A Question of Listening

Can you hear at the heart of our lives a ROAR incessant and blue,

a tulip of melody blooming wildly true, a voice insistent

as a Sunday church picnic of crazy desire, tearing and sundering

unseen borders holding our lives’ squandered fires by those asleep,

myopic and tamed who murmur and mutter in normalcy’s name

while ignoring precious earth’s possible demise, this scourge of warming,

of certain sea-rise, of blazing Amazon’s desecration as we kneel erect

in row after row of fresh-polished pews gazing away from life’s brilliance,

this river of music that shimmers underneath all scattered yearnings? 

When will we stop our anxious distractions and addictive chatter,

place both ears on her ground, stepping now into cool water

to fully awaken, to wholeheartedly listen and allow world’s

creatures and future to thrive and to matter?

She, although fading, still sings of hope in this stillness, sustains simply,

completely, as all flows humbly from wildness within her mysterious glistening.

Light wakes
the eye,

yet who
can tell
us why?

  In The Beginning Was Wordlessness---another word for ‘the radiance of simple being’

(recalling moments unheld by the apparently sturdy and connecting,

yet actually reality-distancing and limiting, sometimes skillfully crafted

yet always ambiguous, supposed scaffolds of language)

Mushrooms nestled and white on wet lawn

Rain splattered sidewalk

The thick-legged girl booting a soccer ball beyond the goal

A bird pirouetting along grass, worm-searching

The bench where we sat and where you’re not, now

Clatter of window shades in wind

Tingle of feet after today’s run

The presence of your absence this afternoon

This sensation in the chest, remembering painting together in the backyard

The memory of hugging Therese in her kitchen silently, forgetting

for a wordless moment other guests sitting around the table

Bougainvillea blossom on the running path, red with a white dot

The shine and shimmer of my grandson’s grin

The bird alone on a bare limb overlooking the lake

Thoughts of an underlying evolving energy prior to all thought,

perhaps the true source of what is known as word

Downtown Portland library in afternoon rain

Hummingbird arriving out of nowhere three feet from my face

The thicket quivering like silver in morning light at the park

The bald friend with cancer sitting next to his wife

A sense of not knowing and still stepping forward

This attempt to welcome emptiness in the gut, something vague

and hopeful, unwelded to language, struggling to be behind time

The poet’s longing to write what’s underneath words and before all images

A t-shirt waving, tossed by breeze on a patio chair

Sensing weariness in morning’s body, stepping out of bed

My desire to live for a time like the blossom on the path, wordlessly….

                                            New(d) Neighbor

I have a new neighbor. She has six or seven cats, wears weird Turkish hats

over red hair done up in French braids and is out most nights with a bearded

dude name of Pat and his pit bull called Ike. Eavesdropping one dawn, I turned off

tv news and with my right ear smashed flat against the thin wall between us

I overheard her speaking to a boss and learned my neighbor’s a burlesque queen

from Provence. I do love how she wiggles downstairs as she heads out to the job

and waves proudly the freedom flag of her half-hidden bod. After night’s grind

is behind her, my neighbor’s undraped silky skin curves like the road to Pike’s Peak

while she waits on top of our stoop at day’s rain slicked rear end for her lucky

son of a bitch short stub of a hubby, that quiet bald runt drives a lifted black truck

and gets a testosterone boost, but I betcha’ not much or enough, while she drives me

nuttier than nuts with the pluck and the suck of those fluffy pink lips, they’re plumper

by far than that simpering movie star surname of Jolie. Please don’t tell him with no hair

how his wife’s swervy flesh and ivory teats twirling over there (and there too) dizzy me crazy

and dazed, I feel drunker than an unfrocked uncelibate monk locked in the wine cellar for nights

and for days, entranced in lusty tune with the smiling sliver of a cabernet moon, to tell ya’

the truth, I tell the boys down at the shop she’s like a feisty Catholic school tease, when I gawk

and gaze at her unclothed complete through this hole drilled in the wall my faith in Jehovah

grows by bounds and gigantic leaps, SHE is such a god damn treat, yes the new goddess upstairs

could quickly become an answer to pubescent prayers, praise the lord one floor above

(take out those hearing aids with your gum and don't faint ), let’s unlock the back door 
of Miss Rubescent Love and enter her lair, she’ll take it from there, my fan dangling bare 
savior who's given my tickled senescent flesh and somersaulting mind one big hearted neighborly shove, 
because Mr Rogers she ain’t !

Real Faith

      is

knowing

in our deep
bones

through
   empty
       space

we are forever

       free
falling....

our hearts quiver 

like a drop

of precious mercury

as we,

     no longer hidden,

     descend

time and again,

unbidden and bidden,

into intimacy’s shifting

sands, these supple arms

of uncertainty and

this spacious,

strange,

befriending

moment

maple trees

   smack

  sky/torn

by whistling

   winds.

Bringing water

 to a thirsty melaleuca

   after coffee

    

      early morning’s

       easy pleasure

         in full sunshine.