Friday, August 29, 2008

RECONCILING FLIGHT

Roll along towards
the great broad bridge,
stand straight, strong
on time's razor
sharp ridge,
go beyond
transcend
dirt floor hut
Croatian lineage,
while two white doves
float soft,
newly born
to soar aloft
over Colima's volcanic
crimson morn
where a white steam
funnel pushes up,
adorns day’s promise
of one’s own
solid parentage.

Earth’s depths exalt
in grand song
and penetrate
infinite sky
with glad sound
and smoke
revealing
your true
unpredicted
marriage to hope,
life’s flow of rest
and flower,
sun and shower,
uncovering forever
this invisible
flying carriage.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

WRITING LESSON

Steam rolls off black coffee,
women’s voices rise
from next door,
then wane for a moment
while I wait for my muse,
apparently AWOL for days
or at best lazing
wistfully in a field
of brown summer grass
and fifty year old squat
palm trees sprinkled sparse
like minimalist art
at canyon’s broad bottom,
far beyond reach
of this pen
this paper
this man’s mind.

ORDINARY MAN

I am an ordinary man
with many foibles,
living hidden in fables
fashioned from ancient
forgotten hurt and hope.
I long for love’s soft
white arms, slender
warm around me now.

At times unforeseen,
from no doing or being
in my power,
grace’s tender
sweet touch
enters this space
called me,
somehow.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Sunday’s Journey

Access what brought you here in the first place.
Feel further than father,
go where most mothers cannot,
find your feathers where no one else
placed anything worth flying over.
Sense with all your openings
and THEN the mutual parade of our lives
can wind its way downtown, out
through the empty suburbs with gates
and maids and Tundras all muscled
and obscene,
towards the two trails
leading to the blue-green
waterfall ( perhaps a red barn covered
by a brown shake roof hides over hillsides ahead)
where we fell nude,
were cooled,
enchanted and enticed by grief’s confusion,
surrounded by boulders
of obduracy and fluent moments
within our baptism of tears,
our embodied wet birth, this sad sad end
into liminal spaces beyond
what’s contained in books or words to say
where we are in ALL,
acts of measurement fade,
dissolve in sweet water,
what is here now,
the dare of unknown
calls quiet and clear
over the rocks and stairs:

ascend and descend
ascend and descend

towards another new day
and recondite whispered promise
of night’s mysteries,
dark and golden,
molding and unmolded.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Taurus on the Mediterrranean

Pomegranate soup,
transparent seeds float
in crimson viscous
sweet water
high above the Amalfi
coast.

Birds soar like floating cliff
faces, stretch us awake
in the pungent herbed air
of dear Italia.

These sheets were so cool,
so calm, shimmering our tired
bodies replenished
through the starry night.
White and fresh we stir
and mix together,
languish and linger
slow into love.
Later, coffee and more,
below(often) and above.

In good, easy time
our amazement rises
from this wooden bed,
through the thick unpainted door
we step to emerge,
gazing over the ancient
stone wall the ocean appears, shining
diamond in morning sun.
Today the earth’s birthday
arrives with pomp
and luster, she asks us
in our new language to laze
and lay with her in play.

We roll out into the day,
romp and bluster
like stallions, mares
and colts--
legs high,
eyes wide in smile,
hair flies wild
in grand celebration
of la vida,
each moment a seed
of life beginning,
nourished in sea air
and moist ground,
embryonic,
peaceful,
fine.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

PEARL OF THE GARDEN

Hold longing close
in sunshine and fog,
appreciate this absence
of full presence, don’t be
down-bogged.
Wait and watch how
stillness flows
like spring rain
on and on,
when we move with
no effort
to see~smell the rose
once thought past gone.
Stand here silent, strong
at flowerbed’s
welcoming edge,
where Wisdom’s humility
may right a garden
watered with wrongs.
Open and brighten
with glad hearted
fresh afternoon song
the dewdrops
of reborn green
eyes,
diaphanous,
sight fresh,
clear and long….
….See now
translucent
pearl petals
where we shall
surely belong,
hidden quietly
here
deep inside
earth’s oyster
rich loam
all along.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Lost (upon reading 'The Odyssey')

I am
lost.
Night surrounds my empty
solitary footfalls
in midst of amorphous,
tentacled Los Angeles’
skidrow.

Echoes of nowhere
return to tired ears
from brick front warehouses
and inexorably sad
seemingly uninhabited
buildings, stretching
old, departed,
catatonic,
like battle-fatigued soldiers
back from months of mayhem
and monstrous scenes.

Space fades……
fails to comfort
or to orient my steps,
confused I walk on
in gray mist faster,
frenetic almost,
the four directions a puddle
of melt, of inept concept.
My head spins in search
of one definite marker,
a lone touchstone of hope
or friendship
to point me home.

Friday, August 8, 2008

Poetic language lingers
and touches
the tastebuds of time,
then rises in rhythms
of smoke, sound and rhyme
towards sky
and cloud reaching
higher and high,
yet

in
simultaneous
scintillations
of one
essence alive

goes way
way down,
sweet green sea water
seeping into,
right through,
fresh fertile ground.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Why I Do Griefwork

Feet placed flat on wood floor.
Back straight against brown couch.
Fingers hold slender black pen on blank page.

Thoughts of mom extend far beyond me now.
After yesterday’s sudden rainstorm of tears,
images of her return in a circling I can see.
Pictures penetrate my left heart space
where warm feelings solidly sit.

A massage of the core of my being begins,
includes our whole relationship
through time, her sad childhood wrapped
in grief’s shawl and the feisty strength of laughter
shown as well.

This completion is soothing,
forgiving,
fully accepted.

Feet flat on floor,
the room, the day,
my life, open
once more.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

STREAMBED

A field of green appears in moment’s expanse.
An animal or two saunters, crosses right past.
It is unknown if a person is present.
There are rolling soft hills and a house in the distance.

Smoke wispy rises from a brown brick chimney.
Thoughts of a woman come into mind.
Descent into love is not often easy.
Cottage windows sparkle clean,
shine bright and clear.

Mooing of cows in early morn
wafts through cool air
like silken music.
The few trees scattered
across hillside's cover
offer solace and shade
for my heart’s tenderness.

Alone in nature, I’m calm
and at peace,
like a stream of blue water,
my life flows easy.
Ongoing stillness
moves me to tears.

With two feet on God’s earth
and gold sun on my face,
a lone river of truth does reappear,
grounded in deep Silence
in one’s soul is seared,
all in time’s shell
surely disappears.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

IN

In reverie
it seemed to me,
true art of life
must welcome strife
AND
sweetest peace,
thereby seeing
clearly, kindly
sculpted spacious
heart~mind being.

MARY JO and RENEE, August 3, 2008

Two women stand strong
and soft together
in front of this happy noisy group
of friends and family
to shine their lives complete
like sun and moon replete,
filling up the sky.

Their wedding sparkles,
enlivens all,
this room is lifted high.
They sigh, they cry,
they smile with joy,
as we gratefully feel
pure peace so sweet
of their pledged love
for the duration
of all time.

Morning Moments

Cat fight shrieks sliced,
knifed me from sleep,
then ceased quickly at once,
what’s left, awake, torn silence.

Bath tub’s stopped up,
full of black stuff.
Josh the young plumber
down drain drove snake,

first try, struck out to no avail,
next day, tub sucked dry, open sail,
thank god, hop aboard, liquid bailed!

Monday, August 4, 2008

CAN YOU?

Can you hear at the heart
of our lives
a ROAR incessant
and blue, a tulip
of sound bloomed true,
a Sunday church picnic
of desire, tearing and pulling
apart these edges and views
of life's squandered fires
known as normalcy
by the many asleep
in row after row
of desultory pews?

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Partner Dance

The Greek, black of hair,
smooth and clean
of olive colored skin
stands erect and strong
on slabs of rock quite thick,
flat sea cover over the azure Aegean’s
open arms.

On occasion, liquid foam
spurts fast and high,
breaks through a crack
a crooked seam in the grey granite
towards infinity’s sigh.

Our youth is essence of solitude,
single under the blazing blood truth
of orange Mediterranean sun.
He climbs high into cerulean sky
like Icarus or a dark masculine
hawk preparing to die to self’s
confining small story.

In synchrony complete,
across far continents,
Georgia O’Keefe creates
herself as sunflash
and moonflow alone
and whole.
She climbs, cradled in courage,
through striations of colored cliff
stained with women’s story,
sex of slender stamen
penetrating secrets of light and shade
and the music of poetry
in the vast New Mexico landscape.

Female and male dance on earth’s skin
and wrestle as worthy foes,
hearty co-creators
absorbing life’s woes,
opening and closing, making
their days, each eve treasured
seeped seen anew
in love’s all compelling
salted great oceans
and dried painted deserts
of deep human wonder.