And on the 8th day
In this rain
she pours
a fevered ballet of
fir
tree and windstorm.
Her dancing lands
in an earthen
jar
of elemental blending.
I am soaked through my
skin
laughing all the
way
beyond the banks of River
meandering, separating
two states
in the Pacific
Northwest.
At rickety pier's end
corkscrewing
whirlpools
twist to transform the
life
of a wet warrior boy;
he’s fending off
stormy
advances. And the
smell
of rain is a woman
entranced and
entrancing.
And the joy
of bounded blue
lines
on unfolded maps is a
child
wandering to witness,
to discover and
wonder,
to speak loudly with
fervor
and frankness
to the gods of
adventure
and learning,
these amphibious
sirens
of yearning
of drowning,
bounding
rebounding..
Scoured in the throat
of a sandstorm
poems sprout wings
without words, yet implore
this tribe of clouds
these cotton soldiers
lost in dreams of forgetting
where are the healers
and rowdy prophets,
those rambling ranks
of upwelling birds?
Marooned no more,
you step into surf where wind washes
fresh skin, Seabirds and Clouds
shout all of your names
as toes sculpt
their lush futures
squishing,
sinking further
into thick
singing sand.
That morning after first
Light and in the delicious
Falling back asleep
There came an in-blossoming upon
Your dreaming self, the spirit and
Fragrance of which brought you
To a precipice of love for all imperfect
Persons in their native beauty, their
Natural eccentric goodness
As your resting deepened
Further
Into a most sumptuous darkness….
Carmen's morning hair
haystacks wildly, twin
tornadoes tearing through
farm and bedroom as mom
Julie performs magic tricks
calmly while the kid shrieks
bloody murder and somehow
feisty curls transform
into elegant coherence.
Golden straw now re-booted
into symmetric halos resting
in this post-storm quiet,
small ponds shimmering,
kissed by a hard-hat
pink and blue neon moon,
protecting her happy head
as Carmen scoots along
the park-bound sidewalk
towards swings, slides
and across the street
that bagel cream cheese
slathered.
Wordless
is a word, yes….yet, there
exist moments not held by,
nor linked to, the sometimes
sturdy, sometimes limiting,
sometimes crafty, often
ambiguous, scaffolds of language:
Mushrooms in the park
nestled on wet lawn
Rain splattered sidewalk
The thick-legged girl
booting a soccer ball beyond the goal
A bird pirouetting along
the 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
The memory of hugging Therese
in her kitchen, silently
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
Downtown Portland library
in the afternoon
The bald friend with
cancer sitting next to his wife at the dining table
The emptiness in my gut,
wordless hole
The attempt to welcome emptiness,
birthing something vague
and hopeful, unwelded to
words, hidden behind time
The poet whose fire to
express herself blazes on in beautiful evocative lines
My desire to live for a
while, like the blossom on the path, wordlessly….
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….
Perhaps God is
a waterfall
tucked deep inside
canyon's swollen lips
on a sweltering April day,
a young friendly woman
with a slight stutter
holding her daughter
'Elli Belli' and me
shirtless grinning,
pants rolled up
past bony knees,
glasses safe
on a dry boulder
and like a toddler weaving
lurching across this pebbled
bottom to perch
underneath
surprising beauty
receiving all her plunging
grace and happy
din crashing down the cliff
onto soaked ears,
her frothy tongue
drenching my mortal skin,
so sensuously tingling--
such wild joyful purifying,
this fluid's saving
unclenching
must surely be a sin.
Even though
there is a hell-on-earth
war happening in Ukraine
with the deaths of countless
innocents, darkness
and destruction,
the threat of a record
fourth year of drought
scorching East Africa,
the far too many
politicians in this country
who continue their hideous
lies, putting their clutch
on power before the republic's
well-being, I can't stop
looking at the rose
unfurled on the black table
like a thousand crimson
umbrellas
this Sunday morning
as its shielding warmth
quietly bathes
the small green Buddha
who greets dawn's
emerging light
with such composure,
grace and peace,
such belonging,
each and every day....
Make Friends
Make friends with what’s inside you,
with what surrounds
and confounds you.
The delight with this salacious
orange and the way
its sweetness nectars
down your tingling chin.
This savoring of friendships, old,
new and in-between, rich conversation
meandering blossoming
something
Remembering To Live/The Art of Gladness
Let's lakeside rendezvous,
someone else can
milk the cows, pay
rent, wake
the kids, fret
about the next
pandemic. We'll
wear orange sweatshirts
with our favorite old boots,
drink coffee with cream
'til noon and skip
stones like kisses
stolen smooth as butter
across the cheek
of the vast
patient lake.
Filaments of tendon and heart
uprooted from earth dangle
in air, tendrils of love's ligaments
scream flames of grief
and rage
as the boy searches for home
inside a phone booth
smeared by heatwaved August
buried underneath
stuccoed apartments
on the liquor store corner
of Broadway
and Nowhere.
In the horrific darkness of this war in Ukraine,
this assault perpetrated on innocents sheltered
in subway stations and theaters for a semblance
of safety, I who am thousands of miles
away from harm thank god every morning
for Mary Oliver and for my friend Therese
who gifted me with an anthology of poetry
composed by this tiny powerful woman
who is a gorgeous bird suddenly landing
on the backyard lemon tree pregnant
with life, with the fragrance of blossoms,
a promise of ease.
Mary's music, her airborne words and earthy images
embrace my cheeks softly and like a cool stream
she gazes into my eyes weary from television news,
as she sings such care, such beauty
into these eyes these ears this heart
encouraging our world
and all who walk upon holy ground
to become a safe
bright place once more.
Behind us, an orange and
pink dawn bleeds across
the lip of the earth, ahead
the blurred image
of a meandering stream
kisses this stand of birches,
sensuous and regal
as they whisper thanks
slowly revealing earth's
infinity of secrets
underneath eagle and hawk,
weather and cloud--
this blue fountain of whirling
planets, shrouded stars
overflowing overhead
with songs of peace,
of lament, of release,
beckoning for everyone
future's unnameable gifts.
Our presence
in the space
of your absence,
a leaf shimmering
at dawn
resting
at dusk
drifts down
to earth....
EROSION AND ITS AFFILIATES
Make friends with what’s inside you.
The delight with this juicy
orange and the way
its sweetness wanders
down your chin.
This savoring of friendships, old,
new and in-between, rich conversation
An invisible lake lapping
at the unseen mountain's
base. Water washes bedrock.
Stone receives fluid's incessant flowing.
Quiescence
Lake learns from stillness
of granite and schist. Learns what?
Perhaps that erosion always
takes two or more and is never
a loss, but is a shape-shifter.
Nature Is Nurture.
Earth nourishes
those with mouths and tongues
to taste, to chew.
Does lake smell mountain?
Does mountain feel lake?
At the lapping place where water and bedrock
migrate, meet and mingle
is there knowing of the primal
feeding here?
If a person enters this space
where lake and mountain touch,
what happens? Wordlessly,
lapping and lapped, life
happening....Can this be
enough?
Aspens shimmer across this yard.
I am 3 years' old and in love.
Do I affect the trees and these
trembling yellow leaves, much as they
astonish me? Aren't we all
sentient beings really? Alive
here and now before
the world had the burdens
and blessings of words?
kneeling on earth
a hiker bows kissing
the boulder,
embarrassed somewhat
looks over his shoulder,
then closing
both eyes
crosses thresholds
unmapped
tasting stone's breath,
sun kissing his back.
Awe-Full Blessing
Arson Clears The Way
That crucial internal gaze
of kindness required
setting God on fire
(yes, the impulse arrived
in midst of a January night),
then incinerating medieval constraints
while tramping through dogma’s
barbed-wire bounds, where reason,
meandering walks through cemeteries
and slow saturation in silence
became his trusted bolt cutter
as he began sensing rivers
of love course through the body, every part
more clearly seen, pernicious
doubts galactic dreams, every nugget
held, kissed with tenderness,
as clouds of curling smoke and ash
lifted spirals of gratitude,
labyrinths of wonder,
from what remained
of that charred, deluded,
hallowed ground.
trembling
aspen leaves
lips of gold
kissed
by force fields
of blazing
rivering wind,
open birdsong
soundless mouth
riveting us
bouldered inside
quivering blades
of light.
At 10 I gave up
on God: those horrible
fights in our pristine
Colonial home, attacks really,
inflamed by dad
more or less daily,
his unchecked mocking
of my buck teeth,
of my boyish exuberance,
mom's chronic collapse
at these gates of hell
no matter how many rosaries
on our knees the family
circled those beads,
the fat monsignor with his pinky
rings, Lincoln Continental,
how he bullied us altar boys..
Yes, I was 10 when the universe's
curtain dropped after finishing
the paper route Sunday morning,
me, my new knowing, my sad
bike, this strange loss, a stranger
gain.
Buddha and Jesus in cahoots,
maybe the girl next door
their flashy sidekick,
offer
homesick boy
this orange sweatshirt
for free.
Ice melts, sky
clears, brown hills
green up, stucco
apartments become less
sinister, almost disappear,
birdsong
river flows
again.
A father's sneers
slashing remarks
scour tender tissue
surrounding
son's crushed
ripening heart;
jagged metal rips pink skin
crash of earthquake
a long bloody birth
mother dazed
for decades.
Let's keep plunging
for pearls,
feasting on oranges
and pomegranates,
preparing for arrival
into that river
of silver and light....
Climbing slabs of lava
up a Mexican volcano
dreamt about since he was 5,
another day traipsing off trail,
stepping through knee-high
chapparal towards the distant
peak on Winter's Solstice
are like us in bed entwined,
naked except for your thick
wool sox, returning at last
inside morning's golden light
to our sexy selves, this adventure
of lovers being
open
bold
in the moment
alive and free
to what's sweet
and sparkling, deliciously
beguiling, this mountain
of beauty we traverse
under cerulean skies
through waterfall and forest,
boulder and canyon,
breasts, shoulders, bellies,
hips and hungry lips,
our horizontal trip
of erupting surprise.
Half forgetting who she really is,
coated with envy's slime, the woman
in that murky midst of life
steps into this burbling stream,
immersed now in holy fluid
underneath quivering birch leaves
and a sky that sings forever
and not yet,
she's somehow,
head tipped back laughing madly with the heavens,
thankful for her lack
of thankfulness.
In this hidden meadow,
she melts slowly
onto a thick carpet
of Springtime grasses
at the very center
of her being,
a waterfall
of giggles
tumbles forth.
Let's lakeside rendezvous,
someone else can
milk the cows, pay
rent, fret
about the next
pandemic. We'll
wear orange sweatshirts
with our favorite old boots,
drink coffee with cream
'til noon and skip
stones smooth as butter
across the skin
of the vast
patient lake.
His eyes, tender moons
softly shimmering
after sneering lips
exploded volcanic rage
poisoning our home.
Mother alone with him
deformed into a wooden
chair by the contorted
anvil of our father's fears.
I'm watching his every
move from the end
of an empty hall;
my brother and two
small sisters
cower behind my trembling
back while in vain
police are called
to stop him
in his twisted tracks.
Tomorrow,
I'll wake early
from nightmarish
sleep, careen up
blocks of jagged lava
to Paricutin's peak,
then descend
onto the crater's
smoldering floor
under new moon's
steadfast gaze.
Home....
Might you essentially
be a multitude
of voices, of concealed
treasures waiting
without full knowledge
to ultimately
be known
in the giving
of your pleasing
essence, your simply
naked presence,
like blossoms swirling
swimming easy
in such fragrance,
this wild breeze
of mercy?
