The Literary Review
Asleep, I Wander
Into the pastures of my dreams I’ve crept
As one untethered from the world that swung
Through orbits of my daily mind, as far
As world will go. Often, as I’ve slept,
I’ve gone where told and found myself among
Familiar faces, but in a bazaar
I’d seen only in movies as a child,
Or unfamiliar faces that somehow
Were known to me, for I can be beguiled
To recognize the strangest things below
The radar of attentiveness, and yet,
Aroused, I wonder at my sleeping mind,
Which seems to know a world it’s never seen
But which in only minutes I’ll forget.
I’ve looked into my dreams but do not find
A path through them, for they have always been
In flux, like fields of grain in gusting wind,
And mute. Anxiously uncertain, rushed
And misdirected, I am determined
To find something I’ve lost, because I must.
- Robert Daseler
The Drama Reviewer
For several years I wrote reviews of plays
For a newspaper in Connecticut,
And she would help me in instructive ways
To frame their matter, indicating what
Was most essential for them and what she
Had seen and I had altogether missed
In each performance, because generally
I failed to look behind the forward gist.
I rarely caught the life that she discerned
In slight inflections, the unspoken word,
The way an actress smiled through tears or turned
Her head at some small sound I had not heard.
Provided all this treasure, I would use
The least of it to write my brief reviews
- Robert Daseler
Life Wears Us
The fabric of a life, how soon it tears
Asunder, thins, becoming flimsy rag.
With no condign excuse we reach an age
When a belated love, with brimming tears
And urgent limbs, besieges our lulled heart.
About us, though, we see the bright world’s weave
And feel the strength of it, as we perceive
The ample beauty of each patterned part.
It wants to wear us out, this life, for love,
Renewed, astonishes, betrays, and wracks
Our flesh. This material we’re made of
Must hold our losses and our pain, must clothe
Bewilderment and shame, withstand attacks
Of anger and despair, suppressing both.
- Robert Daseler
Bandages of Fog
Remembering the bandages of fog
That wrapped your neighborhood at night
And left me with a chastened epilogue
To kisses and the hushed delight
Of touching you, I let the day expire,
Regretting nothing, nothing that
We said or did, and if I tell you what
I’m thinking now, you can’t require
An explanation of what I have done
With all the nights since you have gone.
Children play and scream on pummeled sand
And seem to be as innocent
As people want to believe they must be.
Their innocence, asserted and
Unassailable, is sacrament
To pious fools who will not see
Maliciousness unguarded in their eyes.
Love also is cruel, inflicting
Pain beneath benevolent disguise,
Good intentions soon conflicting.
A morning in August, humid and cold,
The seacoast is muffled in haze.
My consciousness is slightly out of phase.
Early my larking sons have rolled
Me out of bed and coaxed me to attend
To what they need and have to say
In earnest on this inauspicious day.
The drifting haze seems to suspend
Our severed lives in limbo, distant from
The plangency of what must come.
- Robert Daseler
How to Appraise a Possible Mate
“When I meet a man I always know
Within a nanosecond whether I
Would ever want to make love with this guy,
And if I wouldn’t, why then should I go
With him to dinner, lunch, or anywhere?”
She has a point: personal attraction
To anyone begins not with abstraction
But with particulars: his voice, his hair,
The stubble on his chin, well dressed or not.
Perhaps his wrist protrudes beyond his cuff;
His voice is high, sounds as if it has been caught
Or snagged on something he has half-forgot,
A voice not smooth, but neither is it rough,
Sincere, perhaps, but that is not enough.
- Robert Daseler
Navasota
In Texas on the Brazos River, you
Found refuge in a store selling antiques,
A family home now consecrated to
The well-wrought past, when things were made of wood,
Beauty blushed on smooth ceramic cheeks,
And workmanship was uniformly good.
The low damp skies of winter were forsaken
Of any sign the weather might improve,
But when we took the road less often taken
And stopped in Navasota for an hour,
You found an unsuspected sacred trove
Of treasure there, including at least four
Elaborate birdcages and roll-top desks,
A dozen dolls with glass-bead eyes that closed,
A smoking jacket’s patchwork arabesques,
And decorated oriental fans,
Along with other items that engrossed
Your eyes and filled you with acquisitory plans.
Your soul was nourished by such things as these:
A wicker chair, Depression glass, a vase
Shaped like a bird, a copse of painted trees.
Texas was unlovely and unsound,
But there in Navasota was a place
Where remnants of a lost world could be found.
- Robert Daseler