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.
