Full emptiness

We poets ought to shy away
from homilies concerning love.
What manner of creative thinker
might presume to take a single step
in front of all the ranks of millions
who have wept out tired or inspired
words to probe its depths
or sail upon its turbulence?

Yet here am I, the foolish ingenue
compelled to sigh again,
compelled to co-create a god
up in the sky, or some seductive muse
upon the shore, inclined once more
to let me maunder through the swampland
of bathetic sentiment before a world
still too polite to say "enough."

Somehow a love is least bereft
of purity, when left alone,
the lover sans beloved, never lost.
When form or wit or lovely face,
much less a deity, a sunset or an art
is gone, the one who sits apart
may still, enraptured, know
the flow of love is its own source
and its own silent grace.
~

Second sight

Did you see it?
Something blurred the air that day
just as it does sometimes
above the asphalt
in the heat of summer.

Two souls, I think, in discourse,
roiling energy in passion,
sent a tiny spot of cosmos into chaos--
in contempt of time, and for the moment
let us in.

For us, we would not have known
that Love has its insidious side
reaching forth from places
that seemed not to give a damn--
the little tragedies of yesteryear
that never were resolved
still lodged within the earth.
There were fragments of rejection
that we left there when we knew
they couldn't stand alone
and the years that pounded down on them
could never heal but only
make the hurting stronger still.

Some god gets blamed for over- parenting,
for all the better motives we acquire.
Some scraggly, gruff old fellow
out in space, who keeps an eye on things,
and shakes his finger
when we do not think to love,
finally will sigh, and tell us it's ok.

I'm sorry. That is not the God for me.
This guilt is one I own alone,
the one I cannot fashion to adorn
the man upon the cross.

The human creature thrives on fantasy
and rises from his bed each day
in discontent to face the glory of the wind,
the hints and shreds of change
that were not here before.

His state of bliss is unaware
the ocean at the door in silent raging,
poised to flood his consciousness
with seas of a reality he never dreamed,
is an insistent guest.

No. There is no rest from this.
No flighted messenger to sing
an alleluia. No, I think we need
our scourges and our chains.
I think we need the air that trembles
in the day, reminding us
that love is never free
and only perfect eyes
may know its clarity.
~

As others see us...

" I am astonished each time I come to the U.S. by the ignorance of a high percentage of the population, which knows almost nothing about Latin America or about the world. It's quite blind and deaf to anything that may happen outside the frontiers of the U.S." ~Eduardo Galeano

From the Cradle

It seems I have just found myself
not in this body, rather in the wind
where I have always been,
and lost to grimy fingers
scratching inside out in wonder,
chasing old identities,
and not quite happy with the latest one--
who joined his greedy fellows
at the trough wiith thoughts of lust
and later, rusty arteries, and death.

I much prefer the breath, the spirit ride,
creation's thrust returning still again,
the journey through a cosmos
that a man will never touch with fingers.
Suddenly I am aware that one is born
when he is old--must be, as we were told
by one they called the son of God,
but then it never dawned on us

that all those blinking particles
were playing games,
and in the changes that they wrought,
proved quite immortal--you and I
behind our eyes, looked out
and saw it all.

And it was good.
~

Meditation at Ebeneezer Church

Martin and Coretta knew
how straight the road ran
through the wilderness. They knew
that some would stray
and turn across the meadow
toward the woods.

They felt the love rise
from the aging marchers,
knowing when they too would disappear,
the road goes on.

The knowing is
that they shall not return--
and still the road goes on.

Will newer marchers fill the ranks?
And will the flow of love be strong?
And might the breath
beneath the song prevail
unto this joyless day
that we may overcome?
~

Quintessential sobering thought

"From 1945 to 2003, the United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements fighting against intolerable regimes. In the process, the US bombed some 25 countries, caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair." ~William Blum