The past spoils now
and the future
doesn’t help. I want
this simple thing, this
tangerine of the moment
to peel and pull apart and taste
segment by segment, each
in all its sweetness,
and chew the soft pulp of it
after and after, and it still
will be now.
3 November 2020
sleeps.
From Zoroaster and Empedocles
and Nietzsche in his own neighborhood
a few blocks away in time he’s learned
that special kind of sleeping they call
being awake and quiet and doing nothing,
especially not thinking, even his mother
used to say sleep with eyes open
darling, then you’ll really see. What did
she know? Why did it take Persia, Greece,
Switzerland to remind him of that
simple thing he always knew?
Sleep wide-eyed, open-minded sleep
intimate with whatever passes
casting any random thought
aside, ignore the seductions
of causality, break the chains of inference.
Sleep lively, miss nothing, follow nothing,
anything that moves or seems to mean,
that’s just children playing on the lawn.
They’ll be gone soon. The lawn remains.
Study the lawn. Keep your mind pure
till ordinary sleep comes along
and relaxes you into the dark. The day too
will tell you many things, just as long as
you are wise enough to ask no questions.
1 November 2020
1.
The other side
of what I mean
is what I mean.
2.
I walk there
again and again
it is so close.
3.
Time to read
a book
or be one.
4.
Children
are waiting
around in me.
5.
I wait with them,
waiting is
the same as being.
6.
What does it mean
to be wise
or be anything?
7.
When salmon swam
a pool became,
a tree leapt up.
8.
Getting closer
the feel becomes
bird in the sky.
9.
Standing
and under
standing what?
10.
The numbers fade
the fact remains
I mean the face.
1 November 2020
maybe,
a Trojan wrote the Iliad
but who was Milton?
Would a Christian know,
care, so much about hell?
Blake said Milton was
“of the Devil’s party,”
a Whig in spirit, a thorn
in God’s side. Maybe.
Maybe we all are Jews
and never knew it. What
is there anyhow to know,
we say what comes to mind
and praise fine weather.
The lineage is language
even if we lie, even if we seem
to praise killer Achilles
our hearts are safe in Troy,
eternal tower, Helena
at the gate welcoming
all of our fervent mistakes.
Call this the lineage, the line
we stumble along, hoping
it leads us to clarity
through landscapes of beauty
alone. Hum, come along
with me, we’ll sing our way
there yet, line by line, just
a few songs more and we’re there.
31 October 2020
Lock the door
and put on tights,
the roof is coming
upside down,
this is the way to dance away
the griefy demons of our atmosphere,
run around the house
mouse up the cheese
and cat up the milk
and run out the door too,
all around the yard.
Do all the ordinary things
ordinary things do
and when you’re done
become the Sun
and all will be clear
as you gaze thereon.
30 October 2020
If they weren’t women
running through the trees
what were they? Or put it
a different way, if it wasn’t
a boat came slow and dark
across the channel to the island
what was it? What do we
really know about water,
about wood?
2.
Still dark.
The questions
linger.
You’d think
thinking
would bring
light the way
praying
brings peace
at times
to those who share
that strangest
of all conversations,
doesn’t it?
The nights
grow longer—
do we fear
the Sun?
3.
Close to the other side
a bell is ringing,
when we stand beneath it
we can actually see
out into the dim green meadow
all the way to the horizon.
No hint of what comes after that.
But the bell is clear.
4.
I sit here scribbling runes on stones
little stones I toss into the stream.
Who knows what good they do
and I hope no harm.
The signs are washed clean,
what they mean, if anything,
soaks off and spreads
quick through rushing water.
I toss stones into the rapids,
supposing I feed words to the sea.
5.
Is it light yet?
I want to know
without looking outside.
And why can’t I feel you
this morning, you’re only
two hundred miles away—
are you going to let
distance stand between us?
I want it now is the only song.
6.
I look the word up
in some book and find
your face smiling out at me
smirking almost at my long
forgetfulness, a thousand years.
Why can’t I see you
even when I don’t know enough to look?
7.
Why do children call
each other nasty names
and laugh and run away?
This may be the most
rational question of all.
Sticks and stones we sang
can break my bones
but names can never hurt me!
How brave and wrong we were,
bruises fade, insults linger,
fester, turn into attitude,
resentment, politics.
And all the mockers too are mocked—
who teaches us to hurt with words?
8.
So I dare to stare
into the trees once more,
dark enough to be safe
from seeing who
they really are who move there.
Spirits of another world
prowl elegant in this one,
the nameless woods of now.
29 October 2020
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