Poems and rumors of
poems …
From Home
Because we have named them our friends,
The stars will one day call our children away.
Just as our parents have seen us frantically trying
to catch the attention of the moon,
our children will turn a cold eye on earth
and lunge for the stars,
riding the long ships we made them,
using the science we gave them.
Seduced by their haunting, singular song,
Our children will follow their own gaze out
through the harboring sky.
Into a place that does not love them,
Toward a star that does not know them.
Swept along by solar winds,
they sail to the next charted bright spot,
and are surprised to discover
it’s nothing like they thought.
Though wondrous,
it’s not the wonder they sought.
Maybe their own children’s stars
will answer what could not be asked from here.
Maybe when you’re far enough from home
that it’s lost in the shadows
Can you truly see it in your heart.
American Harvest
She bore him five children
Always conceived in the fall
And borne in the dry sear of late summer.
Two and three years apart,
they made up a string of
cool weather reconciliations.
Each of them empowered by their surmounting of summer,
they entered the fall with dreams of recapturing the old prize.
Sara remembered the reassurance of frequent motherhood;
John the comfort of another name to bury his own.
They each sought their separate affirmations that there was, in each, life -
enough to start another.
At moments, there was even a hint of intimate abandon - absorption in the one.
Long days in the cabin, earnest mending - a year’s worth of story and attention
to catch up on, as if each had been different ways ‘round the world.
Sleeping near became sleeping with, then sleeping after.
The enticements of proximity lulled them into a false sense of intimacy.
City people imagine that the fertile cycle begins in spring, after the quiet of winter.
But they never had to get their life from the earth, relying instead on boxes at the general store.
People on the land know that the difference between reaping and sowing
could sometimes be the span between breakfast and lunch.
You start counting on the next crop before the last is in your cellar.
As the one cycle ends, you learn to crave the life of the next cycle.
The quiet of winter comes when you can no longer get things ready before spring.
Life teaches you to sow what you can when you can.
Five kids into the process, they understood they were now immune
to the kind of life a child brings.
Intimacy became part of the story-telling, the long-ago remembering.
If there was any touching, it was that of the returning tourist –
having been there once before,
they hoped to discover just what it was had excited them so.
And like so many tourists, they left disappointed.
Creation
If you want to hear God laugh,
ask him about Creation.
Astounded by his ardency,
I stepped back.
His cheeks flushed,
His eyes wet with the dew of morning.
It was incredible!
An orgiastic surge of intoxicating vigor.
The scent of fresh fruit - none newer, none fresher, ever.
Virgin grasslands , clean pelts, rich soil, firm clay.
Blood pounding in the temples.
Never again would water be so pure,
Earth so fertile,
Rock so sharp and crisp,
Sunlight so bright.
The long, slow trek toward sandstone,
Shale and fossils just beginning.
No diamonds, no deBeers.
The seductive promise of tomorrow -
The pure free gift of Creation,
The adventure and danger of the untried -
Amoeba, trilobites, dodos, and man.
Ten million million variations to settle into a world.
An epoch to ripen -
a billion billion moments of
birth and death, growth and change.
The sweet smell of sad death.
And tomorrows.
This is a good place to be born …
This is a good place to be born.
The damp of the soil breathes out a cool welcome.
The hill, seeking the river below,
at this point cleaves itself,
willed or not, to make a nest.
In the cleft, the water slows, swerves,
digs deeper, seeking only after the scent of gravity.
Slowed, the water falls prey to waiting seeds who, in growing,
slow it further, harnessing it to their leafy offspring.
The gift of earth-mother is the gift of permanence.
She waits coolly for us to come to her.
Receiving no promise of gentleness, we come
and find a place to rest.
She moves where she moves. Sometimes, in fits she awakens and throws aside her covering of people.
She brings mountains down and waters up - driven by personal fires within that even her lithic calm sometimes lets slip.
When she rests, we come back to her folds, mistaking her dormancy for sanctuary; her inattention for peace.
I wait. My waiting is not for you, but yours to use while it is here.
I love the warmth of your presence and the coolness of your absence.
My dance is the same, come or go.
You must live your unquiet. For reasons I cannot see, you were born to heat and noise.
I will hold my quiet until the need of it
fills your ears.
You will try to touch the sun.
I will wait in the shade of my own making for you to slip down again.
Upon your singed fall I await. You will have need of coolness.
I am first-mother.
I am first-lover.
Your qualities make you long for me beyond your reach. You hunger to find all, and to bring all with you.
Wisdom is in knowing what to leave behind,
what to trust to remain.
Find the stars - I will be here.
This must be a holy land (death of Y. Rabin)
This must be a holy land
to absorb the hot blood of the martyrs
without destroying all in a purifying fire.
No rituals will clean the hands of the murderer,
no ablutions rinse his soul.
He bears the mark of Herod, not Cain -
removed from the family, he makes a G-d of his hate and thirst.
No blessing is imparted to him.
None who anoint him will enter the Holy of Holies.
His victim was a man who warred when necessary,
but sought peace when possible.
Against his own fears, he sought the greatest berekah - peace and brotherhood.
Like his name-brother,
he had been on the altar
only to be brought down.
Like his name-brother,
he began the walk home - wishing never to see the altar again.
But this Isaac
with home shining from the distant hillside,
felt in his last moment
the ritual knife of his kinsmen.
So blinded by rage,
they refused YHWH's call
to step back from the altar,
preferring death to camp among them.
Again.
TreeClimber
Having failed to make him hear, she made him hurt.
Schooled in gentleness and the indirection of Southern dialogue,
she and generations of kin lacked the resources to charm him from his perch.
Afraid of slipping, he contented himself with the lower branches,
She sat higher, trying to entice him upward.
He sat lower, trying to appear well-satisfied.
It’s a known fact, he said,
that women are better at climbing certain trees.
They have a reckless spirit that drives them to the weaker branches.
There is too much price to be paid in the fall.
She called out
You can see so many more trees from here - and the sky is bluer.
From the top of his head came the reply
I see a spot of blue from here, which is very nice if you like that sort of thing.
Though it is summer now, it will be spring before you know it and I’ll need to hurry down to tend the earth.
With the sun passing behind a cloud, she heard him declaim,
I think now that it is autumn. I should have seen it better.
That’s my fault.
But things will be dying soon, and
I’ll be called to account for that.
I should stay low.
If I don’t go down soon, it will be spring, and I’ll have cleared away none of the decay. If I don’t do this, life won’t come. I must needs be ready.
From the top of his head, came her reply
Our children should see this place
if I come down, I can’t promise they will.
The wind will find me,
but the sun will too.
It would be warmer with you here
but I can make a new friend of the cold
if you are not here. And we will be fine together.
Formless
Words without form.
Form without words.
Tasting pictures to see how they smell.
The sensation of sweet pencil stroking the back of the paper.
Images most true, whose description means nothing.
I wish sometimes that I saw pictures and heard sounds.
Smelled odors and savored flavors with my tongue.
I used to wish I could tell you what I saw without it sounding peculiar.
But it does, I do, and I am.
Sweetness and sorrow follow the realization
that my son has caught it from me.
I cherish the knowledge that
someone else sees the otherness of familiar things.
Oblong sadness that it is my son.
I try to talk to him with the words I have learned.
But image comes before map.
The road before language.
I hope he will be better than me in the world.
But still bear a broad and shining memory of the old country.
I envy him the wind that will pass through him,
pulling him forward like a jet foil.
I want him to come to me late some night.
And wake me with the story of his day on the sun.
To know that, when his mind flies, it’s as real
as anything his body is doing.
No first date.
first car,
first love.
Will ever match his first trip into the looking glass.
In these days, I am no longer tempted to strip the paint covering my mirror.
And so, the taste of having seen is always in my mouth.
I envy him the tears of discontinuity.
When his puzzle pieces fit in the wrong place.
The deathly-careening-downhill thrill the first time he
perfectly describes a dog in the language of a cat.
Bring me back to the sea before I die.
And I will know I dreamt it right.
Mornings
When I look straight at you,
Not around you at what I fear,
or through you at what I hope.
I see the bearer of a hundred thousand mornings.
Anticipation of the sun,
the earthy scent of dewed grass;
A chance to be new
fresh
clean.
A chance to try again,
be naked in my soul.
Bared to you
bared to me.
My eyes shift focus and your face comes sharp.
I see the crease of the first smile we shared -
and hope its partner hasn’t been lost on me.
It has always been hard for me
to accept the second
or thousandth
day of morning.
But you are
morning.
And life.
And freshness.
And if I want to keep you,
I have to accept it all.
Lest joy be mistaken for drunken revelry,
I have cached myself.
I would give all I know to splash and play in the light
Bathe in the morning.
Let the dewed winds
soften my soul.
But I love you -
not because you are morning,
But because you are who you are -
And in your best time,
invite morning into life.
Because I am not a person of frequent mornings,
I shield my eyes when you approach.
But less so now.
I fall back to the dark that heard me
and held me
when I was a child.
I knew it was mine.
Knew it when quiet and calm was my best home.
Before I held you - it held me.
In the winter, I went to ground there.
It is still hard for me - I start to write of your morning
and I explain the night.
I don’t remember the look of your face,
but I hear, even now, your voice saying,
“Wake, son, the Pharaoh says to go.
We are going.”
What you had spoken with eager dreams for years,
What I had seen dance across your face for decades,
You now said with awed uncertainty,
when the truth of it was delivered into your hands.
My earliest memory is of
following your finger to the horizon
when you said, “Adonai will provide.
We will go and we will not want.”
As we pack, we begin to see
that if Adonai will provide
He will have to do it alongside us
on the road, keeping up as best he can.
Without a word exchanged
everyone knows –
whatever the cost
we will be out of the camps
and past the gates
before first light.
“One hundred forty-four thousand
mornings spent as a
captive people,” you said,
“Our next morning will be as the free children of the Lord.”
Fourteen thousand four hundred mornings later
You are dead;
Mother is dead;
Brother Elihu is dead.
Obed the fool is dead
(somehow as a child, I thought he would be immune.)
The grandchildren you never knew
Mourn their mother Sara
who is dead.
Last night, Moses himself
walked
into the bosom of Abraham.
And in the moonless night, our wilderness hearts died alone and despairing.
This morning, as the heat from our campfires drives the fog away.
Ten thousand people
rub sleep from their eyes
and point as one
across the valley.
Aaron nods;
Miriam’s hymn breaks from our lips
Our people are alive and on the threshold of our birthright.
Freiheit
It finally occurred to him
dark one night
with the wife out of town
and the kids bedded down for the night.
No phone ringing
only damn-basketball on the TV
Staring at the computer screen
And wondering why the question he was asking
and the answers [they] were giving
didn’t seem part of the same conversation.
The pixels of his mind excited, he saw that
not jumping is not the same as flying.
His problem was in being free, not in being trapped.
Magellan
We have never touched like this.
After twelve years and two children.
We come face to face
as new people.
Wearing our passions and concerns as whole garments
Woven around and into our bodies.
No longer do we meet without our histories,
As unburdened, untested, unfocused, unanchored children.
I see in your face the ghosts of a thousand joys and sorrows,
And know now how many of both I have put there.
Bridge Out
Eyes lose the light,
Ears lose the sound,
Feet slow, hands begin to tremble.
Instinct becomes calculations
and knowledge becomes a phantom.
Because it is in my soul
and not in my head.
I will always have the day
I first loved you.
As fresh as the present
and every day in between.
Winter sun dancing on your hair,
Laughter bubbling from your mouth,
The smell of springtime waiting to be born.
Are drawn into me by a sacred wind
Each time I look into your face.
Busman’s Holiday
All fiction is role-play,
Modeling, masking, making.
Your man at the bus stop
(don’t we all have one?)
Muttering, weaving a tale that
even he can barely hear –
Is trying to find the stage door so he can go home.
Telling stories
of other doors, other men at bus stops.
Like keys on a chain,
all his stories are pulled out and tried, in all their permutations and combinations.
One
at
a
time.
Scrolling diligently,
With no career to interfere,
He devotes body and soul to find the fit.
Retelling his story,
the story he saw on last night’s TV
The one he’s seen in your face.
Separate Checks
Joshu the elephant – his belly full of grass
and body exhausted
with
trying to extract the more precious water
from the less precious grass.
expired
alongside the mudhole
that offered neither.
After a visit from the lion family
and a day in the sun
Joshu’s body lies exposed and fragrant.
Enter Mumon the hippo.
Who strolls in from the shining east
one morning.
Stares in puzzlement:
He thinks he sees an elephant,
but knows he smells grass
ripened into sweet warm mulch by sun
and yet … something else.
Mumon passes once,
and a second time,
slowly sifting memories to see if
he has ever before eaten grass
that looked like an elephant.
Fatigue, hunger and thirst have made the lions
surrounding the kill
indifferent to moving stock and non-competitors.
They wait for their turn at the elephant,
lacking the power to bring down Mumon's thick hide.
But in their squinting eyes
they see precious fluids,
evaporate from the body with every moment.
In a different moment . . . patience may give way.
Lost: 1 inner child
I am almost old enough to return
for the boy.
I have seen parents leave their children
behind like dust,
Not noticing the tiny pieces of soul coming free.
What makes it unimaginable to me
is that I have also abandoned a child.
I know his face - watching as the now-unfamiliar “I” drives up the street -
not looking
not waving
not holding in my heart
I thought he didn’t need me -
that others did.
And I went. With blind determination.
Without him, I lacked resolve,
so I gave inertia;
I had nothing for patience;
so I gave distance;
I could give no nurturance,
so I gave liberty.
Everything I offered to others
was lifeless
because I couldn’t give the life I left
a thousand miles ago.
I sit waiting on the porch.
In Country / Longtime Stowaway
I came back looking
for him, yes,
and for much I lacked words for.
I didn’t know who I would see -
a fourteen year old boy
or a thirty-four year old man,
or someone in between.
I didn’t know who would be greater and who lesser,
Did the father go or stay?
Which of us would be the boy?
As it happened, he knew I was coming,
perhaps always knew,
better than I,
that I would return.
I tried circling into town,
spiraling inward as I gained in confidence –
and the knowledge I would need to recognize him.
Sometimes the teacher needn’t wait for the student to be ready.
Sometimes the truth of the glass will be so apparent, that there’s no need to wait to fill it.
He understood my glass, and knew how I would understand.
And in a single sentence,
Like the most deft of Zen masters,
he walked directly to my face,
and said, “I think I’m supposed to know who you are.”
Only at that moment was I part of the community
that understood
this to be an untruth.
All the me there was to see
had been with me all this time.
And now I go home with the same
yet-subtly-expanded me
there always has been.
Treppenwitz
I haven’t been happy about it.
But I am learning to deal with
the realities that haunt me:
I am free.
I am loved.
I am home.
I am happy.
In my near dotage,
I come to see that
freedom isn’t license;
joy isn’t delirium;
love isn’t possession;
home isn’t the space under the stairs
Scenic Overlook
After many years of driving,
he finally succeeded in lodging himself
in the mountains.
On a vector he had not planned,
in a plan he had not prepared,
he found himself staring up at a part of his history.
The sweet smell of pine moved like a fog through his precincts,
and the mess of a mountain forest soaked into his feet.
This homecoming would not last, however.
He sped by land that had once known him,
bound for a place that never did,
with his end the adoptive land of his children’s birth.
Being a refugee himself was reason enough
to love the only homeland
of his wife and children.
Greying Eyes
No breeze
no sound
No warmth or chill. Just there.
Odysseus’ unsleeping eyes ceased to be closed
and stared out at the moon.
Fair
Silent as much from trauma
as from peaceful slumber.
After twenty years and a dozen ports of blood
the son of Laertes had entertained
the hope
that he would have been spared one last.
But the final payment for the journey had to be made in kind.
The last stone of the warrior’s road rubbed intimately
against the doorstep to his vaulted banquet hall.
And the full price of wisdom would come due.
Even now, he sensed Telemachos
standing beside him,
His entire being trembling.
Unwilling to longer stand
abreast of his father;
Unable to leave his presence.
Odysseus himself had felt the sudden fear
Of losing himself in Telemachos’ eyes.
He had not seen this hall in twenty years
And now to see his younger self
covered in blood –
Breathing, panting, pumping his body full of air
in the barely successful attempt
to swallow all the fear
of who
he had
for a moment
become.
In his mind's eye,
he saw a flash of serrated sunlight
still echoing
from the Trojan battlement
on that certain day.
Telemachos tried to stand as he always imagined
his father would stand
But with each glance at the dried face,
He careened forward twenty years
and quaked at the death he saw ahead.
Without imposing on his fragile equilibrium,
Odysseus pulled alongside
slowing enough to say,
“Have courage, Telemachos.
My path will not be yours.”
Then gray-eyed, steadfast, sure-handed Odysseus
reached down with a single hand
to hoist a suitor onto one of the burial pallets.
And thoughtful Telemachos, now gray-eyed Telemachos
found himself on his knees
and did not arise
until there was nothing to be freed of
in his eyes or in his gut.
But all this blood and bile had been loosed seven days before.
Now Telemachos still crept about in his chambers.
too tired to stir during the day;
too quickly aged to sleep in the dark.
Now Odysseus lay in his bed
beside virtuous, faithful and resourceful Penelope.
Now Penelope lay still,
her breath a study in slow rhythm
learned from years of deceiving
faithless servants that she slept
Long enough for the ruse to send them off
While she unwove Laertes’ burial shroud.
Without touching him, she could not know
if he had brought himself back an animal;
And without knowing,
she could not touch him.
Wise, resourceful Odysseus lay unrested.
Circe and Polyphemus;
Scylla and Charybdis;
The Lotus Eaters themselves
were no more dangerous
than his own fear
that he had returned
to a life he could only see through a window,
to a land that held only the translucent ghosts of joy.
Now Pallas Athena
who led him through such blood
Peers across his slate windowsill
and whispers a child's stories.
While Laertes yet lives,
there still is hope for his son:
To become in part a small boy
and grow again
beyond his new scars.
Rural Route
It always seems to start
with a highway,
a roadfootpathstream
or sidelong glance,
connecting the here to the horizon
in a tenuous bond:
A vector
dependent on time and inclination;
direction and momentum;
on whether it's raining
and when the pie will be ready.
Leave it to the West
to turn a critical weakness
into a shining virtue.
Some cultures are born to migrate,
western man is genetically predisposed
toward being elsewhere.
Green or brown,
the grass is never what it might be.
unknown
. . . and when the time comes for seeing
you discover that passion has fled:
gone back to the Veldt,
because you have offered it no reason to stay.
Lions need to hunt,
monkeys need to play,
cheetahs need to chase.
Passion needs to breathe: to feel.
"I am a hollow man" you say
with apologies to Elliot.
Even a straw man would bear
a kindling fire
But each flame that passes
enters the void and is swallowed.
Despite hopes that come like seasons,
you learn that the wind comes that way
only now and then.
You were a fool to wait for it.
Being a fool is easier for the young to bear.
But times are coming,
and may now be here,
when there are too few tomorrows
into which you can blend the foolishness.
Gray-haired men - those who have not learned to celebrate the foolishness - have learned to minimize it.
Or are learning to be crushed by it.
One day you wake to the words, "I would prefer not to have been born."
And are you delivered unto your wisdom or your foolishness?
The Value of a Barn
Without speaking of it,
They all understood
that the memory
would be worth the mud.
Forty years hence,
they would sit in their dry dens
and remember
the barn-raisings.
The beams would be less gritty,
the splinters reduced to sawdust.
The flies would swarm and tease,
but never land.
The stricken cattle would always pull through
just in time for the freshening.
They would remember the blood pounding in the temples
And let slip any memory of the painful gasping for air
that accompanied it.
And in these grayer years,
they would be protected by glasses and hats,
from the sun that had once beaten itself out
against their sweaty, laughing chests
in the pink morning.
Gift Horses
It was no trick to get Abraham
to say thank you.
Thanking YHWH for the life of his son,
thanking him for the journey to the altar,
thanking him for the sand and the heat,
thanking him for the test itself.
Isaac saw it quite differently.
No telling who he would have been
had he not spent those minutes on the altar.
Abraham was born to faith like fish are born to water,
but Isaac was an air-breather.
Abraham went home afterward,
but in all ways, Isaac went by a different route
from those minutes onward.
It was years before his morning prayer would include
thanks
for being the favored son of Abraham.
It goes against the grain
to say thank you for sorrow and for loss.
The words catch in a suddenly too-dry throat.
It’s absurd,
but in an absurd world outside your control,
gratitude is still the best reaction.
What was lost never was yours,
all that really belongs to you
is whether you let the loss control you.
Dancer
Isolated from the others by
the blanket of sound
and protected by the pulsing
shower of light,
She drew her slender arms
around him
and wrapped him securely
in her car payment.
The subtle fragrance of her phone bill
now two months past due
came to him
borne gently
by her jasmine body wash.
He sat, covered in a layer of scented dancer
hearing a faint rustling.
Within the coccoon of music,
he could still sometimes hear
the sound of flesh touching flesh
protected from chafing
by the continuous flow of money
between the two of them.
Whether it was the sound of cash flying from his wallet
or her bills slipping away
against the onslaught of his cash
(always his cash was present)
he could not say.
He knew plenty of places he could go
where the dancers
had no bills in the background,
only appetites.
The bills would come later
when the appetites
have run their course.
And the dancers will
come here too -
their still-lovely
fragrant skins
robust breasts
and whispering lips
singing songs of keeping up.
And they will caress
the customers
with the tender-seeking-passion
borne of uncertainty ...
will this one be the customer
who rewards them
for a little weary soul
mixed with the seduction?
hand dream: overture
an old dream
since superseded
by time scrolling
by history waking
by vectors drifting
by hearts seeing
by paths changing
by life
Hand dream
Hand sleeps upon your thigh
Dreaming of days
When it laughed and danced
Across your body.
Tracing the tender bow of your lips,
stroking the curve of your cheek,
spooning your breasts
in the cricketing night,
teasing your nipples into attentiveness.
Drawing the arm in spirals around your own,
as beating hearts tap messages to one another.
Making your belly dance in soft laughter as it glides over,
following gentle curves around
to cup the savory roundedness
of your bottom,
walking down your strong,
embracing thighs
to greet your calf
rushing up your inner paths.
coming to rest
on your hungering lips.
Deft fingers would craft a song of passion,
playing diligently to draw out the lyricism
of each mons chord.
and the days
now past
when this song would be woven into a roiling, shimmering symphony
are now shadows and reflections
sepiatoned images
daguerreotypes
echos of idylls of passion
The hand sleeps,
upon your wakefulness,
it waits and wonders.
the craft of ropes
life is your rope
Slowly woven with what you
make from ingenuity
receive in love
or find in desperation
in glad days,
you weave the love and ingenuity together
gliding along the safe and comforting spirals
holding fast as you extend your reach
by what you’ve woven.
sometimes
one or the other falls short,
and you reach for what you can find
to keep the rope going.
the dark, desperate sections
we all weave sometimes
make the rope rough
and seemingly unpresentable
but from a distance,
it's hard not to love them, too.
were they not there,
this particular you
might right now be nowhere
clinging to no rope
in some unnameably
dark and quiet world.
And this particular me
with all his own shortcomings and mis-steps
would miss this particular you.
Dreamscape
I heard
your
dream.
spooned together
I woke
whenyourbreathquickened
our rhythm disturbed
I tried to keep up
then realized
We
weren't together
I was here
and you were . . .
on the beach
or in the theater
or laying under the cool moon
or maybe somewhere
there had never been an Us.
My hand on your hips
feels them sway
And I try to remember
if they have swayed
that way
for me.
Are the dream's hands
more sinewy than mine
his shoulders stronger
his lust more resolute?
You whimper
and I wonder
if other dreams
have joined
the reverie.
Gently Rocking Heart
I wrap you in my heart,
gently rocking
Love you have given to me -
Shared with others,
has come back a hundred-fold.
I give all back to you now.
Years of
countless concerned fingers
wiping tears from my face.
My fingers stroke your thinning cheek,
using the same love you gave me -
to absorb your tears of fatigue and frustration
before they appear.
God waits in the hall
by the nurse's station,
because I am not through with you yet.
but evenso, he is here
because you and I are.
He and I have had our words,
and will have more.
But, I trust his love for you,
and know that when it is time
- time not of my choosing -
eagle's wings will carry you home
and you will be anointed and comforted
and wrapped in his vast heart,
gently rocking.
and I know that all the love you left behind
will keep spending itself endlessly,
and I will be comforted that you are with me still.
Sun Room
Cold day.
Winter sun slices through the room.
Flecks of dust dance in the air,
excited by the warmth.
Your body shimmers and glows,
excited by the warmth.
Shadow passes
warm body replaces warm sun.
I fit myself against your flushing skin
wrapping you as intimately
as the sunlight itself.
Hardness presses against your thigh
teasing your downy sex
waiting for the moment
to glide across your soft hair
to part
your moist and ready labia.
We writhe slowly
nipples grazing nipples
tongues and lips exploring
leaving damp trails
cooled to tingling by the shadowed air.
When our shared breath grows deep,
I gently roll you to your back
and our rocking delight begins.
The Economy of Smiles
Smiles were not to be had
Dark and weary were those days.
Late in the evenings,
he learned to forage.
Brought back smiles and warmth,
small tokens that cooled and dissipated
during the day.
Needing each night to be replaced.
As his craft grew,
he learned to weave the scraps
into something
larger and more enduring.
The borrowing was easier
when the scraps bore
many signatures.
Bits and pieces
from a number of authors.
But when he started sharing
from an abundance
of large, warm, seamless smiles,
moreso than the patched-together ones,
he heard in his mind
chastisement
for recycling presents outright.
"They would not mind"
he told himself
"my sharing with her
when the home garden
produces too few."
It was inevitable that
some smiles he gave to her
carried a gentle
alien bemusement,
coming as they did
from the faces of others.
She was not one to notice, however.
But sometimes at night,
he though of his own smiles.
Some of whom
traveled farther into the world,
Much beyond his little house
Where they had thought
they might stay forever.
Traveled out
and found a welcoming home.
Whorls
Different words
floating out
From different tongues
Swirl in their own eddies
Along divergent vectors
Land gently on the table,
And form the same familiar shapes.
What long ways did we come 'round
to arrive at the same place?
What oddly cobbled paths bring us together
and for what purpose?
Waybread
In the cool morning
It was not the food each was seeking
but
tokens of warmth
nibbles of sustenance
exchanged in the velvet dark -
Waybread for wayfaring companions.
The nourishment they each sought
would come at the end of other journeys.
And be shared
with other travelers.
edge
They danced along the edge of the mountain
His arduous curiosity
racing ahead
of self
and guide.
Mad quest
to scavenge touches and scents
flirt with the warm
speckling dollops
of sunlight
admitted by the trees with playful reserve.
Bursts of sensation
give pause
clasped fingers tighten
in alarm
at the passion
splashing in capricious torrents
around them.
Frenzy and calm
in intimate spirals
within them.
Him, longing to know the familiar country
woven
over time
amidst her sinews.
feel traces of memory on her skin
smell years of wildflowers in her hair
wrap the sheltering earth of her home around his body.
Her, wanting to sip the fresh-distilled awe
flowing through eyes and ears and nose and skin and stillness
Into the deep chambers of his heart.
Guide and visitor both become new explorers in this place,
feeding the other with sensations
either unfamiliar
or forgotten.
A quick turn to revisit a moment
suspended back along the trail,
and the damp, musty leaves of autumn give beneath their feet –
and gravity has its way with them.
Feet trace a wild vector
down the hill
slick pine carpeting speeding their descent
paying toll for the ride
with every brush against rude bark.
Rolled together at the bottom of the incline,
they survey one another
hands sent in search of rips
return lightly decorated with blood
and sap.
Laughter and kisses
pass as tokens
that all is well.
And all will be well
and better than well.
Song from the corners of my mouth
I had to stop and watch this time
- the workmen
putting together their dust
pasting it together
with the sweat
of firefighters
the tears of their children
the blood of passersby
who paused
a moment too long
to watch the new building going up.
I watched,
not spoiling the picture
with a camera
not pressing a lens against the world
And warping it
eyes gliding across the fresh
lively masonry
the blocks mingling
and choosing
the face they would show
the children walking by.
the trucks
shook the ground like angry horses
and brave men
dusty men
with quiet
expectant children at home
dragged
warped and weeping steel from the trucks
pressing with their hearts
until the bruised curves
became straight lines
I watched
in case one day
I were to walk by
And the sweat and blood
had leaked
or been driven out
and the bricks and stone
were back to dust and rocks
and the steel beams
had woven themselves
back to angry knots
Maybe
for having seen the building
for what it was
I would not be so emptied
and might find more
strong wise words of hope
in my dry, dusty mouth.
everyone complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it
air heavy and wet
soft breeze dripping from the sky
wait for it
spring sitting on your chest
leaps off like a cat
when the wind whips up
scurries away in alarm,
hearing the murmuring,
grumbling clouds
making their plans
and shoving the winds ahead as messenger -
you boy, tell 'em we're coming
maybe we'll ride into town like gene autry
singing something soft and purty-like
or maybe we'll bust into town howling and screaming,
loosing our torrents
beating you down with
rain and hail
tossing electricity with deadly
whip-strokes,
driving folks to trembling and to cover.
We might even be persuaded
to send an angry spiral arm
reaching down -
threshing a path like byGod Shermanhellbentforthesea -
stay back inside your curtains
and your casements,
lest death catch your eye
and blow you a kiss
but maybe
maybemaybe ...
maybe we'll just ride on through
like a sleepy Sunday afternoon,
dropping little raindrop kisses
on your babies' cheeks
can't quite say yet
keep watch - we'll be comin'
pas de deux
in summer doldrums i would ride lightly on the air
drifting in the tiny currents
moved by your presence
in wind i would swirl playful and pixie-like
around you
in mist i would drape myself
across you
in rain i would drop in sweeping sheets
upon you
in snow i would land gently and melt
at the touch
of your warm skin
through blueblue sky i would come shadowlessly plummeting from the sun
to soak warm droplets of light
into your pores
in northern lights i would dance
into your sleep-shrouded eyes
in quiet night I would rest
within you
Yellow moon over Texas
You spiral along our orbit
Nothing to do but watch.
What have you not seen of us here?
You've followed the lazy, momentous drift
of our whole continent.
to north and west;
Watched the great inland sea
drive westward into worried mountains,
and raise up overall
to become part of
a sea of tall grass
north to south.
Were these virgin lands
when the nomads
flowed across the ice
half a million new moons ago?
Were there no more-forgotten people before them?
You saw the faint sparks of Folsom points
being hammered,
heavy smears along the hillsides as buffalo
darkened the prairies
and hunters chased in their dust
for skins and meat and bones and tomorrows.
You stared silently
as we swept that second indigenous sea
into puddles of people
and claimed the land like prairie grass,
painting ourselves red in the process.
While you looked on,
we threw up dams
to capture scarce flow.
Water to the crowds.
Water to the crops.
Water to our pride.
Then came we to camp alongside those waters
and stare back up at you.
questions of the garden
Uncertain flower
planted in other hands
by other heart
What sent you spinning north?
What wind of absence
loosened your roots?
What memory bell rang soft in the distance?
The garden whispers Zen words
of unknowing
Certain ambiguity
Notion without definition
Beginner’s mind walking with beginner’s heart.
Learning to re-know.
Songs of history never sung –
wisdom percolates into the bed
and light shines warm.
It is not as you thought
true words of never-happened
remembrances of history
that could have been
full and rich
become as real as what had been. And more real.
Stone heart softened to flesh
wanders in dreams
carried by the flower.
Will awaken where?
flyleaf musing
To have been truly seen and heard and touched
This is a gift beyond all measure.
Part of the wondrous forever,
the creative magic of the old universe.
The finger of God stirring
the ripples of time and space
Bringing together people and things
that have never and always
known each other.
And will always know each other
After.
Out the Lighted Window
Out the lighted window
in the murmuring trees of night
whispered voices call up an old poem
writing slowly
drawing in the words and breathing them out
in a timeless – timefree - meter
I sit at my desk, listening to the ancient voices,
feel the cool syllables
the sweetdarkheavy scent of them
flirting dangerously with my nose.
I lay my pen down, then think better
and lock it away in the desk
This is a poem I cannot write.
The words are too big and dark
They would absorb my heart
And I would cease to be, my pen clattering to the floor.
Carlos the Bastard
(composed upon finding a personal letter displayed in a newspaper rack)
Heart writ small
On lined paper
Carlos shared news from Priscilla
with the street
The weekly tabloid rack's
display frame,
not to be refilled
'til two days hence
Could announce to all who stopped to read
That things were ok
That she went to
about two weeks ago.
That her cousin had her baby
and she and the father
had decided to call the child
Ignacio.
That the weather was so nice last Sunday
that she and Anita
had gone down to the riverwalk
And she showed Anita
that little shop
where you bought her
the doll she keeps
on her dresser.
That her little brother Ernest left for the Marines on Thursday week
That its been raining on and off for three days
and the grass has been growing faster
but her dad’s knee is acting up again
so she’ll probably stop by after work
and mow it for him.
That she misses you and is enclosing the picture she promised and is wondering how you are because its been weeks since she's heard from you and maybe you've lost her address so she's putting it at the bottom of the letter and maybe she should close now instead of going on and on
even though ...
you used to say
you enjoyed it.
So instead of last week's tabloid headlines
Curious passers-by
get to view
her heart
and your bare-knuckle calluses.
Until some kind stranger
sees the bits of soul
flaking off
and disposes of the
heart-scrawled pages.
that you left in the newspaper rack.
The King of Royal and
Guitar riffs bounce down the sidewalk
Bluesman in the street
his folding chair’s the main stage
Tip bucket at his feet
Singin' the stories
walkin' by
When you sings yours,
can you meet his eye?
Sings you
Sings me
sings 'bout the troubles
that don't let a man be.
Sings what ain't there
or what don't stay
What comes in the night
or your quiet day.
Sings from your bottle
or your tired shoes.
Sings 'bout your heart
and how you paid your dues.
Con man can tell ya
where ya got your shoes
Only bluesman knows
where you found your blues.
getting there
Train molecules
gliding past
all in a tidy row
going somewhere
Water
following gravity
taking the long way ‘round
and 'round and 'round the Earth
going somewhere
Cars spinning a slow arc
along the overpass
cutting through the morning sun
all going somewhere
Clouds grazing slowly
darkening the plains
come from yonder,
going somewhere
Wind dancing with wind
down the street
around the trees
it’s going somewhere
Sounds of
creaks
and bumps
and thuds
and spills
coming from everywhere
going to many somewheres
Streams and pools of soul
in their people skins
lead by their baggage
and their questions
all hoping
they’re going somewhere
maybe they are
no time like the present
Time taffy
pulled
kneaded
wrapped into layers
Old faces pressed against each other
see times they hadn't known together
The scent of yesterdays
awakened
Flowers pressed into books
Drawing moist life
From tomorrow
Doesn't matter
The "now" remains
Never what we think it is
Layers of when - all now
Layers of where - all here
Layers of murmuring activity -
all closer to quiet calm
than we admit.
riders of the twilight
In our sleep
and in our waking,
the dust and ash
still settle.
Sirens wailing and belching
are cousins
of the sirens that responded
on that morning,
when blue sky
was replaced by billowing sorrow.
The clouds came low
dust bowl in
fine particulate,
powdered grief,
speaking of thousands of
innocent dead,
drifting out
and up,
and blending theirs
with the dust and ash
of the millions of innocents
taken already.
Smoke from
and
and
and
and fiery pogroms.
Innocents -
numerous
and universal
and silent
as falling ash -
pray for us.
Dust from Russian gulags
Southern cottonfields
coal mine explosions
diamond mine collapses
dry footfalls on the Trail of Tears.
Innocents -
so abundant
you shroud the sun -
pray for us.
in words, indeed
Years too late
He discovered what she had surmised early.
She would lose him
or had lost him
or had never had him.
The words would come,
pressing their
vowels and
consonants
and diphthongs
intimately into his mind
and seducing his thoughts.
Singing their siren songs
of meaning and pondering;
damp whispers of stories to be told,
notions to be teased out and given form.
Perhaps she,
cool English teacher,
was jealous of the passions
the words would bring to his unsettled nature
in search of intimate reflection.
She smiled and chatted with them,
but never danced into the shadowed night.
He came late to bed smelling of spirits and musty pages.
When was it too late?
When would the words take him places
from which he would never return
... to her?
Portrait of the Autist as a Young Man
I.
I have sat in your house
young boy
watched from your windows
the same world
I know.
the same street,
treading past
to and fro.
Shadows and unfamiliar shapes for you -
the light
passing through or bouncing off them
meeting our eyes
with similar skews
but different results.
You move,
riding the ripples of the world
as it washes over you
and swirls past
Your mind sinks into the stream,
and I watch your arms splashing,
drawing you along the eddies in the worldflow.
I watch every twitch and nod,
listen to every murmur and sigh
savor the rare word that tumbles from your mouth.
I am tourist out there –
but student in here.
Learning how you live inside.
II.
Studying now to climb your steps
counting as I go
onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten
two at a time
onetwo threefour fivesix seveneight nineten
And when I leave –
new ways to count
One jump
tennineeightsevensixfivefourthreetwoone
spooled out before I land
on the sidewalk.
One day in a sporting mood
I stepped out on your landing
and tapped out pi
threeonefouronefiveninetwosixfivethreefiveeightninesevenninethreetwothreeeight
tracing out the first eighteen steps of an infinite dance.
And then came back to earth – as always – with
onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten
before crossing your threshold
as your apprentice.
I am new to this, so I only count steps once
One day - perhaps coming from the park with you
I will spontaneously repeat something
and find my own pattern
All steps three times?
Five times?
Even steps up
odd steps down
then all steps up to enter?
Perhaps
onethreetwofourfivesevensixeightnineten,
jump back to one, then
onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten
back up to enter.
One onetwo onetwothree twothreefour threefourfive fourfivesix fivesixseven sixseveneight seveneightnine eightnineten nineten ten
The apprentice becomes an acolyte,
having watched the master
repeat his sacred ritual,
and having crafted his own.
III.
My visits
consist of me accompanying you -
sitting outside the carriage of your mind
Watching your world passing by
Wondering what you see
instead of me
instead of walls
instead of furniture
I watch your eyes
dancing inside your skin
I follow as your hands
mark
or count
or handle
elements of world
I can see only pointers to.
My eyes
follow each cycle
each iteration
as you wrap
your familiar world
in repetition
or your own geometry.
I slowly begin to absorb
your comforting liturgy
. . . turn the knob five times, then open the door
. . . arrange the book stacks by color and size
. . . Open the blinds - 60 degrees at 9am; 75 degrees at noon; back to 60 at 3pm; closed again at 6pm
The ritual wraps around the task,
then spirals its comforting tendrils back to me.
My breath and pulse slow
Drawn with the same pen,
our minds
wrap differently around the ... things,
our lines casting different patterns
in shadow
across the world.
I watch your world,
see the lights cast into your eyes
colored and shaded and bent
and then painted on your mind.
While you ride the world quietly
I throw uneasy metaphors
at the world
and at you
and watch to see what sticks,
building papier mache models
of what seems to be.
I remember wisps of the quiet mind
with neither room nor need
for description,
wonder where mine has gone,
and if I must walk back
a ways
within your mind
to find it.
And I have to wonder
if what I see in my eyes
is any more real
than what moves through your head.
Sneaking up on the World
Not the same old way
not rote for the morning
each morning
every morning.
No longer a script
for playing the native.
Waking to beginner’s mind.
The child
sand-painting himself
into my eyes yesterday
is changed by a day
billowed out by moments
blown flowing past,
reshaping his face.
The todaychild hovers in the nearground
surrounded by nothing older
than the light splashing across his face:
eight minutes from Sun to Earth.
Gradually rinsing off the reflected and refracted
illusions of yesterday.
He swims into the eddied now
that pools about
his personal timespace,
continually
draining into the past
and refreshing.
Unknotted,
unspiralled time.
Curving outward
to new moments.
Not trying vainly
safely
comfortably
to recycle old
paths and patterns.
Each moment graced and virginal.
Woman of
Dark hair tumbling down the mountain
following snow melt
Familiar footfalls
in places
whose face she does not know.
Stepping over spring flow
on the very same bridge
she never raced across
with playmates as a child.
"What brings you back to the desert you never knew?"
the yesterdaywords of her lover
drift back around her,
laid like a serape
loose but familiar on her shoulders.
She wrapped the words tighter
against her own condensation
which danced in the cold mountain light
and still made no reply but to take
his cupped hand
in her own.
Cousin of the hawks she knows
glides up the mountain
on the breeze
that ripples her hair,
He twists his wingtips,
and dips in acknowledgement.
as he drifts past.
Without words yet for the morning,
they turn and follow
the currentrider.
Streambed becomes their path,
rocky and meandering
like paths they've had
or paths
that have nearly had them.
Path becomes gnarled gaps
through twisted
pinon pine
who have never known
hasty pulse
and decline to accommodate
those who do.
As their tree window shifts,
their beacon hawk
Becomes a pinpoint drifting
left
then right
and back & forth
and finally fades into a cirrus whisper.
Watching him scout his lunch
brings their breakfast to mind.
Wood smoke still infuses their clothes,
making fresh and real
the memory
of eggs, potatoes, bacon and chile
kneaded
and folded together
inside flour tortillas.
Eyes turn and roll
across the serrated foothills,
ridges displaying the rippled
cretaceous days
layered one atop the other
Waited patiently as dinosaurs
sloughed through
shallow seas.
Some voice of home sang then
slow whisperings
that drew the shallows
Into flats
talked the timid hills up into mountains.
Breathed images
drift into today,
wind themselves into tomorrows
as abundant as the yesterdays
Tomorrows wrap themselves
fitted snug to her feet
cool riverbed shallows,
tugging softly at her soul
intimacy insinuated between her toes,
damp sand hissing as she walks
"Sssssstay-sssssstay-sssssstay"
Qualities of place
weaving themselves
amidst her own innateness
swirls of country like smoke
drifting upward.
No stranger
to mad cold
driving rain
choking snow
indifferent hills
savage crags
No stranger to the desert
no novice with desert
sound
water
wilderness
heat
silence
cold
heart ...
Waterbearer
warmthbearer
windcoolcalm
heartbearer,
the woman of Taos Mountain
follows ridge to crest
and sees the rump of porcupines in the mountain’s bulk,
and superior waters in the high blue sky.
And she who is new here
is she who is still home.
An Answer on Career Day
When I grow up
I want to be a ghost town.
A collection of shells
scattered down the mountainside:
playthings of progress
packets of empire
fringes of the frontier
Seeds of cities
lost in rocky ground
wedged tight in hard crags
not room enough
for roots and nutrients together.
Kernels cast on hot sand
water enough
to try
and to die
dreams cast back out
carried by wind
to other sands
or rocks
or someone’s sandy loam.
In some spring
a small child of uncertain age,
from untested to arthritic,
Will peer through
my unburdened window frames
and balance on my
parched thresholds,
Pry coins and tools and bones of glass
from my sleeping earth,
And in the thin, tired wind,
hear quiet stories
of where dreams come from
and where dreams go to,
And in that sad flowing softness
know that his are not alone
wherever they go.
Not
Not in the dark
Not rippling past in the wind
Not cricketed along in the shadowed grass
Not chirped from wind-wavered branches
Not patiently unfolding in slapping waves
Not warmed into flight by lantern
Not swept into broad particulate currents by campfire
Not seasoned alongside drying grasses
Nor cured amidst leaves yellowed in sleep.
There but not.
Here but not.
Friend but not.
Hearth but not.
Touched but not.
Writing not.
Seeing not.
not present
not filling
All spiraling below the event horizon of not
giving off naught.
Naught but not.
old and not too old to learn
Old man
fisher man
tired man
graying eyes in bowed head
footsteps small and silent
body-weak but soul-strong
lion now in mouse’s robes.
Stays the course
follows the path
lifts the cross
carries the love
lives the joy.
Here is rest
voices say.
Here is quiet
here is reward
here is no wanting
here is joy.
Rest my friend
give less
save more.
Retire.
Old man
rinses all in watercolor whisperings
of living and dying
Still the pilgrim
shuffles slow
and loves
and lives.
Not bending love
to wishes
and fears
and worries of return.
Even tired and cynical Rome
feels the pilgrim's joy at giving all
until the light fails
and the road comes home.
Busy faces slow for smiles
Worn hearts admit hope.
Old frescoes
breathe in color and warmth
as he passes
walking slow but hopeful
toward the final passing.
An ocean away,
for another,
questions of the old man's legacy
doubts of his own legacy
fall to thoughts of the pilgrim's sign.
And the celibate
teaches one who is not
of love
Teaches what truth is
whole rich truth
for vows made
of giving all
and counting none
and trusting hope
and carrying love
wherever it will be carried
until journey’s end.
And the other, not to old to learn, begins to see.
Moon’s lightness
Cool moon’s gaze
through sheltering trees
soft glow
a gentle call to wake
and see
not moon nor sky
nor stars
nor trees
but nearby soft-shuttered eyes
curved neck
slow breath of dreams unfolding.
In the stillness
beneath the cool moon,
and the same soft light from ages past,
Gentle creases
hold tokens of smiles entertained,
thoughts posed,
concerns mused,
Illuminated paths of life-worn love.
In the cool moon’s light,
the pilgrim’s silent face
tells soft, slow stories,
shining back moments absorbed
through patient years;
sweet fragrance of memories
rising like nightmist,
releasing moments beyond count
and beyond words.
And in their rising, sleep falls again.
wrapped in history and belonging.
soaked in love and moonlight.
Cipherspace
letters etched on glass
awed pixels of knowing
world grown small
while distance stands guard
Fragments of outer faces
drift by
Visions of inner faces
dance through,
watch back,
know much.
In their own time
moments
stand distance on end
and both watchers
spiral toward
the same familiar center.
And see a who
they always knew,
but never met before.
browned leaves flee chill wind
chased by ghosts wrapped in fall dreams
wake now, find peace, sleep
fall haiku
in fall comes the wind
trees, fences, and hearts shudder
in wind comes the fall
as it always has been
Hands on the clay
not two but four
Tugging and caressing
the mask into it’s own face
to be fed into a birthing fire
for its own fulfillment.
Hands soaked in the oldalwaysnew magic
of creation
love calling life into being.
Hands locked in motion.
Arms wound in play.
Hearts weaving together
a new and changing beat,
waking enough sleeping magic in each
to make dance a universe.
Two minds orbiting hearts,
spinning their notions,
to be drawn into the center of hope,
and cast back into the ether
as new confections.
One believes a ship into being,
the other fills its sail
One sprouts a root,
the other feeds the wildflower
One chants words in a poets voice,
the other makes them sing
All woven into harmonies
when hearts of love and magic meet.
song of time and memory
shadows
reflections
ripples lingering in streams
eddies stirred across the room
words exchanged
touch confirmed.
all the atoms still in place
the world unmoved, unmarked
senses simmer nonetheless
with reality remade.
neurons rearrange
on paths of recognition
Minds hold truths
brought life by hearts.
In due time
breath halts,
bones dry,
thoughts and echoed voices fade.
What endures is what is real.
What is real is what is felt.
What is felt is what is loved.
Ashes ride the wind,
cornerstones decay,
but "I loved..." infuses each remembrance,
protects,
and animates,
each old
heartcrafted day.
when poplar dreams
On brow of hill, in winter’s chill
young poplar sleeps and dreams.
From root to tendril, memories still
flow in nurturing streams.
At the gateway of remembrance
stands the memory
of a touch -
warm fingers
curved by kindness,
and shrouded by time,
drawing the poplar from crevice into world.
It saw them first -
their strolling gait,
wandering thoughts and eyes -
a couple and yet not.
Hiding from his trained and canny eye,
it softly called to her.
Her mother’s heart and mother’s ear
heard
and paused
and turned
and held tight the sprig from where she stood.
He too, was paused and turned
by her currents of concern,
his eyes following her heart’s reach.
The corners of his mind
expected a child’s hand
to emerge and enfold
itself in hers
but found instead a seedling
trapped in stone.
Her heart stretched itself,
embracing the seedling
and him,
drawing them together
until his hand encircled the sprig,
and moved by her heart’s desire,
began to work it free.
Her wordless laugh told him “Let my clever fingers try”
as her warm hand laid across his
and gently brushed his own aside
to enfold
and tug
and comfort
and coax -
and just before his smirk emerged
to brush aside her smile,
a baby poplar was birthed
from its cramped and stony womb.
Hand of his and hand of hers
cradled the sprig in swaddling fingers.
Thoughts of sudden parenthood
paused their hearts and linked their eyes.
In her soft voice came awareness to his ear,
woven into the words
“You know he will grow beyond our hands ...”
A silent toss of his head
cast his eyes toward the hill’s brow,
trailing her eyes after.
“He’ll be all alone there …
… but likely trod on here”
came back her accord, borne on the breeze.
While his heel and rooting fingers
shaped a divot into a hearth,
a cradle of loess and loam,
she cupped poplar to her –
full bosom’s warmth and body’s shadow
already mothering the young sprig.
With bed prepared, she scooped him in
and tucked him tight against the coming chill,
then bade him sweetly sleep.
And, to make gentle his slumber,
they sat and spoke
of other springtimes,
of other childhoods and sheltering trees
of questions, hopes and happiness,
of little bits of life that lay in wait
and call to them from cracks in stone,
and of traces of new life now peering
through the seams
between their interwoven fingers.
Young poplar stands on brow of hill,
now cloaked against the winter's chill -
unfolds sweet tales to clinging snow,
soft songs that only lovers know.
Independence Day
Between the pickles
and the pepperoncini,
I lost ten years.
Betrayed by my peripheral vision
I spun,
caught by a notion of your
auburn hair
drifting by.
Feeling the tug,
you turned to reel in
and inspect your catch,
but found an old story
still suspended these ten years
on the oldest line
in your book,
“I’ll call and explain … soon.”
New stories and surveyings
passed between our eyes,
nary a blink to slow the flow.
“You look well.”
The corners of your mouth
were a caption of bemusement,
as your freckles redrew themselves
into a reflection of winter constellations,
soaked into your skin
by endless hours of starbathing,
endless hours of lovers and blankets
and night-draped clearings.
My half-nod reply
told the tale
of getting over you,
a practiced tale that
isn’t always true.
A moment’s stare
and two moments’
faltering
hesitation,
then the lips I wasn’t staring at
spelled out
“I should be going.”
“Have a good life,”
four words and as many meanings
was my reply -
A sending; a shooing;
a wishing; and a chiding,
all rolled into one,
and out my smiling lips.
Ten years younger
and one loose thread lighter
I now celebrate
each Independence Day
with pepperoncini.
nocturne
Mists of moonlight
fall from cool heights,
filter through trees’
leaves and branches,
waft through window,
cloak the table
where the watcher,
silent, waits.
Moonlight poet,
bathed in quiet,
waits for phrases
dancing slowly.
Tales of life and
songs of loving
flowing lithely,
pen to pad.
Softly glowing
words of knowing
etch themselves
upon the page.
Cobalt blue curves
‘tween the grey lines
speak of night hues
laid upon day’s
brash designs.
Marry night’s dreams
with the day’s schemes
weave the mind and
soul together.
Integrate the
poet’s vision
with the will that
gives it life.
Are the words and
will his, solely?
Are they old fruit
now come ripe?
planted by some
other poet
writing somewhere
on his heart?
active tense
without an active subject,
the predicate of love
founders
empty and fragmented,
unfulfilled
and
unrealized.
flight
i plunge
through the layers
of your presence
into love,
decompressing
and unfolding
as i go
wildflower haiku
roadside wildflowers
seared each summer, dance each spring
know not how to die
a most informal note
a most informal note
plain white bond
overlaid with penciled curves
casual arcs of invitation
light and fluid
longing strokes
His eyes rolled along the undulations
traced the full and soaring C
into the dizzy, spiraled o
then the playful rise and fall of m
with the extended swirl of e
launching him toward possibilities
all underscored by the swooping arrow
whose tip bid him shift
his attention and his person
toward the garden door
"Come …”
was ample summons
and all he need read
leaving unscanned
her postscript –
lose yourself in the garden and find yourself in me
wingwatcher
Five miles up
and ninety miles distant,
a day’s dry slog
through gypsum sand,
fine and smooth
deep and stubbornly tractionless -
even the airborne recollection
brings mind to its tired knees.
and slows so very slightly
airline time,
that droning, steady crawl of neverarriving
swallowing a day’s steady hike
in seconds.
The white sands sixty miles wide
are a different reality
from 300 miles an hour away.
Only the most finely granular imagination
connects the experience of sand
with the curved-earth splash of white
Fine as gypsum sand on an autumn day,
fine as a moment of treasured weariness,
now many autumns old.
And somewhere along the jet’s vector
wait tiny, old, slow-moving images
bundles of translucent remembrances
evolving slowly as layers shift and blow away,
freed from their places by
ripples of time, speed, and distance.
but all waiting in quiet someplaces
to merge again
with their native faces.
See those small, sand-worn faces -
eyes mingling echoes of yesterdaylight and today,
voices saturated with stories of just here and just now,
hands buttering bread,
legs tired from cantoring horses,
all part of the stream of abstraction
drifting slowfast past the traveler’s eye,
but soon to be made flesh again.
gone twenty years
has the clock gone twenty years now?
I never sought to drowse so long
in this dispassionate bed
where perpetual strangers meet,
but the days held themselves aloof
and the charms of stepping out
were more elusive
than the songs of staying put,
despite the restless soulnights,
relieved only by transient, craving dreams.
my body lay in state these many years,
passions pooled in muscle,
and actions locked in bone,
and as I stir now, I see
even my writing hand grown cramped and stiff
from countless resets of the alarm,
and from so many frantic graspings
at the same stylized dream.
but what harm is it to sleep
and dream through twenty years,
when I had not hands and will
to paddle and steer
my self and soulful skiff,
from these doldrums of fear?
what waters await?
what waits in the water?
will I lose my hands
to ragged stumps
when I reach to paddle
from these leaden dreams?
what portions of my heart
will leap from soul to sea
and choose to stay behind
and not depart with me?
when storms pound
and waves overlay,
and doubt fills the hull
faster than any sea,
who will return my fearful glance,
whose wordless eyes will say,
“yes, you might – but not alone.”
and if a month of months pass
and the only sound I hear
is the lap-lap-lap
of indifferent waves,
and the only warmth I feel
is the raspy tongue of the sun,
peeling flesh from my shoulders,
and the only softness I receive
comes from a lead gray moon
a quarter million miles away,
will I miss my old, homey trepidations?
but I ask myself
how all those accumulated nothings
differ from these doldrums of fear,
and my only answer is
to dip my hands into the water
and push,
as my eyes drip salt -
a token payment to the sea,
my salt-oath sign and pledge
of undertaking the voyage.
the sea takes my payment
and makes its own reply,
with my every timid stroke,
ripples dance and bubbles churn,
gently coaxing fingers to open
and palms to cup,
to better hold handfuls of progress.
even my writing hand
accepts its liquid liberation,
releasing the last bits
of graydream flotsam
it had been cherishing.
as the cramped muscles
savor the demands of freedom,
my shoulders sweep forward,
calling my body from slumber to survival,
lunging uncertainly toward some shore
that might offer berth and rebirth.
with a shrug, the sea gives way,
for at least one moment -
and the journey begins.
spring haiku
spring wind wakes still grass
grass gives form to flowing breeze
each now knows new worlds
in the course of gifting
chocolates
in the box
found themselves
embittered
darkened into the chocolate
she didn’t like.
flowers in a pot
as I handed them over
would look
from me to her
then turn to search for
some hopeful sun.
flowers in a vase
faltered and
drew pale
as the water
whispered itself
into the air.
trinkets and baubles
grayed and greened
themselves
in the acrid breeze
of conversation.
words themselves
turned to wood
shedding splinters
as they tumbled across
my tongue.
in the end
I gave her a box
filled with
the absence of me
a gift which finally
drew a smile
from her depths.
native child
Her hands live here
fingers dance here
shape wood
curve wire,
break soil,
cup water here.
World-wise hands -
fingers leave prints
in oil upon wood grain,
bones press steel wire
to her will,
sinew and soil
share the language
of energies ready to be spent,
and blood and water
murmur their soft-flowing
songs of life.
She lives here
and I marvel
at this unfamiliar feeling
of being deeply at-home -
wrapped in
but not bound by
the world -
native child and not
itinerant poet.
Lithe hands,
which age will not soon change,
Small fingers,
softly shaping space,
sculpting a snug-fitting universe about her.
Carving a home in the side of life.
predator
Ages of evolution,
years of experience,
and the urgings of appetite
have honed her talents
and made her thus:
She is huntress -
the fear in the eyes of mice,
the quake of fleeing birds,
the slick unwinding of snakes,
the bane of nosy hounds.
She is danger and death
on quiet, padded feet.
But -
for the moment,
she is the ball of sleep spooled upon my lap
butterfly haiku
butterfly on screen
comes each day, eight seasons long
one day, it flies on