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….

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.

Paradigm Shift, Twist and Shout

Instead of that afterlife idea

Espoused by some, if not many,

Or the equally believed articles of faith

In either a murky nothingness or a definite

Return to the planet as a new character

In a novel plot, I prefer to imagine

A grand room about the girth of Nebraska

That’s filled with the dead, the living

And the not-yet-born. This motley trinity

Sweetly shuffling together in stocking feet,

Sometimes raucously, at others' silently

Across a shimmering vast dance floor.

They’re telling corny jokes, laughing

And beaming in their wild inclusion;

Feeling so much lighter now, they twist

To Chubby Checker, fox trot to Sinatra,

And waltz to Mr. Mozart. Past hurts,

Let-downs and betrayals, injuries

Of all sorts one day surely to transpire

Are released completely here where

Everyone perspires scent of peppermint.

Smells of freesia and alyssum swirl,

Entwined with tendrils of night-blooming jasmine
Kissing pregnant air; my lips can feel babies

Kicking in the joyous twirl.

Even wallflowers blossom in this sparkling air.

When I’m quiet I hear our breathing softly wafting

As we spin and sashay round 

And round without tiring

To lift each other up in tender spirals

Streaming high and higher—

Beloved past, bright-eyed future

All embraced by those now present,

Without clocks ticking.

And everyone is gleaming….