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….