Robert Kendall: California Poets Part 11, Four Poems

Robert Kendall

October 20th, 2026

California Poets: Part XI

Robert Kendall

Four Poems

Matrimonial Mathematics

for Chelsea and Andrew

When two become one in matrimony,

let us raise glasses and voices in celebration . . .

and then take a moment to check the math.

1 + 1 = 1? What are we to make of this revisionist addition?

There’s some hanky panky happening on one side or the other

of that equals sign, let me tell you.

What self-respecting addend would simply give up the ghost like that,

cash in its chips, bite the dust, without putting up sum sort of fight?

What manner of smooth operator could so beguile its operands

into dereliction of duty? Maybe there’s a kind of

Heisenbergian uncertainty going on here.

Perhaps each number is actually both 1 and 0 at the same time.

That would explain why, as any divorce lawyer can tell you,

1 + 1 can also sometimes equal 0.

But then marriage doesn’t operate on a quantum scale.

It’s something grander. Something almost galactic in its aspirations.

So maybe there’s a cosmological constant at work—something like love—

that lets us fudge those numbers.

Yes love. That must be it.

The invisible dark matter that throws off all the equations.

The dark energy that radiates just enough heat

for us to cook the books by.

Or maybe the mechanics are altogether different.

Perhaps there’s a simpler explanation

that’s been staring us in the face all along.

Could it be that love, that consummate bedazzler,

that supreme dream machine,

merely renders us too fuzzy-headed to count past 1?

An Ode

Your eyes are brown piles of leaves

that make me want to jump into them,

sink into their damp depths,

flail my arms to make leaf angels

as the musky smell enfolds me

and little leafy souvenirs cling to my hair

and slip down the back of my shirt.

Oh, and of course they’re limpid, too.

Indeed they hold bewitching quantities of limpid,

not to mention pellucid, the way a spring holds water,

down there among the troves of intimate brown treasure.

Your lips are red popsicles,

the cherry variety that everyone goes for first,

leaving behind the lime and the grape,

all glistening tongue-seducing curves

that start to ooze ripe sweetness after a few licks,

shyly at first, then with increasing eagerness

until soon it’s running brazenly down my chin.

And yes they’re sultry.

Definitely sultry. They have sultry

in places you’d never dare hope for it,

sultry to fill closets and beds and dreams with.

Your smile is the sun gleaming off the white aluminum canopy

that covers the ice cream cart at the corner of the park

where the moms all come to sit on benches and talk

while their kids make secret places in the sand

and a bit further off a middle-aged couple makes good use

of a bench intended for cuddling and dreamy gazing

at the idyllic pond-and-willow scenery

and the ice cream man watches them for a minute,

admiring the way they seem to fit perfectly

into each other and into the afternoon,

before he turns to stare idly off into the far distance,

letting the sun polish away

the residue of late-lingering spring cold

that still clings to memory.

And it’s winning. That’s the word for it.

There’s no question your smile is a winning

gold-medal-worthy track star of a smile

that leaves the others in the less-than-scintillating dust.

Then there’s your heart. It’s . . . well, it’s big and mysterious.

Something pulls me toward it like the current of a quiet river

I’m floating on in a canoe at the end of a late summer afternoon,

a current that ushers me forward so surely yet gently

I stop paddling and am happy just to sit and watch

the maple and beech trees make the breeze sigh

with rustly abandon as they rub their sensuous foliage against it

and the water ripples a little tune as it takes me where it will.

But no, it’s actually more like a stream of people trickling

toward some unseen spot around the corner,

the buzz of feet and voices swelling alluringly

until it draws me along with it,

infinitely curious to see what’s up

because I can tell from the looks on the faces

and the half-caught remarks hanging expectantly in the air

that it’s going to be something really, really great.

March

for Leni (1955-2022)

February tells its gray story achingly slowly.

The vast plains splayed between one word and

the next are traveled only by waiting.

Waiting. Waiting.

Yet from deep within this bone-bare no man's land

of anti-journey, for those who listen with care,

there arises a thin blue music.

Shreds of near-melody clinging coldly

to the undertones of stalled white fields, roadsides, sheds.

Tune-thread unraveling from a distant frayed radio.

Bread crumbs for the ear.

I remember the time you arrived on the last train of thought,

rescuing me from myself after the waiting had become unbearable.

You brought armfuls of greens and yellows

to lay at the feet of the ending hour.

Alms for the harvest gods forced

from the shelter of our loneliness.

One by one, the hermits emerged to dance

among Time's fallen temples,

where slabs of wintry marble lay smeared with purple twilight.

There's a path through the woods behind your house

and in winter you can see for miles through

the naked branches to far-off fragments of sky.

In summer you can see only

the raw point-blank ultimatum of leaves.

We walked there once

wondering whether you were going to die. 

We judge the story by its ending.

The story judges us by

the sticky crumbs of hope we leave

between the pages.

An Invitation

I want to take you where the trembling early hours

    are wrapped in daybreak to comfort them

        and the silence starts to sing.

I want to take you where morning

    fills slowly with sunlight and destiny

        and the old lonely nights lie shriveled in the grass.

I want to take you where possibility

    climbs the eastern hills

        and throws itself into the sky with a cloudless cry.

I want to take you where ripe summer

    still half-dreams suggestive fruit

        as it fills with awakening white sweetness.

I want to take you where fields

    whisper their paths in expectant green

        and small winds solve huge skies.

I want to take you where lavender afternoons

    blossom in time’s private garden

        and the intimate breezes know just how to touch each moment.

I want to take you where the sun

    paves all vision with gold

        and guides the invisible down that glistening road.

I want to take you where joy

    rises up from its valleys as if falling into a cloudy sea

        that washes away all up or down.

I want to take you where the hillside columbine

    translates eternity into fragile blue and white gesture

        and twilight sets it to shadow music.

I want to take you where the irreversible ocean

    sets out across the mind on its way to new shores

        and seabirds recite the last hours of land.

I want to take you where moonlight

    smolders in the streams

        and auspicious stars burn up the coal-black void overhead.

I want to take you where ending

    relinquishes itself to the ever-receding horizon

        and the story surrenders all language.

Author Bio:

Robert Kendall’s book A Wandering City received the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Prize, and his poetry has appeared widely in printed magazines (including Contact II, River Styx, Barrow Street, New York Quarterly, and Indiana Review) and in several anthologies. He is one of the earliest practitioners of electronic poetry, and his work in this form has appeared in BBC Online, Eastgate Hypertext Reading Room, Iowa Review Web, The Cortland Review, The New River, and elsewhere. Installations of his electronic poetry have been exhibited at the Franklin Institute Science Museum (Philadelphia), the Dodge Poetry Festival (New Jersey), and venues in Europe, South America, Asia, and Australia. He has given poetry readings in more than a dozen cities, as well as on TV and public radio. He is the recipient of a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship and a New Forms Regional Grant, among other awards, and has taught poetry and fiction for the New School in New York City. He is also a composer and photographer.