, she could not see, yet didn’t care!…
Though often clumsy…what she didn’t know”—
Now in her voice a softer shade of mirth—
“Was I could also see her though,
As I have said, I have been blind since birth…
Nor said I, ever once, a word for fear
She’d think me mad...”
At this, a sudden show
Of sunlight
“…or that it might disappear”

© 2013 Dave Blanchard………to FN

Spring Forward

---

Nor even as a dream, the hour lost...
I looked below, and past the boulevard
To see the winter sunshine now advanced
Beyond the void, and coming down as hard
As had the rain, competing with the sleet
The night before…
Still gazing out, I chanced
To see a building’s doorway by the street
Wide open at this early Sunday hour—
Invitingly, if somehow with that power…
As, smiling now, I realized the door
Was only something’s shadow, nothing more;
Some promise of the distant shade in store.

(Note: Time, every spring and fall, is 'moved' by one hour;
thus, the reminder: ‘Spring forward, fall back’)

© 2013 Dave Blanchard…………..to FN

Apres Le Debat

---

What truce that for a final peace accord,
Beyond quite understanding, passes yet!
As though this silence in the guns restored
Must leave somehow your own more firmly set...

And yet so like freshfallen snow and quite
Remote upon on a windless mountain, mum
In your impassive gaze, not so severe
As merely of some kingdom-not-to-come,

I find at least the one already here;
Of paradise, at least accorded some.


© 2013 Dave Blanchard……..to FN

Where Daylight (xvii.—The Nephew’s Lament)

---

She is the sea and mine the simple footprints
Left in the sands her waves obliterate
An unexpected reason for existence,
If reason now my latest still await...
Now lost within a world of indifference
Like heaven’s to the Danish monarch’s fate
Awakened from that orchard to repentance,
And yet too swiftly, finding it too late—
Nor rest again, nor sleep perchance to dream
Of lovely new illusions; nor as sad
To dream of those, as real as they seem,
As I to dream tonight of what I had…

© 2013 Dave Blanchard………to FN

The Drifters

---

You crash sometimes, and lap across my chest--
The spindrift follows, cries among its reach;
A final one: the seagulls now at rest,
For now at least. Two creatures on the beach

Re-oriented, drifting to a course
Where those now so in thrall must ever go:
To watch the blazing chariot--the horse
That, far away, has such an undertow.

© 2013 Dave Blanchard…….to FN

Where Daylight (xxiii.—The Academy for the Blind (1))

---

“She had in school no friendship more than mine,
Who taught her how to run, and then to fly!…”
She paused, now looking up as for a sign
Of comfort; then the sun broke out as I
Continued on the terrace. If quite blind,
She heard me, so, and so herself resumed,
A rustle now, of what she had in mind—
As on her face, the lovely answer loomed.
“I only meant, into a pile of leaves!
No better cure for anyone
Who for the waves of summer sadly grieves...”
I stopped. “Well, they can keep the summer sun!”
I answered her, my heart now in my throat,
The breeze now less a helpful antidote…

© 2013 Dave Blanchard……to Francesca Neri

Tango (iii.-Flashpoint Zero)

---

This part is simple, this I learned at one:
To crawl, just not beneath the desert sun.
Although come on no doubt some others did
And kudos to them, too: the sunshine rules
And what was it keep going Something cools,
That leaves at peace, no, pace, a pace to keep…
Yes water, this remembered thing, in pools
Some near mirage, and shortly drinking deep
You have no time the thing is going to blow
So this just carpet, me, not yet a kid...
And hanging on, the only way to go.

© 2013 Dave Blanchard…………to FN

Near the conclusion of Adam Hall’s thriller, The Tango Briefing,
the agent has thought to assemble a makeshift timer, in the hope
of sparing his own life while completing his assignment.

In the spirit of what tennis champion Arthur Ashe once asserted—‘Start where
you are, use what you have…’—the agent utilizes a teak statuette as a
tempting perch for the vulture he has managed to seize and throw into
the now-closed cockpit of the wreck. Although fatigued, now with
the statuette placed, at rest, just above the device’s detonator, he must
get away as quickly as possible, one concern residual radiation from
the upcoming explosion.

'Flashpoint Zero' is an insurance designation for dangerous cargo.

Tango (ii.--The Cloud)

---

Ten lines, okay, let’s start--the muse is up:
'Her eyes are like an ever-brimming cup'
And so forth. Now another one, the same:
Her eyes, again: 'an ever-lasting flame',
Et cetera...it seems to be ‘Her Eyes’,
The cargo in this…distant section, here
Right here at hand, oh God…
                                                 the bluest skies

Where mocking birds-of- paradise appear
As all the others sing the world joy
Except for you: the one they would destroy,
No, no, ten lines her everlasting sneer,
Those eyes well, twelve GET OUT your sole employ…

© 2013 Dave Blanchard…..to FN, and the family of Adam Hall

Note: In The Tango Briefing, halfway through, the agent begins
an inventory-- a shortwave radio report, to his director-- of the two dozen
or more gas cylinders--most intact, one or two proving less so--
that are stored in the downed plane he, after three attempts to eliminate him
and a midnight parachute drop well wide of the mark, into a featureless desert,
has finally located.

The location is being pursued desperately by several organizations at this point.
The bodies of the two pilots are outside in the dunes, three days ago
apparently having tried to run from a crash landing; though not getting far,
their last expression blind terror, something not to be expected from pilots.

As with all the author's, the chapter title is a single word; here, Frenzy.

Tango

---

How do you weigh it, but to say the wait
May yet provide relief for other eyes?
Or measure irony at such a fate
Constructed from such dwindling supplies

The sky is full of her by now, alone
As you remain, with little of supply...
...though with a target, yes--you are a drone
That crawled the earth; now turning to the sky.

How do you weigh it, what you cannot lift?
Though in a moment may forever hold,
The flame that feeds the desert, here--a gift
You need, yes, now return, a million-fold.

In memory of the writer Adam Hall, & after his The Tango Briefing.

In the book, the agent finds himself at the end of a Saharan assignment
to locate certain evidence (the contents--nerve gas--of a downed private freighter)
inimical to national interests. He has agreed by radio, now, to obliterate
the evidence, though knowing this will require his activating a small,
fission-based device without the use of its damaged timer; that is to say,
by hand.

© 2013 Dave Blanchard……….to FN


In This Way

---

What does it mean to think I’d never lose you,
If lesser loss and more than once so far,
In stories meant no more than to amuse you,
Is yet the record of a certain star?
That though it governs still, now feels chilly,
For now another, with a brighter law...
Although its ways may prove a little hilly;
As ever, fighting sometimes to a draw--
At least, whatever lesson taken from it
May grant the way to meet what’s next in store.
What does it mean, then? if I take for granted
That someday on a peak a flag implanted--
If you, your smile of that cloudy summit,
Would look at me, this way, a little more.

To FN………………….(c) 2013 Dave Blanchard

Where Daylight (xv.--The Gleam of Nefertiti)

---

She is the spring, the flooding of the Nile
At which the Sphinx is heard in giving thanks...
Until, to see her dripping form, awhile,
Made silent--or the gold upon the banks
The maiden light that glides upon the Rhine,
Fair April, stirring August from his rest
As if had Antony looked past the queen
The jewel of the Nile, to the west
That western shore, the realm of the divine
To find an older name for the affair
So in the shade around her passage seen
The gleam of Nefertiti, stirring there.

© 2013 Dave Blanchard......to FN
(February 5th)

Where Daylight (iii.)

---

What beauty that could send words so awry
Did cry, of course, for more…though I had been
From Corso d’alba to the lakes of May
Where looms in ancient guard, til then,
Each somber pass, against what few who try,
Whose peaks now on the summer heavens play--
These were my splendors all, if once again
The protests of each somber lass whom I
Would more recall…
Yet what he had to say
Of beauty—of this creature, and her power—
Dispelled what passing notions held before…
For my repast, at least a happy hour
A bargain, and the likely rate to pay
Within a tavern’s walls, for hearing more.

© 2013 Dave Blanchard………to FN

Primula

---

Deep-set in the emplacement where they wait,
Her eyes take in each miniature below;
Two hundred yards of void above the strait,
Her view commands the only way to go...

The one remaining passage we can use
To put destroyers through, and with some luck
Make sure our troops survive--and yet the news…
And now a plan, the only one that stuck.

A thrown-together thing, of course; as such
Not quite the most imposing of all time—
And now a storm…already out of touch.
I guess we’ll see if they can make the climb.


(In memory of Primula Niven, and the actress Gia Scala.)

On The Guns of Navarone, by Alistair MacLean

© 2012 Dave Blanchard………to FN

The Compass Point

---

So is the evening sun—and to the eye
So often near! or only distant as the west
Where drowsily it says goodbye
To endless day and all the rest…
The very same applies to what it leaves:
The air it cleaved, if somehow being cleft,
Still furnishes our nearest needs--this as it grieves,
In disappearing, too, for being left;
So hers, as with a compass point, or sun or air
A lovely thing, if more than each
The native of a land forever there,
Though somehow near yet nearly, somehow, out of reach.

© 2012 Dave Blanchard…….to FN

Where Daylight (iv.—The Tavern)

---

...Now even stranger, what he had to say:
"The question’s one of resonance—the way
A note is held…so as a singer may,
Her beauty shattered glass and so without
The burden any vanity would raise
As Caesar legions, humble and devout,
With time, deprived of little but that gaze,
She grew in gracious steps, with every page
Revealing more that perfect modesty
A ballerina leaves upon the stage…"
He paused, now staring past. I turned to look--
Whatever pages true, the mystery
For now remaining in his story-book.

© Dave Blanchard 2012……..To FN

Again

---

It burns my eyes, this even as it cools
The rest of me, your long and lonely gaze...
A thousand miles long, though I am here,
Least likely or the luckiest of fools.
It stings, your beauty, goading me, I fear
Again to rally, and the banner raise,
To let whatever treaties might, protest
The coming storm this gaze does not arrest...
That even now reveals a single tear—
Nor my imagination as you turn
Your look—like that—upon me, so to burn
My eyes a little less, now less as cool
The rest to even gold, or golden rule.

© Dave Blanchard 2012.......to FN

Where Daylight (xii--The Plain)

---

What plea it might have held, the note, in vain,
He closed his eyes a moment, and resumed:
"My boy!" He paused, now calling on the doomed
She is the solstice and my past, that plain
In southern England where the painted left
Their slabs of wretched midnight to absorb
Whatever little heat the graying orb
Of winter dawn could offer as a gift,
A gift a monument should not contain…
His past? I asked at last. He looked at me
As through a glass. “He was the toast of all
For wit and valor, and the courtesy
He showed in each; each waiting liberty
He never took--that is, before the fall…”

© 2012 Dave Blanchard………To FN

Beyond the Storm

---

As ours upon a certain star of screen,
So is your gaze, a little, on each soul…
Although of course, whatever passing scene,
Of others mindful, with more self-control:
Not blurting out objections, as a rule,
If often thinking “Don’t go through that door”
“No, no!” “What are you waiting for, you fool?!”
Til at the finish, having hoped for more
Than simply seeing free will made again
Some pleasure-seeking storm of fleeing pain,
The way a proper critic might explain—
As any star, beyond the hurricane.

© 10/29/12 (during Sandy) Dave Blanchard………to FN

Where Daylight--The Transit of Venus (October 10th)

---

As when a clue of dawn disturbs the star light
So was her coming, and her path across
The winter skies, slow as a bride’s, as pure white,
Now diamond-like within a veiled gloss—
If slow, as though reflective of the insight
Her distant mother offered at the loss…
While there behind each step of hers as though
On shortened leash, a sight itself endearing
That he of all ! Poor Jupiter in tow—
Til as with dawn, the heralded appearing
With Venus turned, and showers of confetti,
The waiting weighed, as for a bride the same:
That having seen, and conquered all already,
The endless wait enough, at last she came.

(c) 2012 Dave Blanchard………to FN

Quiet! (September 30th)

---

What is the best comparison—
Mother Earth or Aphrodite?
For one who hushes endless song
At dawn, for love of the Almighty
Pining so for her attention…
Til suddenly there comes along
A lovely soloist's redemption,
Sweetly, softly, courtesy
Of simply this: her merest mention.

(c) 2012 Dave Blanchard........to FN

Where Daylight (viii.) (September 24th)

---

What uproar at the antiquated door
Now venturing outside to make its stand,
To be extinguished in the breezes or
If too late now for that, then merely fanned…
He looked at me again. "I had a note
The wretched boy had sent, late June, it was…
Elated, I had thought, yet now he wrote:"
Now is the summertime, I know, because
She is the solstice: and her every gaze
The very sun now strives to designate
The lesser or the greater of its rays—
If still in vain, somehow to recreate…

© 2012 Dave Blanchard…….To FN

Well, If They Insist...(September 18th)

---

When thus the grace by angels wrought,
The lovely day that you were born,
The point of epic battles fought
Of what of heaven should adorn
This heaven of a wilderness:
More than deserved, or somehow less?
In you, the answer: clearly more
And so I’ll take the choice in stride—
I may have failed, some, before…
Still, this much fuss must one abide.

© 2012 Dave Blanchard…….To FN

To The Heroes of the Twin Towers (September 10th)

---

There is a place the angels missed,
Too fragile for the worst of this
This middle land where hearts will break
Or be consumed, or just subsist
Or all at once, depending on the day;
Let those unhearted who would take
The measure of our rage and pain
Remember, though, that hearts are not in vain--
There were three hundred, many more
Whose fate or choice it was to stay
Until the very towers spent
And this a mending heart cannot ignore--
Let angels weep, and stay away
There is a place these others went
Most caring and most hard of heart
Who damn the devil; and this, only they.
(c)2001 Dave Blanchard...and to all responders

Fate, Away (September 5th)

What chance the sea--if you were she, the bitch--
Whose wild scorn still greater craft than these
Destroys, and yet fatigued, to punish so,
Could ever punish you, if there your ease?
Whose beauty yet some epic warnin g which
Might warn off further interlopers swept
By summer tides, or merely fate, away,
With heaving vows, and promises unkept…
The heave of waves, it tires; the tempest’s blow:
With you instead, whatever chance you’d stay,
What chance the sea would ever let you go?
(c) 2012 Dave Blanchard........to FN

On Mt. Ranier (August 28th)

Our own are petty, yet un-ended still,
Reducing each our prospects though they may
But yours—whose blame lay elsewhere, after all,
At least yours finished in a grand display:
It’s lower, now, at Valley Forge, the flag…
A lower lighthouse on that wind-swept hill
That holds a reef, the bane of lesser names—
A giant archway; hazard, as it frames
The day renamed for one it would recall…
And lovely, too, if now the granite sags
A little at the story of your fall.

In memory of Nick Hall, NPS Ranger
© 2012 Dave Blanchard

Where Daylight (August 18th)

There is within the Dolomites,
Where daylight ends its lonely march,
The trace, still, of a beauty mark
Within the flawless meadow's sweep:
A cottage, where the range's heights--
By some design, a castle keep--
Above the empty timbers arch,
Thus guarding the abandoned dark.
However long that gloom within,
Her merest look had torn it so,
The remnants scattered. She had been
Delayed by storm, some years ago.

(c)Dave Blanchard 2012......To FN

Swept Back (August 10th)

---

These rhapsodies, at which the others wonder—
Those smaller joys, their new estate divining,
Raised now above, although forever under
This newer realm, which, if but underlining,
Would lend their all...
As ever yours; for you, as ever, pining.

And so as though the rescue now erased
Nor ever sadly glimpsed, atop the ridge!
Upon the sandy beach, this message traced--
That is, this writing on a happy wall:
A friendly note, upon the empty fridge.

© Dave Blanchard 2012....to FN

Not So Enchanted (August 4th)

---

These tricks-of-light of yours they seem to play,
Your eyes, are better tried upon the air
Which, though it comes to town to have its way--
The sirens warning of its drawing near--
As though a two-year old! to lay it bare,
Still whispers at its leaving, I am here

Though if she’d deign, that lady, she whose eyes
Restore the light to its intended glow--
If she might one day simply come to try
She’d calm the air, its reach immobilize!
And left not so enchanted, now, as I
As simply clear, no better place to go.
(c) Dave Blanchard 2012.......To FN

The Inlet

---

In Maine, within the evergreens the sea
Has draped across her beauty and her chill,
Those woolen scarves, the silken tapestry,
There is a lovely plunging neckline still,
If one alas! by now so far away.
Wherein the even throb of time and tide;
Whose inlet ebb-and-flows confuse the day
As epic bluffs beneath the fabric ride...
To be inside. I think of you as her;
The coming of that flood, above my head
My birthing; and my executioner
That hour later, when the tide has fled--
Inconstance…Oh! still hoping that I may
Draw nearer to her neck, that plunging line
Whose perigee the sea--a hidden bay,
Whose wind and currents more today than mine.
(c)Dave Blanchard 2012...to FN

And Yes, To Honor (July 26th)

---

She serves a certain purpose well,
In light suggestions that compel
The perseverance that endures
And common sense, that may resolve
The doubt in yours in seeing hers--
Those eyes, where other worlds revolve
Yet courage too, in all you see,
The overture to luxury…
Or not, depending on the day.
And yes, to honor, come what may,
Compelled as once from clay compelled.
This most of all, if she’s beheld:
The impact of a higher plan
Of simply this: goodwill towards man.

© Dave Blanchard 2012....to Francesca Neri

The Perfect Storm (July 11th)

And now a taunt, the champion's, to you:
IS THAT ALL THAT YOU HAVE? as though a king
Upon the moors, who grinned and bore it too,
And so leaves you the fool. A weathered storm
Is what you are now, though each lightning bolt
Still echoes here, the evening in revolt
At beauty bent and naked thundering,
The bifurcating power of your form
That lifted off the canvas champions
Not long before,
Not quite as great as this--
The one who smiles, seeing how you miss.

Re-imagining Swept Away’s unforgettable Mariangela Melato
as 'meeting her match' in Zaire (that epic bout also in 1974)!
 
© Dave Blanchard 2012....to Francesca Neri

And here is the FIRST poem...of mine, that is...
the first one that the lady inspired!
--and one hers, why not?--perhaps to grant some title.

---

Perhaps she is the end of sight as I
Have known it, seeing her, no longer can--
What left to see, the shuttered sea a man
With sails empty, torn is left to try

Of sight a journey's, as if through a mist,
A prism'd light that tears unshed suspend,
Perhaps this way instead she is the end:
That yet at dusk persuades the day resist

In that a chance the light, in giving in,
Proves vital as the rosy air, as I
Thus given sight, now fear that I could die
Now having seen her, had she never been!

© Dave Blanchard...to Francesca Neri