Said to be enough,
THINGS HEARD
Caul for my comfort
or do I mean a different word,
morning means confusing
what I dream with what there is,
Caul to wrap round,
or call out to thee?
because all the old words
are still living in the night.
2.
Now silenced by sun.
Who are we today,
brave pilgrim,
on time’s turnpike
asphalt softened from summer heat?
I mean wake up in me
natural as a ball of twine,
uttering secrets orderly
one tug at a time.
3.
These days I miss the sea
though the river brings some of it to me,
fjord that it is, firth our word?
But only with the whole
sea can I or music be
continuous. Otherwise
it’s just one song after another,
wren at the window
last night you heard.
4.
Ah you, the diamond of my days,
you are where you are
when nothing is where it is.
You tilt the light so I can see,
you coax wildlife to give
singing lessons to the lifelong child,
bluejay jive and chipmunk chatter,
speaking strictly, like a flower.
5.
But do not name it
so early in the day.
Let it be music
if it must, rivers of,
sensuous legato
rifling the silences,
is that an oboe
or a little girl crying
softly over a torn dress?
Should I waste the music
trying to find out what it means?
6.
Suppose a spoon.
It does what nothing
else quite can do:
lift a little liquid
to your lips. We must
have spoon nature
in us, since we give
a little taste of us
to you and you, only a little
and hope you like the taste.
7.
Anyhow, that’s what the music said
while I listened to the loud piano,
sound is such a paradox,
it comes so far to touch the skin,
child Mozart memorizing
Palestrina, some such story,
stories too are music, come
from far away to touch us as they can.
27 July 2020
THE STAIRS
We breathe more
going up.
The steps creak
louder going down
as if all the air
that lifted us
were gone now
and we sink
weightily, body
alone, unthinkingly
from step to step—
Virgil says it’s easy
to go down.
But sometimes
as I climb at night
I linger on each step
to think the thought
that lives right there,
only there, at that
particular ascension,
that shelf of history,
every step its own
chronicle, theorem.
I stand there, stunned
by what is suddenly clear,
what is utterly there,
then hoist myself
out of that thinking
then rise to what waits
eight oaken inches
closer to the stars.
On one step
I stop and think
of who I am—
but ‘am’ is a house
with many floors—
am I what I look like
as I do a certain thing
or am I what I think
in doing it? Am I
even doing it, or does
the task itself draw me
into the vacuum of itself
to be done, so that I
have no more agency
than a feather floating
on the wind?
So many feathers these days
on the deck, the old
steps outside, the hawk
attacking mourning doves
again, soft birds
that come to be fed
so it’s my fault when
the Cooper’s hawk comes
down and kills them.
And is that too what I am?
Why are there steps
and how many are there,
I count all the time
and the number keeps changing,
how many steps to get where I am,
and know the place
and go on from there?
And why are there numbers
anyway, chalk marks
on the cave wall,
up the stone hill, no,
the wooden hill to Bedfordshire
they used to say
night time, beddy-bye
where Great-great-grandfather John
was a priest and knew
a winding path to Sophocles—
I knew Greek once too,
that was a gorgeous step,
a long swoon of scholarship
a warm unending autumn afternoon,
but I digress— you’d think
that would be hard to do
on a single flight of stairs
but no, distraction beckons everywhere,
and maybe wandering aimless
is the real road to Jerusalem,
pilgrim quest, top of the stairs,
al som de l’escalina, said Dante
who knew who waited for him
up there. And for me?
Take one more step,
who knows what I’ll see from there,
the groaning elevator of my attention
yearns to rise. O an elevator
would be a precious tool
to bypass thinking
into pure Arrival,
up there, where the angels
wait to stage the night’s dream.
Though I suppose dreaming
counts as thinking too,
wouldn’t you?
And sometimes even
while I linger on a step
(speaking of thinking)
I’ll think: why not stay here?
This present place,
this exiguous plateau
is new-found-land enough for me.
Stay here and be at home
halfway to nowhere,
but home, home, no more
climbing, no more going down.
Standing there upright
somehow feels like lying down,
peaceful, a long soft exhalation,
all vigilance relaxed.
Then before I know it
a foot lifts by itself
and heaves me to the next step,
bare tundra and a sense of loss.
My body has its own ideas
so who am I after all?
23-24 July 2020
OPAL
Help the opal
find its wheel,
help the chimney
find the sky,
a jewel has meaning
but not always one
the books explain,
find its meaning
by wearing it— with care
because who knows
where the smoke goes.
A thing knows its own mind–
do you know yours?
That is the question
every door asks
as you go through.
Or even just wait outside,
patient, waiting
for me to open it and say
you are the diamond,
please come in.
2.
But of course that is not
the end of it. The diamond
has no door or only one
the soul alone can enter,
whatever the soul is
or means. The mystery deepens.
The diamond gleams in the sun
but deep down in it
I saw as a child
a pure and radiant blue.
Study your mother’s engagement ring—
it gives the first faint glimmer
of what you will become.
3.
I use this word ‘you’ a lot,
it is small as an opal,
precious as diamond.
But don’t get me wrong—
the beauty of you
and the beauty of me
is that we can be anyone at all,
depending. Depending
on whether you are listening
or speaking, the words
around you like emeralds,
pearls, carnelians all strung
together coherently,
a necklace. Put it on,
wear it to know what they mean.
4.
I [verb] you.
This is the greatest
vector language knows.
Wind in the trees—
see what I mean?
5.
So we are beasts of burden
who carry words to their intended,
and somehow they sustain us
on the way, some of us
even grow fat from carrying
so many words so far,
so far. I really do wish you were near.
6.
In India they let cows
walk on the highway
right amidst the cars
and trucks and bikes and horses.
Sometimes they loop flowers
on the cow’s neck. Sometimes
I feel like a cow in traffic
dazed with other people’s
strengths and speeds but there
I am, four feet to the asphalt,
lurching slow forward.
Towards what? Not the slaughterhouse–
this is India remember, ahimsa,
no, towards somewhere
what I am or what I give
is needed, honored even
in a half-unconscious way.
I mean towards you, ready or not.
7.
O the glint of one
sun on so many windshields!
Head for the lake or the river
to see the single sun again
smile up at you from calm water
and your own face in it,
your mother found at last.
23 July 2020
EPIC
A man
upright
before
a finely scratched
red enamel metal door
as of a car. Or van.
Our hero
in this song,
no dogs, no ravening.
Song without anger
but joggers a-plenty
and plenty of wheels.
His mother
comes to visit
every now and then—
who’s telling this story?
“My mother is younger
than I am,” he explains,
“there are so many miracles
in this neighborhood.”
She smiles to hear him say so
and agrees when she comes by,
always some new suitor flustered
by her side, puzzling out
how this man could be this
young girl’s child—
If they behave themselves
they’ll finally find out.
We were puzzled too,
we looked it, so he smiled
and said “My mother
is my other
and from this other
all wisdom flows—
I catch it as I can.”
The main thing is
everybody is alive
at the end of the story—
it has to be that way,
only a story is allowed to end.
2.
The shiny door behind him
reflects the landscape he faces—
fences and fields and trees on a ridge,
what might be a cow way over there
or a boulder left by a glacier,
hard to tell, life
takes odd forms in these places,
these planets.
We could ask him to decide
what that pale lumpy object is
but we have more important
issues to address—
you don’t waste a hero’s
time with ontology.
What is the order of the day
we ask, what’s new, what’s next?
He rolls his eyes,
almost girlish,
and answers what we didn’t ask,
“The clouds bring rain,
but what does the rain bring?”
Don’t know, we say,
we are not skilled
as you in consequences,
what does it bring?
“Brings you you yourselves—
you’re twice alive
when your skin is wet—get
born every day!”
What would we do without such advice?
Dry crackers in dry fingers—
“Quiet your brain
and pray for rain!”
3.
It has to be long,
like a road,
has to be wide
like a door,
has to be deep
as a mirror,
shallow as the sea,
must be you,
like me.
That’s what the leaflet read
we found on the front seat
when he went for a walk in the field,
never out of sight.
We could watch him walking
as if following a pattern
he could read in the grain,
young corn, barely up to this thigh.
We put the leaflet back,
began to wonder whether
we should be here at all,
so many words to listen to,
so many religions
and no horsemen coming over the hill.
Look in the back
one of us said and we did,
empty save for a paper cup
with coffee in it still warm
but no one dared to take a sip
though even we knew
wisdom takes the oddest forms.
4.
He came back soon,
the man,
offered to drive us into town.
But we all came from different places
and didn’t know what town he meant
and didn’t dare ask—
we are not brave,
we people of the word,
we know the awesome power
of what can be said.
So we said we’d make our own way home,
studying the wildlife on the way,
the guerison of local flora,
church bells and factory whistles
will guide us more or less
but thank you for offering
we said. “I hope,” he said,
“you’ll meet my mother on the way.”
7 July 2020
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