At Gravesite

At Gravesite

How is it I draw near to you
as I approach this common ground,
yours above and mine beneath
connecting our mortality yet still
symbolic of the separation that took place
as I laid you there apart from everyday.

I know you hover there with me,
our mutuality in tribute to the Adam dust
that formed us, carrys us along
to ride the winds
across the fields and towns forever
while these minutes here
when I look down, resist,
and in our tryst pause to allow
'I love you's' here and now
to bridge the days beyond
when I must turn away.

The visits carry vanity as well.
I choose them to assuage
my feelings of neglect; it never works.
The stone, defiant, strong
in its assault upon my eyes
betrays the irony its vigil promises.
Its song of death alone
is all I hear behind my upraised heel.

But it is not the ash, the dust, the winds,
the stone of taciturn reproach I keep
upon my heart as I drive off.
It is your voice I hear again,
"Dad, I'll always be here, loving you."
You knew I needed that.
~

Port Discovery

Port Discovery

The mind on course is nothing but obtuse,
recalcitrant and leaderless.
Silent particles stream by unnoticed
and a soul doesn't care;
the stopping ports are easier...
until the ones and zeros re-arrange
and an electron jumps
the other way... not much incentive
for another listless hour on shore.

No matter then, the prayers are said,
the songs are sung,
and suddenly there is new joy
upon the threshold of the day.
That which is known
is much too prone to cloy.
The time has come
to celebrate the open door,
and why?...not for the prayers
or songs intoned too readily.
No, there is more.

I am a captain with a visionary crew
who long for the unknown,
along with me are ready for
a midnight rendezvous
when we shall toast the sunrise,
set the sail upon uncharted sea
and drink the wine of love.
~

Reliquary

Reliquary

See? Beyond the hill crest,
there laid down the words,
the tokens of a life as unintended gifts
like gems remaining, precious,
to be gleaned as one more little universe
to save—an ember of a personhood
surviving death.

Then seek them out, for they
are worth the price of the uncovering.
As monks illumining the word of God,
retire to your cell and dip your pen;
the commonality of all the saints—
of you and I is on that page,
encapsulate in time.

Scholars pore upon
words dropping down...
upon a timeless stage,
upon a now that celebrates
each time the mind says yes.

But it is mind that needs no more
for monuments will wear away.
While for an age or two,
mortal clues are everywhere...
these gatherings, however spare,
will prove to be enough

to die for.
~

Santa Fe

Santa Fe

It is the hovering time,
moments made to bear defining.
Someone should declare when it is night;
the dear white ghosts slip down the corridors,
wordless, in and out of rooms
as if the walls did not exist— and commerce
is a strange and other-world imagining
fading quite away, just after eight o'clock.

Sound is sacrilege, gesture frames the hour.
And from the morgue below, the cart is bound
for 722; there is no one to weep.
There was a prayer a little while ago:
"You know, of course, dear lord,
I have the promise of my son...
that he won't let me die alone up here...
and in the dark."
~

A Remote Christmas

A Remote Christmas

It was perfect today. My wife and I were alone, dinner had been
eaten, and the beloved family were hundreds of miles away.
We love them dearly, but today we did not miss them. We
loved the quiet, the finemusic on the DMX, the warmth inside,
the good reading from my recliner chair (I'll tell you the book
if you ask) and the time to reflect that there is love wherever one
is, if one takes time to absorb it. The peace was tangible, the
sense of gratitude, suddenlyprofound. I do not credit my own
spirituality for that, but I do thankfully credit an spirit of
acceptance that says that is what communion with God is all
about...a taking of the moment, breathing it, and finding that
loving all that is, can be a simple thing if it is simply permitted
to be. The God part was not out of meditation, or worship, or
even gratitude, but merely experiential for its own sake. It
required no creed, no sense of duty, no falling upon the knees,
and certainly not any relics of childhood or even faith, to grasp it.

No football games were on at my house. There were no little
ones to discipline (though that too, is lovely), no Christmas
wrap mess to clear away, and not many dishesto wash. But,
yes, for this former Christian who pried God off his throne,
demoted Jesus from his scapegoat sonship, and derided the
nobility of intentional sacrifice, I duly noted that love had
seeped into the room, the path that Jesus illumined still
showed the way, and the God that the centuries were seeking,
still filled my heart. For an iconoclast like me, that was enough
of a miracle, though not unexpected, to overflow the remainder
of my days on planet Earth.
~

The Metamorphic Heart

The Metamorphic Heart

It's Christmas after all.
Of sweetness it may not be wrong,
this chamber of the damned,
with destiny to take the spears of politesse,
break, and give again,
live as if the age were new...
as if there were a healing God within,
not out beyond the stars. It knows
the perfidy of humankind.
It knows itself.

For there is bleeding, here, and cold.
There is crusting on the heart;
a wellness quite apart from charity,
a schism of the soul that never heals at all
but festers and divides
and in its agony succombs to war.

It's Christmas.
There is death upon the field of sweetness;
There is valor dressed in blindness
for the zeal to coverup.
There are carols out there,
loud enough to mask the sighs,
the wrenching, last goodbyes we say.
There is a baby there, to pray to.

Somewhere, lost out there
among the penitents upon their knees
...caught up in all this splendor,
there is peace.
~

Blithe Spirit Company

Blithe Spirit Company

My daily walk for exercise has changed;
for there are souls along the path
I have not seen before. Oh yes,
the regulars are there,
and smile at me, too often share
my miseries from ice and snow
and muscles slow to dance in synch
with my advancing age, but these!...
the shy ones...they who subtly appear
before I am aware, and then are gone.
What can I make of them?

They're at the borderline of sight;
they catch that old third eye
designed for sensing—clusters
of old friends at points along my route,
then family I supped with
while the energy of breath prevailed—
the ones I didn't get to say goodbye.
And there they wait
to see me make my rounds,
and Zounds! I don't know why.

Perhaps it is because
I soon will join them
on their vaprous other side
and want to get me ready, or
more probably it is another way
to let me know that they are there,
to catch me in a time when I
am not preoccupied with pleasures,
pain, or measuring my own
crude mortal quest to reach them
from my sterile room.

For on this mobius circle of my walk
I have the luxury of silence plus
the absence of demand, and they are free
to stand beside my route
and unassailed, stretch forth
the lavish purity of love.
~
["Poor Dean", you say; "he's cracking; we'll be gentle
with him, let him keep his imaginary friends. They
are harmless, as is he, so long as we don't get too close."
Ah, fare thee well, my friends, I promise not to drool
on you. And I don't really see them...just 'almost'...and
that was enough to bring on this crazy poem. Yeah,
I think they're there, all right, but I don't stop my
circuitous rounds long enough to talk to them. It's just
that I never knew ghosts could be quite so much fun. :-) ]

In Full Humanity

In Full Humanity

They were naked and were not ashamed,
pristine, unknowing of the world—
unknowing of themselves, the undertow
to draw them down,
beneath their surface paradise.

For that is what it was,
a crust to hide the deep, the mystery,
the richness of a feast
set forth in royal David's city,
hidden still beneath the tree,
the man and woman unaware,
the linden in the garden
apart from innocence.

A woman and a man,
a crust of ignorance, a tree...
there was a sensitivity to good and evil
waiting for a fall.
There was a hunger for the festive board,
an overlooking of the cost, a restless urging
...and a stable rest.

There was a Galilee—
an infant god, they say,
who would not have them call him good.
Was there a tree, for his undoing?
The wood of faithless fruit?
The wood that touched his blood...
would it be death that sired a homo sapiens?

No, it was life that taught them.
It was the tree from which was plucked
the consciousness of good,
the love which is reality,
the gracious gift of knowing
we may be
all that awareness will allow
in full humanity.
~

The Question Man

The Question Man

There goes the question man.
See how he walks?
Deliberate, and not like others
...not at all.
His lust, unlike our own,
is for the shadows right and sinister;
they play a different melody
for him. They seem
to sing of soft excursion,
tasting of an eastern shore
already redolent of Asian mystery.

He is the question man...he seeks,
not struts, for wealth is not ahead of him,
but dancing by his side.
How singular his pride of heritage
laid down by books, not blood,
an overwhelming flood of curiosity
that sends him off to islands
where the tradewinds call,
and he may answer with a spirit song.

His prize is in the quest,
his being filled not with desire,
but with the fullness of Matisse,
black hair down to the waist,
bare footprints on the beach,
the crinkled pages placed most carefully
beside the mythic bed, and left there
for a maiden fond of dreaming,
longing for a different strand
another midnight might disclose.

So much for the question man
who walks his magical domain
within the crystal globe upon his desk.
So much for nostrums
in the wake of shipping lanes
that cloud its clarity.
It is the questionning that drives romance,
and not its appetite.
It is the dance unending that will breathe
the tropic splendor of the night
~

From the Third Eye

From the third eye

These are the words that write themselves,
phrases struck in steel
and driven into me,
borne of tablature and burning,
speaking only of their silence
as Atlantis, lost in dark constancy,
might re-appear out of the sea
knowing, still unknown,
yet known to be unseen.

There is a cloud upon my brow,
a doubt embracing certainty,
a synthesis of thought and draught
quite rich enough to taste. It augurs death;
it augurs why; it smiles and spins away.

I smile as well.
This unknown knowing
leaves a trace to follow...the ellipisis
saying this is not the end. It augurs breath
a little while, the mind upon
an open path, the pristine gift
suspended somewhere
just beyond our eyes.
~

Thoughts at Bedtime

Thoughts at Bedtime

What may be said
of the phenomenon
perceived just once,
and almost not at all,
that were it known
across the galaxy,
would shake the stars?

Might it be likened
to the faded signal of distress
picked up one time
out of the ocean wilderness,
the lonely listener himself unsure
of what he heard?

Invasion of the lost upon
a single consciousness let go,
or tumbling in the mind forever
is creation, helpless in its stormy power,
a spark that may have glowed there
for a moment off in space,
ignited by an infant god.

It is too much.
That which is there, or was,
is never not,
will not release its hold,
most certainly may never be dismissed,
for it will streak across the inner skies
with all the force
of an intrepid infant universe
to claim a destiny as faithful as our own,
to life
or to another certainty
the bald impertinence of death.
~

Inside Out

Inside Out

The face is still,
the personhood a mask
and from outside, there is no door.

The world slows down,
its voice as if a worn down tape
devoid of presence, drifting,
lost in its pursuit of time;
it is a galaxy of strangeness
where a breath of lonesome melancholy
would relieve, but still the wind forgets.

How taciturn, outside,
how churning is the turmoil from within.
How resolute, the longing of the sperm
to tear into the heart
and liberate its glory or its agony,
its oratorio to God, its plaintive hope for love.

How curious indeed, upon its evanescent throne
is love, still innocent of thrusting light,
still hopelessly naive
before the pounding hooves that heroes ride;
how frangible its shell.

Millenia preserve their heroes very well,
although their colors bleed
upon the pages that we read,
upon our inner souls when we allow them,
though the face,
yes most certainly the face
is cold and still.
~

To seek the "I"

To Seek the "I"

Amoeba swims...
unconscious consciousness and then
a growling in the earth...
divide, and multiply and co-create
and life encounters life;
the ganglia reach out...and touch!

Now there is one again, comprised of two
and as I trace the "I," I think I know
right up to the edge of my awareness;
there's a dangling thread
that reaches in between the dark,
still causing me to wonder at the little boy
who stood there in his coveralls
content to watch the world,
and not inclined to undertake a trip
back to the womb for insight.

That is my beginning?
An egg and an intrepid tad
out on the town? No blinding light,
no "ta da" from the band?
...and my hotel without a single star?
No, thanks.

There must be more
than just a one-celled shiver with a friend
to make an end to nothingness.
Just who pronounces me an "I"
a nano moment following the void?
...for I did not.

Aha, break out your best champagne,
for if there is no death of consciousness
there is no birth; around the sifted solid
where we just presume to play, the kindly guides
prepare our downy beds again for astral flight
as they have done each night, a scant eternity
without the slightest, "Thank you,
I shall have another glass." Perhaps

it's best that we not speculate
on origins of knowing who we are, and why.
Perhaps, indeed, discovery of what it is to be
is cosmic study quite enough
for this our tiny corner of infinity.
~

Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast

There swims in each of us, a catalyst for dreams,
an urgency that calls from shores that never were,
a twinge of terror, lining distant paradise,
uniquely all one's own.

No one knows where all this comes from.
Oh, perhaps it is innate desire
to temper every fortune
with a modicum of pain, a hint
that if we know that all is not quite well,
we simply shrug it off
and chase the angst away.

First sight became
a theatre of absolute deliciousness,
a goddess with the right excess
of pulchritude to send
my conscious spirit spinning off
on errands of delight, my body
journeying a fantasy of flight with her,
for no one else created in a smile
such sinister conspiracy of mirth.

It was not she who cowered
at the brutish mien
so tactfully unroared,
but I, the ingenue, who saw
the beast had not consumed her; no,
he lurked there in her carnal confidence,
his quivering claws impatient
for contumely, catastasis
and my condign consent.
~

Of Loss and Victory, of Poverty and Wealth

Of Loss and Victory, of Poverty and Wealth

It is a curious tree of paths
we take to justify the place we are,
the bold and sacrificial leap to insecurity--
one step to left or right to override
our common quest for righteousness,
for unknown breathless wonder far ahead.

Higher on the climb, the codicils
to all the monuments of history,
bravura songs of loyalty that we were taught
amid the hands on hearts,
the festive manifests we sang
before the home team
flashed upon the scene.

Looking down, we never knew
that we were lost before the game began...
that we were fed upon decay,
the victors' bounty measured in its septic glory
only at the birth of consciousness...too late,
too late to claim the prize
beyond a price called love.

At the height, the branches will dissemble,
tremble at the tentative alighting
of the dove. They are tender infants,
prone to alarm beneath the laurels of success.
And it is not for us to know
their sheer audacity to grow
beyond the riches of the earth
into the skies of peace.
~

Of Prophet Stuff

Of Prophet Stuff

They made the wilderness their womb,
the lairs of beasts their motherland,
and in their eyes, the fire their god
had kindled from a spark of spirit flint
embedded in their souls...faced the terror
of an irony millenia would never understand.

What was it, spurred their zealous hearts
to speak the voice of the Invisible Divine?
What stony pre-Damascus pathway
led their bloody feet out of the mire
of history and to the portals of the king?

It seems to be the beasts
we may not send away.
These hairy men knew them too well,
and lay beside them,
heard their pounding blood,
their breath,
their agonies of birth;
they knew the bond of consciousness' embrace,
the seeds of love emerging from a common weal
and spreading as a tree unites the earth and sky.

They felt the flow of passion
that could only grow within a silent intellect,
a peace,
and a creative sigh.

And then they preached and stormed complacency.
To every wasteland they were bound
in stubborn zeal until the chariots came down
to bear them to our dreams,
a corridor of voices streams them on to us,
scarce listening, scarce reaching back.

For now the voice is ours, the messengers
within our flesh, still ready to proclaim
their thunder birthed out in the wilderness,
a feral peace, still burning in our hearts
a strange, compelling legacy of love.
~

Tell

Tell

We speak the language of the dead.
That which we describe
is only echo in the empty hall of history,
a ghost of memory, imperfect,
whispering against the walls
to make its point, and lost, forgotten,
dry before the wind of change.

It is the change itself that lives,
that vibrates, sings the Gloria;
It is the power of creation,
bearing life undreamed and hopes
that never knew to be expressed,
an ecstasy quite reachable
inside the stillness of a time
just set apart.

Somewhere the sounding of a bell proclaims
an angelus the heart alone recites,
a hymn to the divinity of joy poured out
in that pure sacrament of love.
Soft and far away.
I heard its echo somewhere

...ringing.
~

Another Vantage Point

Another Vantage Point

I visited the shadow world,
preoccupied with shadowed thoughts
that smoke across the page,
and vanish in the light of reason.

That is to say, it is the proper way
to deal with thoughts like these,
the ones with worrisome exteriors,
fuzzing up the mind...to visit, sift them
through the lens of the unknown.

Is it not pure sacrifice of light
that sculpts an evanescent joy?
Send the night upon my heart
and let the shadows dance
their pure, seductive art
that streaming day would cloy.

Something else occurs beyond
the simple blockage of the sun.
Something past humanity
tears at romance, makes possibility
of pathos and of festival; it speaks
of rest and restiveness. and sends
its waning light on pilgrimage to truth.

Shout down the stealth
of gods who blaze across the sky
upon their firery chariots; their myth
is wearisome, their legacies of death
are past design. The time is ripe
for children's games at twilight
when the shadows play, and tease
and disappear into their history,
yet there in immortality
for still another day.
~

The Scent of God

This poem is dedicated to Beryl Singleton Bissell, whose book of this name
reveals her love affair and sometime contretemps with God. I thank her for
graciously consenting to a poetic adoption of her wonderful book title.
The poet makes no claim of representing her thoughts; these are his own.

The Scent of God

To speak of deity
is automatic blasphemy
inside the gallery of man.
Here pontificates
the power beyond the stars,
who listens in when his
creation cries and sighs
and tactfully reminds him
of the plight of poor benighted
creatures on that speck of dust
that floats upon the milky way...

the grand old man between
the galaxies who loves and hates
according to the chirps
on planet earth...the triune spirit
who with cosmic skill unleashes
lightning on his enemies,
salvation on his friends,
and tomblike mystery to shroud
his everlasting court.

He is thought to come some day,
but in the interim, a sometime friend
who dwells quite far away for most of us.

...until...

our eyes turn far off from the skies,
our cup is emptied of his blood,
and we consent to do the listening.

Thereupon, the tongue is bound,
the breath will bear Jerusalem
unbreathed, the senses yield but for
a single vapor on the air,
the everlasting mystery ineffable,
that is the scent of God.
~

November falls asleep

November falls asleep

Outside, a world of grey...
no one there to share the bravery
of weakness, only those few ragged leaves
that fight the wind before
they resurrect, low flying
in their feeble lust to seek
a winter niche within the wood.

It is a time to celebrate regret,
to think of tears that wet the cheek
in spring, and dried in summer's heat—
of grief postponed until the seasons sighed
and left their challenge incomplete.
It's time to set out thoughts
and make them work, not just drift
into another winter unredeemed.
The leaves do that.

Desire forsakes itself.
There is too much sterility
to cold, forboding ground
that may not whisper of the spring...
too much to leave behind,
abandoning the prize of breath,
of dream,
of warm creative light that bursts out
from compassion's womb.

It takes departure
from a foetal berm,
impetuous to join the sojourners
who dare approach the city
where the pilgrims stay. It is there
around the sacrament of peace
they break the bread of unity
and drink the wine of love.

Beyond the gate are monstrous things
I have not known before,
and from the core of me
is sung the antiphon,
Thanks be to God!
~

Mind, reaching into the void

Mind, reaching into the void

The forest path pretends a voice
of purpose through distraction,
birds sound their curious intent, and then
the voices all around will cease to be,
time slows down, the lake
too far away to break the spell.

There when the leaves were down,
I bought the measure of an ending
that would crush a saint, a wild cry
inside me, resonating in a memory
engraved in pain that only I could know.

Late autumn is the time for gathering
not only of the harvest, but the fruits
of loss, the tearing, grinding
resignation of the sundered heart,
ever too obtuse to understand

Then it is one may perceive
the place within, the soft retreat
that speaks a stranger tongue—
a flight from mindlessness
to that familiar silent hovering.
A restless peace it is, but on another plain,
with still another kind of joy
that glows behind the sunset clouds.

There is a promise there
that one may count upon—
to be sure, as yet unknown.
The flight is past.
The mind is home.
~

Surprise

Surprise

Equanimity is like that—
great for day by day.
Triceratops comes out to play
among the smilers, scoffing
at his claimed reality;
the screams are left there,
hanging for a time,
when creativity refuses
to be stuffed back in the box.

The poor old fellow, horns and all,
will not be taken seriously,
no matter how he mugs
before the camera; believers yawn
until the soldiers join the march
behind the flags and pretty girls,
their pretty legs--and then the band!

Our ugly, born again,
intrepid hero with his plated armor
never had a chance;
it is his destiny to be unloved
and munch his vegetables,
and sink into the pit
that feeds the armed machine

far past the Pleistocene
that hovers on his dream.
~

But, is it true...

But, is it true...

A mind may settle in a groove
of circumstance suspended,
unaware of all the deep beneath,
all the sweet bouquets tossed out
by early travelers taking pity
on the darkness that they saw ahead;
they gave the best of theirs to give,
the little spurs of light , the baubles
that would never lead them forward,
only penetrate and stay,
waiting for their call.

And there they wait, the sperm
of new philosophy amid the flowers,
patronal in release, and bearing
thunder in their genes, a tracing
that will probe the silent ages
for the helpless now, and flashing,
flashing an integrity that says, "Go back
still more to celebrate
the birth of consciousness."

"Go back, into the womb of God,
the true mother of your soul.
You bear in your own body
all the scars of sacrifice,
all the seeds of wisdom,
all the triumph of eternity."

There is the litmus of belief,
the greatest postulate of faith,
and it is you.
~

Mission Statement

Mission Statement

My empire is the wind of change,
that blowing field of gift and seizure
out away from sanctuary,
out in wilderness domain, where
signs of hope are spare, redemption
may not intercede to foul the air,
and there is purity within.

There is the wisdom of intent,
the love that is not summoned forth,
but overflows when gain is sacrificed...
when nothing but dry grass is seen
upon the meadowland.
There is where creation soars;
there my sons are born.

I dream of fields like this.
My craving is for conquest
where the self gives way,
for there is tempest far beneath
my consciousness, where I may yield
and feel the morning on my face,
the deep desire of all the race
for home.
~

Ghost Ship

Ghost Ship

It is quiet on the bay
and boisterous on the shore;
the ship awaits its destiny,
romance awaits its foil and soon
departure claims its troth
above the lovers' agony,
beyond adventure's lore.

The sails are turned again to open sea,
the mast is high, all hands on deck,
and through the mist is scanned
the pathos on their faces,
eyes upon the land, and hearts
upon the lea they'll never cross again.

The Hollander is resolute,
the capstan locked, the deep possessed
for yet another seven years
of still horizon, salt upon the lips
and tales once more down in the hold
of tragic irony,
of love forever left behind.

Now in the night off foreign shores
when that dark hull appears
within the fog, or just above the clouds,
the captain might be seen alone
behind the wheel, and silent
as he listens for a distant bell
to sound the dawning
of his wedding day.
~

Campaign

Campaign

Poor truth will bear the blame for lies
and live in costume, in disguise.
It is for use, not sought for its pure self
but rather in polemics, overlooked,
profaned and booked on flights
of rhetoric and inexactitude.
It whores its beauty, sells its soul
adorned in profaned innocence
to die unnoticed and unmourned.

It is victory we must lament;
beware the buyer, dangling
that dessicated prize
before a January crowd,
for in its final moments
it had not the strength to weep.
~

Zooming In

Zooming In

Shall I take a single word along,
upon my morning walk?
The scars it left upon my mind
some days ago do not heal easily;
my pace is slower
as three unassuming letters
rake across it, once again
demanding more than I can give.
My step is ponderous
beneath the weight of just
'how long is now?'

When is the point that it begins?
When does it end, and why?
Is every 'now' in truth a 'then?'
and every need already in the past?
I stumble then. Oh dear.
Precisely when is that?
~

Encounter

Encounter

There we were, my coffee cup and I
secluded in the corner booth
where flights of new realities,
my own created children, rose and soared
and readily transmogrified, touched down
and died according to my will.

I loved them all.
They were my fleet of consciousness
and altogether temporal,
yet in their frailty could darken houselights,
raise their stage to hide the universe
and for the nonce assume totality.

A single wisp of thought came through
and it was no surprise to be aware
that the professor with his pipe,
tweed coat and frowzy hair
now sat across and looking at me
quizically, but not disposed
to answer any questions

I was eager to propose, though I
had read his latest book, and knew
his vast research could lead me
down the path I wished to go.

For the moment I could merely know
he was my august puppet, not my key
to magic chests of insight... that he shared
the wisdom of the academes
that I once listened to,
and who would only point the way.

My cup was empty; I snapped back
and saw the room return, and it was time
to kill him off in tenderness. "You know"
he said, as he began to fade,
"I cannot help but go out wondering,
what kind of God are you?"
~

Crossing

Crossing

It is time.
My forehead brushed with kisses,
I am blessed with knowing
in a moment they will close my eyes
and cover me...send their prayers
across that soft grey wall I see now,
drifting in...I try
to form my lips into
the love words...
try...
~

The Revelers

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Revelers

A tilt of the head
and there's a universe
never seen before in time and space,
and passing strange—it's boiling hot,
contemptuous in its familiarity,
for though the slate is new,
it mocks the mind and speaks
of high adventure, Mondrian upon the wall,
the queen of age enlightening...
that fresh page a ship at anchor,
tugging at the post to sail
before the morning's past.

Do you feel it?
Can you breathe the air
Arcturus saw when you were born,
and passes on afresh— stirred anew
this time around with one
forgotten eyelash?
And, do the changes
thunder in your heart?

We are the revelers,
the chasers of the dawn,
who from our beds may joyfully
engage Leviathan, or rage
upon black flowers of the night
that dare to cast their shadow
on the day.
~

The Lighthouse

The Lighthouse

Its singularity is insular
until it stirs itself
and throws its restless particles away,
out to the blackened, hungry sea,
the heaving grace of irony
whose understanding is but to receive
and never to return.

Now in the steady beam of sacrifice
there is disclosed the synthesis of fire,
that essential spirit stuff
which place is only to destroy
yet on its saving mission
borne along on minute quanta,
substance of the universe.

I cherish that cold vision
of a lonely cynosure upon the coast
that draws me from the world
and speaks of vigil to the night...
speaks of faith where none is asked...
speaks where time enfolds
an unknown plain
in its embrace of light.

The lighthouse, that last ghost
of mother shore and set apart
like some evasive anchorite
enchained in vows of silence,
demonstrates its wisdom
in th' immaculate restraint
of modesty that we who write,
audacious in petensiousness,
will never understand.
~

For All That

For all that*

A man assembles in his mind
that which he knows,
then listens to the colors
of oncoming thoughts,
tempered in the fire
of passion and of love.

It is the knowing that he fears,
the messages that trail across the years,
creating "I" within his mind
and tremulous that he might cast aside
a piece of soul that nestled in him,
his alone, or worse the germ of everyman.

He pauses by the stream
to dip his fingers,
wonder at the incompleteness he has wrought,
and suddenly impatient
with the rippling image looking back,
he clings to the identity that is
his permanent sarcophagus,
a sacrosanct mortality
no one may ever share.
~
*(with gratitude to the spirit of Robert Burns )

Ezekiel Reborn

Ezekiel Reborn

There are hazards there.
To board imagination of another soul,
to probe behind the rocks along the way
and find too much, converting chill into reality—
there is the romance!

There too is desert, the wandering for years,
knowing that the self alone will dessicate
until there is another sacrifice,
another mingling of the blood there at the wrist,
forsworn to die as breath is dry upon the skin.

It is as much a ship's departure
blessed of the wind upon the back,
blessed to see the stars above the prow
and still detect the beating of a second heart
as passionate as mine to cease
its feckless thundering.

There is the time to seize the glory
of the second wind from out the east,
the second rising of the power of God
that lurked behind the cloud of innocence
to interpose its frailty
upon device, its patient magic
on the dryness of despair, the bones
of a forgotten day, connected still again
by two...and by that still outrageous gambit
forged of love.
~

C'est Moi

C'est moi

In my childhood
they
impressed on me
not to galumph,
lest I be typed
in stereo
as my eternal twin,

but now somehow
it pleases me
to see you are
constrained to know
that I will go
galumphing on
into the nevermore.
~

I shall not come home again

I Shall Not Come Home Again
(reflections on a college reunion)

Too much of loveliness enfolds the ground
I walked in youth, again in age,
and I shall soon lie down beneath it
as my spirit wafts above its art
in clear salute to mind's eternal joy.

Too much, I stand upon the edge of a regret
I do not wish to re-explore,
though I did not succomb.
Old flowers would sigh with me,
and speak of gravamen
that memory could not restore to light,
of crusted wounds I had ignored for years,
then strange in their emergence
would leave their ghostly shouting in my ears.

Yet I had smiled politely as I watched
the curious melange of student mirth
among the pretense of a mellowed age
which walked beside them
for that shred of while last weekend...
and that inside a host of smiles
that flashed around in vain denial
of a fiercer truth.

The time was beautiful
inside that frail transparent shell
of grace that comes with blessed rarity,
and I departed with a heart and mind
in dialogue upon dualities
that never should appear, but drum
upon the tympanum of my perspective
on a world I caused to change
two generations past, and now impart
a flavor in diminuendo, a seasoning
refreshed, more newly wise
and in finality, more spacious in its love.
~

Chimera

Chimera

I saw a titan trembling in the wood,
a little deity who once devoured
the power I gave him, stormed at me
for my naivete, and left me on
my knees to pray, not for today,
but some chimeric garden spot away.

It is the fall of leaves and titans
as I pass the wood again,
divested of its mystery
to make its pathways plain—
that I may look within
upon another twilight of the gods,
a new apocalypse to write
and yet another new Jerusalem
to settle in.

It is a transient Eden
we would give away,
to celebrate the monstrous in ourselves,
to recreate within a forest plain
the holiness of fear—

and an Olympic irony
that we as gods would tremble too
beholding all our gnomic children
scampering to seek a paradise
or an oblivion.
~

Statue

Statue

A whisper of his life within the stone
emerges from the cold of retrospect,
that he behind the figure's vacant stare
could know that other hands saw history
within the reach his fingers stretched, could throw
his burning soul across millenia
and we are there attuned, somehow, to catch
a shred of wisdom, borne upon a gray
and crumbling art.

And do not look apart just yet, for there
is mystery within the telegraph
of ages left to us that may not foil
romance, but prey upon the dying age
that we, ourselves encapsulate in time
to shun mortality.

It is a voice we may not like so much,
unable to attain vitality
that seizes the imagination as
a Praxiteles did, a voice for us
that we may not let go, though photos fall
aside, for this was life incarnate in
the stuff of earth, a transient man come down
to breathe upon us as before.

How still he is! How firm his stubborn grasp
of all we are—how lost are we outside
this quarried slab to meet a personage
that we already knew within ourselves
and fear to know again, lest life and death
in harmony may speak aloud before
we run away.
~

Touche

Touche

At the end,
there is the silent field alone
to offer up its peace , and then
his eyes upon the rising smoke
Pyrrhus smiles,
not for his hollow victory
but for the twisted, blessed men
who do not have to see.
~

And then, and then

And then, and then

Quite apart
from anything to touch,
more is an increment
that lies behind the consciousness,
to swell the mind with new imagining,
inexhaustible—thriving in its sacrifice
just as a fountain
throws its treasure to the sky.

Still as a vision never seen before
and nevermore returning,
haste to burn it into mind and then
away, away across the clover fields
to seek the wooded edge aglow
with inspiration's light.

It is just such fantasy as that
to feed a passion where reality
emerges from a thought created,
just as God ex nihilo sought out the earth,
the dew upon the ground,
the misty heaven, the distant haze
of peace.

In dulci jubilo,
the endless questions
form the ziggurat
of humankind's delight—
the endless answering
a sacred palindrome
of an eternal life.
~

Wisdom's Tree

Wisdom's tree

I meant to set aside the self
and follow that clear beam of knowing
on its journey to the earth. It shone
on Aristotle, Plato, Kant, and William James
and pulls the rest of us along,
a breathless following, half-mired
in transient, vain contempt.

And now we have the future
reigning down on us
to shatter that bright column
into further dissolution. Universities
parade their colors in processionals
of PhD's, regaling us with red and gold
and dissertating academic truth
amid the shards of light.

It's time to seek the self again,
to probe beneath the skin,
for there is just one brightness there
to shine upon posterity.
It is the gleam of Everyman
as his own prism,
gathering Old Greeks and infant toy
philosphers, and with a smile
to filter them between transparencies
of insight, probing every flash of light
emerging from within.

It's time to put down roots
from wisdom's tree. It's time
to introspect, to tap the mind
and set aside the noisy boxes
with their strange hypnotic ghosts
who only play to win.

It's time to dine with Thoreau
by the pond,
to revel in its quiet depth
and in our own,
where wisdom saturates the ground
and nourishes the soul.
~

A

A

that I may be
attuned
to the requiting
at the edge
of my existence
where I meet
another soul
attuned
to mine
~

It's Always Morning

It's Always Morning

There is a sliver of the dawn
upon the earth and sky,
as escort to the sun that speeds the day
and will not let it die....that rushes forth
aggressively upon the penitence of night.

So is the love that travels on that constancy,
in haste to flood the nether earth
with light arriving as a grace,
that perquisite inborn in all humanity,
and dusty with neglect.

It falls upon us, sweepers of
this cosmic bridal path, to celebrate
a permanent retreat of shadow,
consecrate the razored liberation
of surrender to the dark.

It falls to morning as the benison of day.
Its racing touch upon the sluggish earth
is the pursuer, not the fugitive.
It is the fabled hound of heaven,
its brilliance a progenitor,
an aid to understand
the raging nebulosity of man.
~

What time is it?

What time is it?

The time is always now;
then come invent with me
a treasure we shall never lose,
for if there is no future time at all
then it may never force itself
upon us...how?
How may it ever cease to be
if it may not become?
And if there is no ending
fear itself is hollow, empty,
airless in its hovering,
so let it waft away,
less than a dream,
less than a now in memory's retreat.

We are amazing, are we not,
creating our eternity?
Here is your now, and here is mine,
and I shall have a God today
while you, preoccupied with yours
may not come out to play
although you may within our fancied
planetary course, yet share with me
a common-birthed bewilderment
at such a wondrous cutting edge
on which we ride.
~

Closing In

Closing In

The distillation of a thought,
how like the science of a touch—
to brush aside the pretense,
scope within the lake of memory
and know that still intact
is all the passion there submerged,
genuine, for all the years unknown.

How rare! That light may penetrate
the depths of false despair, that history
may reappear and flash its insight
once again upon the yellowed obfuscation
of a consciousness worn clear of hope,
a blindness self-imposed and born
of ennui and pride.

Then from the waves, Excalibur,
and from concentric heritage
a triumph—to the lady evermore,
a mystery surrounding her,
past the eternity of men
who then must yield it back again,
drawn underneath the surface
of the mind of God.
~

Of Red

Of Red

Red flames its connotations at me
in machine gun style as I stand apart,
gazing down upon a viscous blood
that gathers on the ground.

It darkens, as to pour on
an offending brown of quasi innocence,
defiance of its claim to urgency,
though crimson petticoated ladies
scream, and stream away.

A color holds for me too much of sway
to siphon off mere brightness
from a twilight evil
just to make a point; it screams and rages,
throws romance upon a dalliance,
excites a passion far too colorless alone
to sweep a lady of the night
into the morning.

It takes its purplish and golden hues along
reluctantly. It is a prima donna
unassuaged upon its fearsome quest
to rule the sky at sunset when
those mocking soft pastels would rather
whisper their reflection of the day.
~

A Thing to Prize

A Thing to Prize

The sense of loss
transcends accounting,
hovering instead as that one gift
itself uncountable, to rank
with heaven's stars as candles
for a cosmosphere that blesses
with its questions, wrenches anguish
from its cursed calm, and dies perpetually
before the face of sins undreamed.

No savior in his mortal frame
might fair eclipse of that, indeed
personify a paradox so terrible
that for the curvature of time
all other entity may fall away
before the might of such pure frailty.

Presumption fails, and it remains
that loss alone is genuine
among the treasures of the mine.
Its power is infinite to wring the heart,
swing back the gate of pride
and open wider still another door
once spurned, a fool's magnificence
called love.
~

Veni Creator

Veni Creator

In traverse of the cave of my desire,
the next is fashioned from an ember
keeping faith within, silent, simply there
as called upon to glow between my palms—
to sing with borrowed voice
a song not heard before.

The next is that which calls
when there is life in unknown packages,
a little hill beyond plateau, and suddenly
for us to know, to leap upon,
proclaiming, "It is good."

Stay fast upon the embers warming
that vast interchange of spirit enterprise
upon us—manifesting where it will,
testing a reality that only sings within.

It is a mystery to covet, that rare fire
that flashes only on consent,
on love's conjunction with desire,
on restlessness preceding
holy intercourse when soul
may enter universal mind
and next is born.

A birth alone, no answer
from the churning black outside.
The question burning,
"Muss es sein?"
"Es muss sein."
~

The Educated Man

The Educated Man

"He can sit in a room, and not perish" *
Or might he stand upon the deck,
release the dove, and weep for years,
not for its loss,
nor for the triumph of its flight
above the waters; they are not of God,
they are the backwash of our fears.

There in his room alone,
imprisoned by his conscience
he may let his mind fly free
while fears beneath his wings
may no more flood the ground.
But we are not alone;
we have the educated man fulfilled...
and weeping. He has not such irony
for comfort.

It is a flood to cling to.
Fears, we understand;
they are our bulwark
when an educated man could speak—
could sweep us all away with wonder,
separate us from such grand pretensions.


We are not free to weep with him.
We may not seek the refuge of the mind,
eyes not for insight, not for closing,
senses bound upon another time
away, another circus of distraction,
yes, another box of little men
to dance upon the screen.

It is a dance to take away our fears,
a dance beguiling death,
suspending it awhile with candied tears
and frosted dreams protecting us from envy,
nodding to the educated man apart,

who sits there in his room alone
and weeping for us,
just as we who may not see
across the arch of his reality,
cannot.
~
*quotation from Jacques Barzun

A Capital Farewell

A Capital Farewell

"Will someone love me, please?
You see that I am naked now,
without a rag of pretense;
my province is an alpha lost,
a phoenix dessicated
in omega's ash."

We may look down at him;
in reaching out, he exercised
imperial domain
to choose his destiny.

Then pass him by
with but a modicum of pity.
See? ...an emperor indeed
of infinite resource,
who never touched
the soft infinity of power
to reach within.
~

Never alone

From his promontory,
space divides the emptiness beyond,
permits a blinded soul
to look upon the void within
and view eternity. It matters not; there is a mind to touch,
a spirit revelry within
that cannot be the same
for sighted ones who miss the feast.

Plato shakes his head
emerging from the cave,
fire stick in hand—
It is the dread of knowing,
not the chains,
that binds his prisoners.

Their eyes may slowly close
and yet the sight is ever closer
as a haze drifts down,
a cloud of soft enlightening
as on an afternoon Seurat knew well
when all is peace
and there is dread no more.

With isolation gone,
no rising from a tomb is good enough.
There is a higher resurrection to proclaim,
a cosmic sweep for us, into the rush of dawn—
Never alone.
~

Alive, Alive O

Alive, Alive, O

To look around the corner of a time, a hovering,
and know that there is more, a gathered mist
of portent stealing comfort, roiling waters
calmed amid the dust trails of a heritage
that didn't want to be disturbed—
there's incentive for another breath,
another setback for the march of death
along the pathway of a life
that only stopped to wonder
just a while ago.

It is Molly Malone who calls us
past the curtain of the years, imploring
with a voice heard only as an echo,
as a haunting fantasy, perhaps
encrusted sentiment that moment
in the Dublin fog where we thought
we saw her there again.
How curious the parallel
that we would long to bring her back,

for it is history in all its darkness
that congeals into a strange nostalgia,
speaks in distant cries that it is we
who vivify the murky ghosts—
who see ourselves alive in Molly's shade!

It is the gentle earth that feeds us.
Consuming and consumed we share
an immortality we do not understand;
we are gifted, rising from the sea
no more confined, and still we hear
across the ages, Molly's cry
assuring us we do not die,
her voice across the square we know,
"Cockles...and mussels alive, alive O..."
~

And what is this?

(Two companion poems based on an inquiry into the meaning of love)

And what is this?

I

Right away I saw the power of it,
knowing that the loan I made
would never be repaid;
that made me smile—
that secret, quite delicious irony
was mine to keep within my heart.
My sacrifice had just become a gift of love
I didn't even understand.

No loving person would return
remembering, or able to requite;
she acted out of need alone,
a pure divestment of her pride,
and out of need I gave—
not from a love inside,
nor from a hope of heaven,
that pain embraced. It simply
was replaced by mirth.

There is a spring
within the desert's bleak array
that flows with power
to beautify that mendicant
from whom I readily recoil,
and how I thirst!

Love is a sorcerer,
a charmer quite devoid of intellect.
Emotions may be far away,
the strings within a heart untuned
and every day the wind blows cold
across the stony ground—
yet still I smile, a lesser man complete,
beguiled that such a thing as love
has twisted sensibility, and from a tiny throne
far off in space has brought about
a new and wondrous world.

II

I spoke to you of pleasant irony,
of desert springs that burble forth surprises
past refreshment, past all hope of change.
They lurk there, just as patience would,
a gift inside an unexpected dawn.
It just won't do to try to cultivate it;
gifts are like that,
bursting from the flower of love,
and teaching us as water splashes
laughingly upon our faces,
then retreating underneath the sand
as if it never were.

I like that subtle self-removal,
finally to preach without a voice
of all the pure delight when I
am taken from my own
mysterious pathway, cleared
from crevices of latent will
without a struggle from my childish id.
Nothing virtuous in that!

The sand grows dry again,
but still exuberance is there—
a reservoir beneath my feet,
unearned, and like a geyser
driven from creation's power
and its own joyous will.
And we?
We shall not chase it down.
We may not toil
to write it on our hearts.

This thing called love
is but to feast upon
as honored guests, properly oblvious
to any shroud of night.
~

Who stands out?

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Of Good and Evil

Of good and evil

Life is a fabric, isn't it?
a crazy-quilt melange
repelling and attracting
fantasy and myth.

So pain and pleasure claim reality,
never sure of which ascends.
But evil is the foil for understanding good,
and may become the soil of happiness,
nourishing by virtue of its dark
and close embrace.

Now you and I may look...examine pointedly
this new perspective, leaping up
to spark creation...set apart the gladness
into islands bursting with the fruit of joy.

We want to see what makes us.
We want to tap that urging far within the center
that invites us to the feast,
that speaks in tongues of revelry unheard before.
We want to dance through that thick mystery
into a radiance unseen.

It is that diverse unity that drives a mind
into the swirl of consciousness,
of just and unjust brotherhood,
that common blood of greed and graciousness
on a continuum without an end.

It's where magnificence prevails,
where light comes rushing in upon a shadowed stage;
the denouement, the prize song, all the roses
waken sense and sight,
the night outside an introit
to the splendor of the day.
~

A Christian Odyssey

A Christian Odyssey

The waters of the earth are rising,
capturing the little boats we left upon the shore,
capturing the islands where we took our hopes
of paradise, the trees that sank their roots
to freshness deeper than th'invading sea.

Most of us forget the rarity of England days,
the girl whose hair falls to her knees,
the secret lips upon the cheek.
Prisoners of time no more, the lust of green,
the falconer, the joust recede;
time is what we say it is...and it is ours
to press into us as we will.

For we are lost, would press unto us
all the praise of lesser visonaries
England left behind, the ones bequeathed
to forest lands, to forest farms,
possessing only dreams to feed their lust,
the call of sacrifice, a brother's blood
avenged to codify the law

...would press into our hearts, the ones
of powdered hair who saw us faithful
to a sacred honor that we never understood,
for there before us something
in the mist and clay took form,
bequeathed us enemies
that neither land nor forest had revealed—
only ocean waters brought them home
to love and to destroy.
~

We are

We are

We are the sweep of majesty
that all the stars impart
to the responding earth;
no greenmade glory shines
beyond the music that a mind
creates upon a page,
liberates the sons of art
and marches to the tomb,
embracing the unborn.

We carry history upon our backs,
create pellucid legend
when our heroes fall behind,
and with the fire
of mighty men beyond the clouds,
assemble freshly-martyred saints
to bear our cause.

We are the fallen ones
with tears enough
to cleanse that counterpoint
of victory and loss,
for there are fears enough
to purify our altars
with the censors of regret.

We are the engineers of greed and glory
and the wind, indeed blows colder
'round the corner where the children
may not play again...

It was the mystery of things we cannot see,
the evanescence of a breath, the Hebrew lord
chose first, empowering his friends
to change the world,

chose us, survivors
blessed of spirit wind
that dies like candle flame
within a moment we may not control.

We are the Godtouch
breathing sacrament upon the land
and properly along the path
choose every step with awe.
~

Scenic View Ahead

Scenic View Ahead

I stopped my life a moment,
knowng that, unmarked by an event,
there was a curious wedge,
a watershed of history,
a crest without connection,
meaningless and rare.
I saw it as a precious time
that never could return.

Then there it was,
a precipice no man could see;
its hazard was itself, unmarked in time,
unsafe, no single quest defined.
There would be consequence,
a changed reality, a breath upon a butterfly
to set the courses of the stars.

Of such, to speed the heart and whirl the mind.
Of such, an agony unchronicled—
It is of choice like this from which a soul
may race away in fear.
Beware. It is too much.
Don't stop to understand.
~

Slipping through Time

Slipping through Time

We were naive
to predicate believing
on a body, dipping through the ether
to another day; it changes, doesn't it?
Within a moment, not the one
to enter fantasy, indeed it is imposter
to a creed of self-identity, of microseconds
vanishing and re-appearing
as it thought it was, for it is new
and also nevermore.

The traveler may simply take
his presto-chango body as a set
of luggage, purchased on the way,
and like a spirit, set it down
within an instant on a different floor
of miles and centuries.
Spirit is the teacher,
thought, the faithful friend.
And, yes,
There is that dogged body,
stranger though it be, to tag along.

You smile.
This is for anyone,
at any time he may create. Go see.
And then return, though it is possible
I will not recognize the one who left me.
Who is he?
~

Creation's Irony

Creation's Irony

A man begins the search outside his head
with wondering, what kind of God would make
a wind-up primate, hot to rule his world,
endowed with nothing more than jealousy
to motivate his simian success.

But no, there simply must be something more
in peering out upon the field to see
an ass's jawbone crush a brazen skull
or drown with liquid words, an enemy.

Of what divine intent is the enfant terrible
who calls upon the prince to gasp above
the nails for his own sin? What triumphing
is that? There is the seed apostasy
has dipped in blood and planted in the soil
of apostolic greed.

Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come and buy!
There is a heaven here, a boon, a sigh
for every paradise pursued in vain,
for yellow cobblestones, and mansions in the sky.

A singular dimension waits beyond
the taking of a dream to consciousness,
for that becomes the moment when the God
of Abraham falls silent, angels need

to chant no more to shepherds on the hill.
The new Jerusalem has open gates
for every traveler; the wine is soft
upon the lees, the song is lush upon
the ear, the night perfumed forevermore
with love.
~

Ein Heldenleben

Ein Heldenleben

The element was sacrifice,
the set aside of commerce; what remains
is just that browned reminder of a yesterday,
the crowded theatre of retrospection
one could not let go.

What remains are all the questions...
Hopes were high, now there is none...
only the present, eking out existence,
just a crumb of joy to keep him going—
yet those questions are his magic:
that shade of dawn behind the crescent moon
that asks...expects no answer,
basks in adulation for a breath or two,
and then would readily exchange it
for a death entirely his own.

And so the final days
of lost celebrity
are worn away within
the West Virginia hills,
shouting at the thunderclouds
to make their peace and co-create with him
a requiem for vanity,
a mountain echo for the voices
singing in his heart; his heroism
rests within that place
and there it celebrates not pride
or strife, but profound mystery,
agent provocateur in everyman
and every solitary life.
~

Of Lilliput

Of Lilliput

They are such tiny people,
slipping in your blood stream
unperceived as you, crusading,
ride the clouds and seas
exposing unseen cavities
within the noble paragraphs our children read,
or did upon the times of innocence.
Semites all, they roamed invisible
with Moorish wiles through Consitution Hall.

We are the ones who still
may fight the Saracens beyond the Alps
and take no prisoners, the enemy
is always with us, always must be killed
to save our way of life. Better there
than here.

The Asian hordes are dead,
the swastikas are torn away,
the jungles with their bloody footsteps
have decayed to grow anew
upon old screaming ghosts
now silent, yes, too silent underfoot.

The Moors are hovering—
too small that we may see them;
they dive into our brains
and steal our mushroom clouds—
they thrive on secret plans and planes
and black economies
that rise from underneath the earth;
as dark and slippery as their own skin.

What presidential grace bestows
this Lilliputian race upon us; just
as we were out of enemies,
these riders of the sands to test our will,
our sons, the peril of our peace...our love.
Now we may raise the flag again
and sing of bursting carapace above
and not of bloated bodies
in the cargo space below.

Oh, no.
Oh, no.
~

A Psychic Manual

A Psychic Manual

Time is a coverlet
of secrets not to be withheld,
but dressed for the revealing,
just as humankind sits down
among the gods partaking
of the succulence of truth,
and no priority may interfere
with that vainglory of the feast.

See, it has begun
with whispers in the air,
alerting us that it is there
surrounding thought
like friendly shadows frolicking,
calling out to passersby
that there is always more within.

It is the hour
when judgement slips away...
the inner ear entices
in a strange romance,
and everyday is set aside
to clear the way
for new dimension, moving in.

You may attune your mystic sight
as flesh retreats;
the field is vast enough
for you to play, embrace its green
and celebrate the day
of your awakening.

The fresh halloos reverberate
across the miracle
of this new consciousness,
our hidden friend for many years,
our self emerging from the sleep
of alien domain, an infancy
to suck upon a proffered breast
quite unaware it only pacifies.

Halloo! There IS a crystal universe.
There is a holy light upon the sky.
There is a company of messengers
that we in blinded days
ourselves considered aliens.
We called them angels, yes, but they
were winged of mere intent, unseen
yet with the song of bounding
and rebounding love alone
and only now and evermore to be.
~

Behold, I make all things new

Behold, I make all things new

There was a yesterday, pulling at my mind,
disclosing the expected mundane self
reacting, not inclined to throw the clay
upon the wheel, to love without a cause,
to walk the forest path seen overgrown again
and yet there was an incompleteness hovering.

It was as if a man would be content
caressing all the little treasures
that he knew and loved--the ones he kept
within a little box that rested close at hand.
Old friendly ghosts were there for nourishment
and with emollients for dying days.

And yet there was a scent upon the wind.
There was a voice, more powerful than ears accommodate,
that beat upon the modest self
that hides beneath my consciousness,
brought forth like Lazarus and swathed
in winding sheets, reluctant to arise.

A working Christ would be like that.
No force of arms, no epithet of conquest
nor a blooded history to write.
A gentle call into the tomb would do it—
just a soft reminder
that there is no grace in sleep
beneath a monument or stone—
that there is glorious bursting of the night
in store; there is a paradise to own.

It takes that tug upon the consciousness.
It takes an empty page or two
before the forward to a mound of years
set down. The alpha and omega bow
before that bright eternity of now
and are consigned to rhetoric;
there are the stars aborning,
charted, crumbling as their yesterday
becomes today.
~

The Cherry Tree

The Cherry Tree

To crown the foil of window's questioning disclosure
and an afterthought—the ready sweep of old terrain
that would not seek completing, only slept
in still reflection of the passing hooves
returning from the wars, the lesser footfall
of the deer to gain the forest just beyond,
the baking of the sun...the years deluding...

This was only heritage, encapsulating ghosts,
but yet prepared to raise a living monument,
a friend to feast the eye, the body,
so contain each memory
within a morsel's succulence
as its own sacrament, bright red
and clinging to a disappearing past.

Then with a triple grace, the tree ascended,
fashioned from the vision
of a mind that saw the little slope
reborn as one observing, reaches back
into his heritage, illumining the trail
with purest loveliness pursued,
and finally in death, its richest wood
as offering to frame the instruments of art.

The thought is framed as is the view
outside the cabin window...longed for
even as fulfillment of an old desire.
Its fruit is of the years embedded
in the transcience of a hope
forseen on shipboard long ago.
Step across the time with me
and seek the cherry tree.
~

Of Myth and Men

Of Myth and Men

But is it true?
Does flesh impart
the spirit heart with mystery
to synchronize its beating—
fare its child with golden history
beyond its bloody birth,
its soft resigning death
to spur romance alone?

There is a touch of sainthood
in the firelight raconteur who
sketches in the apparition of a god
to dress his reach into the past...
from where did that emerge?
In truth, inside of us.

In truth, each journey to the mountaintop
will pass the lions in the heart,
medusas on the sands to lure us
to the lands of strange delight
where men and beast unite,
where totems tower
beyond our failing sight.

And with it all, the fantasy of song—
the legend sung to men
far long upon the trail
who caught a glimpse
of that old highway through the mist
from earth to fair Olympus
where the demigods cavorted
one last time, and left their imprints
in the golden dust.

With humankind there just is not enough
to raise the breath of life beyond,
yet with the fabled must
of prowling lions, teacher and disciple
feed their mind and soul
not from the carrion of Eden
but the cradle of the Ark.
~

Le Penseur

Le Penseur

Merci, M'sieur Rodin!
for you extruded from a faceless blob
the naked sinews of a man
who in his abject solitude
embraced a galaxy of mind
that sings creation,
nude of all but truth and purity
conmingled in the kiln's holistic fire.

From such prolific pondering,
he shares with us one absolute—
reality originates
not from an alter image floating
in long robes beyond the skies;
his gaze is downward, cast away
from reaching fingertips, away
from dancing sprites who will persist
in worshiping the dawn.

His shoulders bear no triumph,
neither promise of reward
for lack of pretense; there they crouch
with not a single argument for victory
or sacrifice—Dante in seclusion
at the gates of hell,
and silently to tell of paradise
that is the intellect alone.

It is no wonder that we tremble
as we stand before him,
for we may not shy away.
No less than all that is
between, beyond
the hours of our imagining
lies there among the racing quanta
of his thoughts and our despair.

Je vous en prie M'sieur.
Tiens pitie!
~

The Little boy Who Wouldn't go to Bed

The Little Boy Who Wouldn't Go To Bed

I followed him
upon the stair,
saw his spirit stare
beneath his leadened eyes
for there were cries inside
that would not be expressed
until the meadow day,
the time for him to play
and not to weep as
he would now if distant love
were not sustaining deep
inside.

The meadow was his refuge;
he could be alone,
appear to fly across the crest
and disappear from earthwatch,
hide the tears no longer,
speak the words
that welled within the dark
beside his bed,
were in the crowding of the night,
unable to be said.

It was resounding of the sun,
a badinage that tore at tenderness,
that made of rest
a shrouded interlude,
a quietness that screamed
of flight, of meadowlands
that in their emptiness
could understand.

And so to bed,
and coveting release
with every hour he stored away
as bonds to be redeemed
at that bright meadow's call
to lacrimation unrestrained
by its attendant joy,
the surge unheard and unobserved...
the time unique to its belonging.

He knew--I knew
the meadow gathered up its own,
the speeding night too slow.
He knew within him overflowed
the love and sorrow of a Samuel
the cosmos blessed,
and dressed in an emotion
few will share, or care...
that with the sun an age is born
and in the age another prophet sired,
another mystic son of man.
~

A Song of Victory

A Song of Victory

As conquerer
he stood upon the hillside with his army
looking down
upon the silent town below,
miasma of the battle slowly rising,
thankful that he could not see
the fallen bodies of its fathers
in the streets, nor in each house
the infant cribs stained red
from every blankly staring doll
upon it, every bludgeoned mother
on the floor.

His lieutenant, watching, venturing,
"Will you raise the flag, commander?"
"Yes."
"The white one."
"Look."
"We are undone."
~

A new kind of patriot!

I've long been cynical about patriotism, but Dr. Bowman, a former military pilot, and in charge of Reagan's Star Wars program, his given me something to think about: I urge you to go to the site I have indicated below, and then follow up by finding out about his thoughts on 9/11!

www.thepatriots.us

Knowing

Knowing

Unlearned, unfathomed,
lurking in recesses of the mind,
they suddenly emerge...
understandings that would not appear
in any yesterday, yet here they are,
a trick of consciousness,
ready to disclose new mysteries,
ideas and adventures
never thought about before.

But I must chase the images;
they disappear and fly away
before I pin them down,
yet have their way of coming back
as inspiration—hollow, silent
thunderbursts within my viscera,
that substitute for God—
may indeed be God implanted,
not by whim, by passion or entreaty
of a master sculptor in the sky,
but by the glorious cosmic chimera
of our creation.

You and I, it is who wield the wand,
perhaps indeed from a divine intent,
but it is we who are the sculptors,
we who grace the skies
with kindly paradise, and we alone
who have the power to love or to destroy.

The thunderings are from within,
the insights ours, the loving father
not out there among the stars
manipulating his divine machine
inspired by mortal prayer,
but of the dust beside the river,
just like us.

There is a certainty within it all...
and like the river running through us
has a job to do
in all that quiet thundering.
It has to do with sustenance, of life
we never knew until this very moment.

It has to do with celebration of the new,
an unimagined, closer walk with God.
~

Remembering

Remembering

See the images parading, passing,
falling back into retreat,
their rest still unassured
while restless mind may hover o'er the field,
to feed upon white faces,
pioneers who hunger for the light.

Old friends, old teachers
do not resurrect...their coffins
closed forever, neither does
identity within a mental photograph
corrupt, but dwell upon the ether
I inhale as if it were a live daguerreotype,
persisting in my consciousness.

And there they are, secure,
profound beyond corporeal,
a voice transcending earth,
a portrait brighter than the sky
that lives because it cannot die,
and of its musty sweetness
one could scarcely comprehend
the everlasting hologram,
a shrine though hardly seen,
where love and truth prevail.

If that does not confound a man,
then memory may rightly fade,
its heros wrapped in softness,
packed away beneath the earth,
and never visited again.
~

Innocents Abroad

Innocents Abroad

Scarce a year it was before my birth,
that Lindy set The Spirit down
at Le Bourget one night
and all the old voitures
as suddenly lit up the runway
with their headlights.
as he taxied to a stop.

Thirty years beyond, I landed there
from fair Bruxcelles and it was day;
the city of the light took rest
avant le gaiete of night—
there was no welcoming;
"Attencion Monsieur,
you are in zee way,"
and my attempt at French
brought only curious stare.

"Et je n'ai pas de plus argent
and little more to bear me home
to Orleans. Je suis un etranger
dans ma cite des grandes lumieres, "
I thought, and sent my fond farewell
to Brussels and its wondrous minature
Etats Unis and Circarama
still unknown in fifty years back here.

Sacre Bleu! C'est incroyable
that naked little boy in Belgium,
and the Champs above the catacombs
in Paris, now still flaunt their youth,
their vibrancy, as I advance
to that dim room somewhere
when irony prevails—that Lindy,
luckier than I, will share with me
the just equality of death.
~

On my birthday

On my Birthday

There are a thousand births like mine
in that cluster of the noosphere
the rolling earth had left behind—
where birth and death joined hands
to siphon off the heavens in a moment,
in a block of space
etched by an evanescent time.

A thousand births, a hundred years,
and altogether disappeared
as father of the father of my father
will not cause extrusion of a single tear
nor anything beyond a dusty line
of history—the earth will not look back
upon the airless cubicles, and I

may smile upon the moment
when my father smiled, and let it go.
Within that crystal box, and scarce observed
there is a breath drawn in,
another sent away...
a candle life ignited, snuffed,
to float out to the stars, unseen,
where memory is like the rising mist
that one time only
may refresh the morning air.
~

On Beauty

On Beauty

It is no ordinary stop that captivates,
no lush green paradise
as if to flush the ugliness of war.
There is instead, that rush of purity
that sweeps across the panorama of the mind
to speak of the uncommon,
of something changing everything
just by standing still.

It is said that pain is that which will evoke
the journey to the mountain peak, yet
quest is the fulfillment of desire
and not the burning fire of dreams
that dance before the one to seek
the pinnacle of art.

And when the best defining
may not approach the mark of truth
that in that sacerdotal lay
God dwells in you...
that on the shining rim of day
God dwells in you!—

it is to know
the fairest beauty of them all.
In supreme accolade
before the fair impossible
white angel of a far ineffable
white paradise, there comes
a son of man, a daughter of the earth
for whom all worlds, all time
attends.
~

Zero Point Field*

Zero Point Field*

A mind is something not content
with stimulus-response,
but must go flying off
into the never lands
to see if they are there...
and when reporting back,
at best is greeted with a stare
of incredulity.

But minds are stubborn things
that go on processing
both truth and doubt,
and greeting fantasy as friend enough
to squeeze it, probe it,
love it with a clinical devotion
plain romance would never understand.

Of such a love as this is born the light
that penetrates both time and space
and bounces back into the consciousness
of humankind and feisty lean bacteria
forever bound in brotherhood.

Pride is the casualty.
The idiot savant may lead
the Hawkings of the world
into the wondrous places,
those diaphanous and misty islands
that their instruments could not disclose,
that were in fact not even there
until he thought of them

and like a painter, sketched the trees,
perfumed the air,
and filled the surface crown
with many-colored animals
never seen before—
and then with idiot delight
might whisk it all away
before their eyes.

Not the stuff of fantasy, all this.
We would endorse the cry of unity,
accept the god of miracles,
the triumph of a science
leaping past his lordly heels,
but this? To heal the sick
by thinking back before their birth?
To marry the millenia ahead
with history?

It is a bigger field on which we play,
too much to entertain the day
with less than breathless wonderment—
to see beyond the window
where the scientist and God
rest finally from all the work
that they have done.
~
*In order to fully understand this relatively simple
poem, it is necessary to read "The Field" by Lynne
McTaggart. Both the evidence and the speculation
that she presents, is truly mind-boggling.

Jody Too

Jody Too

Jody was nine, her namesake calf
but newly-born, soon shorn
of his vitality, to be a steer
and hers alone, for just a year;
it was for both of them to grow,
and know of love. Thus
with her brush and comb
and her aplomb above the skin;
she rushed the hours on
until the day the Four-H show
crowned Jody Too in blue.

It was the day
that Jody learned to weep,
for champions are made
not just of love alone,
but masterly caress of shank and bone,
organic marbling, and charts
and sleeplessness;
there were dark forshadowings,
insistent silent taunts forced back
upon the trip home from the fair...
yet there were weeks beyond, to dare.

She knew she could not dwell
upon the end that she must not ignore.
There was no store of stoicism
in her heart, no lust for sacrifice,
no practiced separation might be there
to strengthen her, prepare her
for the market day when she could see
her father readying the truck for those
magnificent black steers,
(nine hundred pounds enhanced
each frame) and watch them
on the ramp.

From her bedroom window all of them
were seen on board, then Jody Too,
when eyes still dry, she turned her face away,
her own tear-drenched goodbye an hour before.
Her father had not known, came in,
and in bucolic wisdom, thus
invited her to watch them go.
She shook her head, there was
no consolation for her dread.
"Dad, Jody knew!"
~

That we cannot know

That we cannot know

The role is servanthood,
that which belongs as some sweet entity
but dangerous, a tendency to fulsome loyalty,
a liquid unction serving as supporting arch,
complete so long as it is rare, and yet
no matter how abstemious the doing,
hate brews underneath, the kind
that unarticulated, strengthens
with the rising heat of day.

The pommeled human clay
assumes its destiny, its birth and death
a twisted dwarf in halflife,
the pity flowing from above
as some mad spring,
its flowers just to touch
before the king might choose—
inhale their sweetness
or to crush them
underneath his royal feet.

It is done.
They stand before us,
waiting but for grace or martyrdom,
the father and the son,
the slave not yet complete,
the master, orb in hand
and shadowing the sun—
and who will speak,
and who will write
of justice at the last?
~

Grave's Eloquence

Grave's Eloquence

It was as if a friend I never knew
came in to speak of some old honor
left behind while in the rush to war...
as if there were a bond
between the tides of men
expressed upon an ancient scroll,
and pressed into the mind.

I do not know how it occurred
but found that words may have their birth
as heartsong from the other side
where seasoned consciousness
emerges not from men,
but from those fallen souls
incarnate in the spirit void.

These are the words of passion that we cling to,
that even in their error,
echo in the hollow corridors
where heroes strolled,
intoned by eyes alone,

and as I sit before my desk,
drop tears upon the book I read...
confronting old vitality,
then in a stone engraving
now refreshed by immortality,
there is a timeless, personal rapport
I may yet presume to understand...
a strange new epithet,
that life begins at death.
~

Chasing down the day

Chasing down the day

For a fallen man there came
a most engaging metaphor;
the light persists while consciousness endures,
streams out across the empty spaces
particle and wave, and unconfined,
immediate and still abstract,
dubious as wind whose origin
is steeped in mystery, whose end
forever lost in the unknown, as is
creation of a mind, reaching out
beyond the galaxies to seek where history began.

And then antonymous, a mindless rule
opposed, squeezing from its barren birth canal
to celebrate an instant death
(god from god
light from light
very god from very god)
while torches blazed in protest,
the light not of itself, illuminated
just itself alone!
And there was evening; there was morning
on that first stupendous day.

So the wars began.
So the gods processed in irony,
and so the little people far below
held festivals of light
in triumph over dark
until the sun burned out,
their cannons fired no more,
and they no longer could remember
how to pray.
~

Divine Arrogance

Divine Arrogance

The little man stepped just beyond
transcendence from his little world
and found divinity outside. The huge surprise
was that he found no throne, no kindly spirit
there, no lowering papa in the sky
but there was ecstasy in emptiness
he had not seen between the stars,
between the frenzied prayers of men
who sold their commentaries on belief.

What irony to note the hidden god
who sent him back without reward.
That humankind might lift the sword
and find it weak, inadequate, the symbol
of a stumbling gospel half believed,
half emasculated from the altars
censed in smoke.

And then to venture deep within at last,
emerges just the glimmer of a cosmic pride
that always turns away
until our tongues receive the simple sacrament
of love, and only then
our knees may serve as pedestals
for truth.
~

God thoughts

God thoughts

From on the bank above the bay,
I see the passing ships embrace
this newborn world of me,
unknowing of my captaincy
that maintains their course
along horizon's edge, connecting worlds,
combatting tempests of the mind.

Inside their little universe, they do not see
their god look on. They do not know
about his helpless love,
about his curious majesty
enabling electrons to perform
before his eyes among
the unseen planetary orbs.

Quite the bemused deity am I
to watch my little boats defy
the corner of my paradise
that blurs my sight,
and powered only by my love
will disappear into the night.

Impractical am I, and wise enough
to send them storm and peace
and sun to keep their faces dry.
And only I have destiny
to contemplate, for I
have given them the last, best watch
before their midnight,
and before the shadows die.
~

...and I must write

...and I must write

I hear crescendo in my body,
bursting at the fissures in my mind,
churning up the tears that flow from springs
inside the prototype of flesh that I became...
far back when dreamers went exploring.

I hear the song passed on
from those grey men who marched,
and laid their hopes aside,
their passion drained—I hear the word drums
beating cadence as I rest.

I do not know what is to come,
yet I may not hold fast
against its strange caress,
invincible duress that emptiness alone
invites in spirit intercourse.

It isn't quite enough
to joke of muses, deities,
or objects of desire.
It is the hollow place inside
that calls, that sets a turbulence

too urgent to deny. And I
must serve its singular intent,
accomplice to its mystery
and lover to its fervent power
so long as it prevails.

We are a race caught up
together in romance,
a melding of delight and sorrow
in the dance of arrows to the heart—
a dance of danger and necessity.

Now may such wonder be preserved,
and understanding such a rarity
as to be left behind. The cadence thrums
its unforgiving song,
and will you dance with me?
~

Resurrection

Resurrection

The dead still walk
within our memories,
and breathe
and smile
and talk
inside that strange preserve we keep,
a room still redolent with life
above the boxes where they sleep.

What irony prevails, that we
may call them forth upon a whim
as frozen servants microwaved,
enjoyed, and then returned at will
to their uncertain rest.

Might we indulge them,
favoring a spirit laugh
at our audacity?
Might they indeed, be guiding us
inside our stumbling bones,
inside this diorama
quite obsessed by touch?

We might do well to understand
they fly to us
with such astounding love
to fill our reminiscences
upon demand, and yet
with sad politeness fade away
at suppertime.
~

Divine Deafness

Divine Deafness

There were shadows
shaped like feathers in your words,
drifting in and out of focus—
a consciousness that could not speak.
though mightily it tried

without pretending anything,
without a shred of pride,
and made of sweet politeness
with its wild vibrations
pulling back upon sincerity

as if it cried—
as if it knew that there was more
unsaid, and holding back
caught time alone, and held it close.
There was a trust

before a distant God
who might emerge all wooly,
open to both lust and sacrifice
and sheltering the I and Thou
beneath a cosmic question mark—

beneath his baking sun...beneath his glory
you and I beheld with some amazement,
for the saga quite compressed
within a moment's irony
had only just begun.
~

Afar

Afar

Beyond the plain,
beyond the distant hills
the coast is calling,
even in its silent diffidence
proclaiming richness to horizon's crust,
that here is where the world begins—
here is where a man may throw
his soul into the wind, and gather
echoes for the journey home.

Here the ember glow of vigil
still betrays old fire of mariners
who lie beneath the sea, of broken men
who saw the land again,
and of the ones who dared
to carry England to the left of God.

Here is where one breathes
the scent of history,
here where romance was hovering
when rest alone was hungered for.
And it was here where blue-eyed visionaries
raced,
and flew,
and shot out for the stars.

And there is yet a timeless phalanx
built of heroes lined upon the shore,
the ones who face new hazards every day,
do not quail before the hot demands
of solvency. We're dealing
with a system made of irony,
of reticence, yet steel resolve
amid a fantasy annointed with desire.

No wonder death appeals,
for it is either summary completion,
or an open highway
to a plain where more aesthetic sophistry
proclaims its awe.
It is the choice afar
that rides upon the mist above the land,
that reaches with a man
beyond the twilight of the day,
beyond the churlish midnight toll
to celebrate the flourish
of the dawn.
~

To Know Regret

To Know Regret

It was a misplaced trust, a moment
that refused to slip away—
a burning for a lifetime
just because it could have been avoided;
there was a time to shroud temptation,
pathos selected just to try it on.

And there I was, my verbal sword
undrawn until the moment,
and at impulse came the thrust
to free another's blood,
and interpose in me,
a strange, quixotic love,
impossible to seek.

It is a curious thing,
this wallowing in paradox—
this gravitas so chosen of a whim
that streams may flow down
each remaining breath...and wondrous,
for it bleeds the heart as well
and makes of tears a fountainhead
to birth a new humanity

—a curiosity indeed, that arrogance
is conquered by its own default
while love defiled is lovely still
and in its frailest sovereignty,
its unequivocal reward.
~

All my trials, Lord

All my trials, Lord

The thrust of mind on every plane
relflects adversity...
and life idealized
is every life that cannot ever be.

Profound, the misanthrope that operates
behind the shadow of our consciousness.
Pervasive is the hate that flavors
that bright charity abounding
in a smile benign,
yet shallow in design. We would not trace it,
dare not face its counterpart
inside. It hurts too much.

There is one injury that cannot heal,
that echos down the corridor of all reality,
confining us within
the little world we own;
the hurt that never fades
is like that stubborn visitor
L'esprit de l'escalier,
a threshold of regret.

Perhaps such thorn as this
within a well-kept soul
is our condign salvation,
our protection from insanity
remembering too well
a frailty too easy to forget.
~

The Interstices of Time

The Interstices of Time

Time's world is porous.
One may slip between the fabric weaving,
journeying upon the back of art and music,
poetry and meditation,
and the offering of love.
It is transition in a paradox
of peace-filled paroxysm
faith would not accommodate.
Then just beyond, the spirits gather
for a welcome that exceeds imagining.
There the past and future laugh
at their deception, vanishing like smoke.

Come to the marrying
of fear and celebration,
the collision of realities
we never sorted out.
It's over there a bit,
where mornings never yield
to resting suns, and yesterdays
that know not how to say goodbye.

The pathways lie within your dreams
but far outside as well.
and all penultimate
to that grand boulevard that we forsake
with each device of breath
and one insensitive laconic label,
death.

~