It’s not about me
not about me—
that’s what the crow
is always calling,
warning, guiding, look
all around you,
choose another path
through the woods,
hurry home now,
think a different thought,
clean your mind
with pure listening,
come, go, it’s not
about me, not about me.
29 September 2020
Yes, I was born along
the edge of things,
the marsh that holds the city,
migrant birds singing foreign
in the cattail grass, the whole
horizon a closed eye. Edgy,
they say, always on edge, yes,
how could it be otherwise.
2.
The letters I wait for
I have to mail myself,
stay up late to write them,
wait for the mailman
to bring them back
romanced by otherness and far.
Or, to be true to my seaside start,
I have a long, long conversation
with an oyster, the rugged kind,
from the south, makes me do
all the talking, I am both sides
at once and no shell to keep me safe.
3.
What a way to talk about a friend.
As if the whole world
were a waitress
you’re flirting with
in some midnight dive.
What a way to think
about philosophy, theology,
Gothic spires, sleek
hips of Aphrodite by Phidias.
You get me all confused—
one night Olson and I
walked all the way
along the Santander corridor
to the Bay of Biscay to see
Britain far away, walked back
to his place in the Fort.
Weird how distances disperse
while humans talk,
cup of black coffee, hidden Grail.
4.
I hope I’m happening you.
You’re there,
between the closet and the sink,
cigarette smoke dangling above
but who’s smoking?
We don’t do that anymore,
it’s like the Roller Derby
or Robin Hood, lost in time.
But there you are, intimate
authority, leaning on the sink.
If it were up to me, every
kitchen would be full of chairs
so we could sit and think
about the food, and what we mean
by feeding it to one another,
the whole epistemology of choosing
what to eat. Dark matters.
It’s your fault. You make me think.
29 September 2020
Walked in and the wind
was calm. The names of things
though clattered round the head,
occipital fairytales trying
for frontal rationality.
Fat chance. It’s mostly dream
anyway, the thick dream
called the dictionary. As if.
As if words were things
and were there, here,
to be with us and comfort us
as we limp down the mountainside,
who am I fooling, the meek
hillock of the day to day.
2.
The shadows under big trees
are richer and deeper than wine
must be for those who drink
but do not chalice it. The dark
is sumptuous, full of subtle,
touches and departures,
bright eyes suddenly seen
seeing me I thought I saw.
3.
Wouldn’t it be useful if
you could look back suddenly
over your shoulder and see
what you’d been thinking just
a few moments back? As if
the thinking left a trace out
there in matter world, sidewalks
and shadows, crowds of people
you thought you had forgotten?
4.
Let us suppose, the pompous magus
declared, that the world right now,
this very instant is the sum
total of what every human in it
thought ten seconds back.
And not just humans. I declined
his supposition, slept on,
a causeless victim of someone else’s dream.
5.
That’s a gloomy way of putting it,
sun in Libra and cold nights.
In my dream an inch of snow
lay on the porch, wake up!
is the solution. But there is
no problem. Or none out there,
but much further away. Why
does power make those who wield it
hate and hurt the ones they rule?
Send me your answer by Capricorn
when the fang of weather really bites.
6.
Remember the rosary
a prayer on each bead
and no reason to stop,
round and around.
A year is like that, any
day can be a pause for breath
or take a rest. Or say
a different prayer.
22 September 2020
Milarepa
under a leaf
sheltered—
himself and a friend
from the rain,
the leaf no bigger
and they no smaller
still they sheltered
beneath one leaf
2.
the leaf
a word
sheltered
them from the rain,
from the seeming
3.
to dwell in
o twist
the story:
in the seeming
they sheltered
from the seeming—
miracle of Milarepa,
the mind large
enough to shelter under,
the radiant seemingless
safe beneath all seeming.
21 September 2020
1.
The fever plants
of the Tampa coast
help the music
to decide.
Whistle or wander,
warble or wait.
Wade
with me
in the shadows.
Shallows.
We belong
to what we hear.
2.
The notation is usually
accurate, the performers
sober and alert, the cellist
hides behind her instrument,
the blatant trumpeter
of course has to blare on
even though a modest type
himself. (But why choose brass?)
Outside, the low wind
stimulates the chemical habits
of those mystery plants
said to cure faints and fevers–
brassica family, like leafy kale
but pale. The sea celebrates
just beyond the quiet leaves.
3.
We need these things.
It can’t all be Chopin, Debussy,
another kind of rigor is required,
growl of granite, lust of limb,
someday they’ll let us out of school.
4.
Music for midnight—what kind
if you had to choose?
Wind or water? Name that tree?
Which king of France
built the coast of Normandy?
To be simple about it,
the Hungarian prairie
is very far away. And yet.
5.
Is it cold enough to be tomorrow?
What did they mean
when they asked that?
Fine tune your sweaters before breakfast,
buy roses from the south?
Radiator’s warm, fridge gurgling.
6.
We’re still here for a little while,
as I heard a wise man say
as we stood together on the plain
counting hilltops on horizon,
here a while and then an answer,
condescends. Descends I think
was meant but there goes
that music again, this or kiss,
albatross or arabesques, help
or harry, or marry, or just
this sun in calm trees now,
blue ointment of sky
a function of our longitude.
Far away as it is, I pray
I mean I think I hear the sea.
20 September 2020
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