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

Dancer

Rare fortune to witness the wonder of a pair of vultures
cleaning bones of a dead fox on rocks in deep wood
finding themselves discovered under the gaze of dogs and I.

As we approach the cliff they rise in silence absolute
with the fundamental sacred beauty of their powers, to float effortlessly
up and above to wait for us to pass with no sense of their wondrous beauty, their performance.
As much as the remains of the fox, we're simply witness to their innocent, inevitable being.

Your beauty fills me with wonder and desire.
Without performance your every move, the dance;
the dance, your inevitable being.
"Touch me, dance, and let me trust you."

Music

Sacred dance extempo-rare, I dare
recall my strength, possessed to embrace your fair
swooping arc unbound, unbroke, rebound
to balance perfect time to perfect end, a dance woven into life.

At the window, in the street, as I breathe
Sudden dreams electric shudder chakrac isles
Shiver neck, envelope heart, course current wile
To quake desire, remembrance
embodied vision, aftershock after shock, we dance.

Aftermath a Memory -- The Lovers

Birds goes
loosely wingen
through air silent reign
feather glide motion
gentle ocean
rain pliddle sand drops.
In dawn calm breathen rhythm mist
o’er we wet skin-foot-walken soft beach
hand in hand
the birds goes.

Leaves blows ...
soft piana-key-playen wind fingers
strum tuneful hush music smilen
summer-shaded forest downy
breath of lovers breathing.
When dark come warmen naked to kiss
close lyen open wet and touchen,
we watch stars back through black patches
the leaves blows.

Love knows
nuzzle open flowing
closeness gentle, warm in
whispered kissing moistness,
candid hands, possessive lips and
passion heaving perced to the rooten
bodies now arose with petals licoured wetness
swollen hote to one the other melden
madly to-and-gether naked lovelay
soaken bursting inside one an other
one eternal molten ecstasy
only love knows.

In the Woods

I saw in the paper that the moon would transit Saturn
on a particular night at about four in the morning.
I had a vision of the great ringed planet passing –
setting like a movie poster vision – slowly behind the moon.

This is my illusion.

Now I believe I walk beneath my stars.
I believe the moon is shining through my woods
And through limbs, Saturn and Jupiter, my friends.
The wind has ceased and smells are close,
as close as quiet in my woods now lit only by the moon.
My friends the dogs, oblivious to my quiet woods, my stars
and ages of needy, random reflection and misdirection
are my companions on this short journey, this illusion,
I believe, and share their own with me.

One New Years Eve not quite midnight I described to Elizabeth
the transit of Saturn by my moon on that peculiar night:
how the Great Ringed Ball of Gas empostered never appeared,
how the simple, planetary light and friend to dogs
passed irreconcilably behind the dark rim
of the mountains on the edge of the moon;
that the light reflected back, directly to my perfect eyes
had been created hours before in the energy of the sun
and spun off, there and back, and different light
on its own sweet time had spun my vision of the moon.

Beneath my stars, my moon whose edge
on the limbs where it rests is sharp,
I walk in the rhythm of my moon, the stars, my woods,
my moon, my illusion.

Inevitably this night reflected from Elizabeth's different light
now spins my limbs, my dogs, my moon itself,
the message, her message delivered toneless,
in transit of her shadowed despair.

Between 2001, 2002, some egg nog, and my vanity,
I ratcheted on ... how the moon and planets' motion
generate a personal sound
as the swirling silver gas and dusty rings,
reflecting light from the sun would
approach and disappear behind the limned moon --
my great and ringèd ball of gas
just a simple point of light, now there,
now not, disappearing, reappearing somewhere all the time.

Now reflecting this poor light on my friend
Elizabeth's quiet hopes last New Year's Eve,
comes this particular moon in these particular woods tonight
no less momentous than a disappearing point of light
or Elizabeth's realized despair
or my dark wander, pointless, here in the woods,
reflected to the open sky, with dogs and snow and failing sight
tangled amongst Great Gas Balls reflecting an invisible sun.

April 8, 2002

Vacuum

I. Word Game: If nothing exists, show it to me.

“1960s” not “1960’s”.
“us” not “u’s”.
“us” is not “us”.
“us” looks like “us”.
“us” is not “us”,
“us” is not “we”.
Double u is in a vacuum
We are in a vacuum; w is not.
Is anybody out there?

II. I don’t think we abhor nothing.

Is nothing a vacuum?
A vacuum contains nothing.
Nothing is a vacuum.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Nature abhors nothing.
There is nothing in Nature that Nature abhors, because
Nature can abhor nothing, so Nature abhors nothing,
least of all a vacuum.
Nature cannot abhor nothing, because nature can abhor nothing.
If Nature is everything, then everything is natural.
Nature contains nothing, so nothing is natural.
Nature does not contain everything if it does not contain itself.
Nature contains nothing, itself, and everything else.

III. Final Exam: Vacuum

Are the two us empty?
Does dead always come after death or
is there just “dead”?
There are dead things in Nature.
There are dead things in me. And you?
Does dead end and not alive begin?
Limestone: dead? Gold: dead? Nothing: dead? Us: dead?
Nothing is natural. Everything is natural.
Nothing is unnatural. Show me us.
Show me nothing. Show me everything unnatural.
Where does a vacuum end?
2001