World News Tonight (2002)

The day darkened blue grey and poured down
rain on the world earlier today.
Grass grew under the wet heat
and the cool sweet rush of air before
the lightning shook the trees in thunder.
More rain is expected tomorrow and tomorrow.

Last week's storm exploded the bark off
a respected, two-hundred-year-old walnut
and blew the ground up off its roots.
Though reported critical, it seemed to have survived —
counting its decades more patiently than most —
but during the week it weeped off young leaf clusters
in a slow, uncontrollable rhythm, barely perceptible.

The grosbeaks come to join the singers and peckers,
the bullies, the meek, and other proud birds at the feeder.
A single thrush ate and trilled, delighting onlookers
while the old man who grooms her left clumps of Bessie’s
black hair on the low garden wall near the house.

People in the house are studying for final exams,
the Prom at the Plaza, and the deepening, anxious sadness
of parents’ imprudent end-games.

The May flies are gone, but hundreds of damned mosquitos
emerged from standing water, roamed the heavy air last night
and sucked life out of unwitting hosts. Dozens have been killed
in continuing hand to hand violence
while others are simply chased down and disappeared
by roaming gangs of bats and swallows.

Locusts bloomed and dropped their supple yellow flowers
in two short days a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday
their primordial green leaf fronds sifted leisurely
shadows from the light of the late afternoon.

Bessie had a bloody, near-death spell of
diarrhea and vomiting last evening
and woke her alpha at 3:06 am after a guilt-ridden dream
of fighting in shallow excrement on a despairing, humid day.
She hunched and stumbled about outside,
poured out the remainder of her bowels and wretched
a neat pile of curds in the darkness. She’s still a dog.

On a personal note, I ran my hand under the blown off bark shroud
still hanging fresh on the walnut and was stunned to experience
the electric thrill of its smooth, damp cambium. I admit
I took pleasure in the tips of broken capillaries
looking like freckles on its exposed supple flesh
in the quiet morning light.

By this afternoon it had turned wet black.

Am I David?

Surrounded by quiet circumstance and days-long isolation --
the vacationing Poets' gift --
I walk naked freely, alone, atop the mossy rocks,
among the massive trees and off-spring,
along the steeply nestled creek to dip in the pool
above an old log dam wedged between the banks.

Along the dog-worn trail passing a fire circle and a labyrinth of rock,
back to the exquisitely purposeful yet seeming random-built and scattered house,
embedded safe and secure in the mountain over years,
I pass berries, leaves, flowers, plantings and fruits of the endless garden,
enter through the spacious, airy, well-appointed
vacationing dogs' apartment (some would say, "enclosed bare-wood porch").

Back inevitably to the Poets' den of intellectivity:
rare and rarefied, addictive library corners, enchanting shelves of collections,
Camus, Rodin, Baudelaire, Dickinson, Michelangelo, Dylan,
fireplace, piano, guitar, commentary, candles and plants.

Still naked, and but for my paradisiacal isolation's looming Goliath --
the voice who threatens me with return to the human world from this nest in paradise --
I watch, asking my reflection in every mirror and glass for courage and a sling,
"Are you David?"

for Mary and Heller

Where am I?

Where am I?
Like, yeah, no, like becoming some first times.
You know.
You know the inadequacy, our shared experience,
where you, like, know what you want, yeah, no,
and I know, too.
You, a mystery, infusing me with nuclear fuel,
like Iran, illegal according to some,
but so powerful to us locals, so legal, so impossible to deny.

River of Love

A river of love flows
out of my heart
non-stop. And another out of yours.

Our torrential flood
flows into the frail human desert
surrounding us,
willing to sustain life in abundance and
the thirst for keeps.

Yet here is sand,
And elusive aboriginal arts aside,
I see no silk and spice in caravan,
no oasis, beyond the slippery banks
of this lonely violent flood.

February 9, 1999

Seventh Wave

Stunned, not swept off my feet,
my feeling, inadequate,
somehow absorbs the love that comes
to break, warm, around and then within me.
It is not a constant, burning heat,
not lapping sweet nor massive crest tsunami.
But like the rhythm of the seventh wave,
almost inevitable, it breaks and, more than expectation,
more than passing, overwhelms.

1/1/2014

I Took a Walk Today

I took a walk today down by the falls, in sunshine along the railroad
I tightroped the tracks and timed the ties to step along the day.
I took a walk today, by my magnificent river, under full moon and stars,
I reason an excuse for tides, for bridges, ferries, docks and parks.
I took a walk today to open up my spirit, to give me time.

Time to fly, time to recognize my ignorance,
Time to open up myself to all my possibilities,
Time to stop thinking of them and every detail in between.

I love where I am because it is where I am.
I love to watch, to look, to have this Earth around me.
I love to walk in sunshine, rain, fog and storm.
I love to be with those I love.
I love to challenge myself.
I love to be happy when I'm finished even though I fail.

I took a walk today and the sun shone down, the Earth shone up and
I shone in between, all one.

June 7, 2015

Booktalk

Thank you for joining in this journey with me. Do you hate it when someone calls some simple pencil scratches on paper accelerated into a book, a journey? But proceeding in the spirit, not having had a drop yet, by the way, [‘by … the way’, get it?] I am glad you are willing to share the toll on the road to the end.
It keeps me alive.
If I didn’t think you were there to pay the freight so to speak, had something in your pocket there on the seat beside me, that is, to buy some grub and have some left over on the other end of the turnpike [page-turn pike – do I have to explicate?], I would just quit.
Like you and the rest of us faced with pressing ahead, I mean moving forward, not pressing per se, but then again [‘then again’, think about it: I’m trying not to repeat myself and besides, you get in beside me here on this journey, taking a seat that you paid for once again, you get my drift; ‘you get my drift’, think about it]
I must be putting the pedal to the metal or you wouldn’t have laid out the cost of the ride already.

You know you’re hitchhiking, and I’m hoping you have a beer or a story or a joint or a kindly place to rest if needs be; that is, my ride with you already beside me, my having something virtual to look forward to, by virtue of your having hopped in and having already gotten here [x], then I guess the ride-journey metaphor doesn’t work quite, given that you could have picked up the book … stop me right here … you picked up a book that’s already a book so’s it must have already been paid for by somebody and then you might or might not put it down or bring it to the register, risking the guilt that you paid the toll or just had a cup of coffee and paid the toll to somebody else who already bought the book that you’re willing, if you did bring it to the register, to gamble it be worth the ride, price, burden and the guilt over both the coffee and the coffee and the book when there’s a baby, education, house, Mercedes in your drive, a future that may have benefited by not having been preempted by our journey begun here in front of us, since you got in.

So isn’t it the truth, hard to be authentic here, stay on track [on a journey home or away, on the seat beside me in the car or train or ox cart box, maybe scanning the horizon] when cool cynicism put those last words down, needs be that there’s a little bit of toll ready, maybe gas money, then I guess we’re already on our way in a respectful sort of way, you acting your part and I acting mine [and, of course (course, heh) directing].

Just so you know where I’m coming from, so hard just to be here, inside the journey you could burn or close, I feel like I’ve already given too much of my gratis side and need to share my gravis side, as opposed to my graveside, since you already put your change on the table so to speak to read this.
You and a few thousand others, I hope.
Words are so easy to get on and ride.

2010