In an old school building

There is time to watch the eagle's talons
grasping what it may, the arrows or the wheat
creating legend some will fight for, creating
heritage they didn't fully understand.

I saw the children's feet
upon the wooden stairs, concave
from all the years of children climbing,
rushing down to music only they could hear--

their colors blending in the tapestry
of always yesterday, always in
concelebration of the swirl
of one more generation in the dance.

They stopped in time,
and with their piquant crumb of insight
that a fleeting pre-pubescence gives,
informed me with a glance

the moment was their own, and I
might frame it only with my memory,
its capture that pure vanity
that only visionaries ponder.

Then why do they not take
their voices with them?
With what trans-time device
do they still rush

upon my consciousness, insisting
they are better ghosts
than those before them
on the stair?

And then I knew
their predecessors too
are children, mirroring the lives
of everyman

who crept, and marched, and flew
through centuries of festive rite
and held their sage observers
in their thrall

as headlong children teaching
love to watchers, sprites
intoxicated by the dust of chalk
and leaving

their forgotten kind of laughter
in the staircase walls
for passersby who listen
with their hearts.
~

Theatre of One

I stood aside the other day, and looked
upon the superannuated man
I have become, though I considered it
the climax of the years
devoted just as caricature
of my anticipated self.

Walter Brennan's role inspired me--
Grandpappy Amos, with his elbows
tightly flaring, voice in octaves, ah
yet all remains unclear
until I learn to dodder--now just watch
I'll master that next year!

Strike out the days of grand design
and see across the rift
elusive images that worked
and played upon my open heart--
that let me sift
through their own store
of youth and wisdom,
caution and delight--
but never spoke of endings.

Why do you wonder, little boy?
What may I give you
that does not contain
the scent of death?
It may yet be the wondering...
what we old men have taken
from the years
that gives us license
to pontificate, or yet repine.

By cracky, youngster,
I just heard your mother
calling you to supper. I'll admit
I had to turn my face a moment,
indulging as I must
when mothers intervene,
that old intensive wish
that she were mine.
~

Visible and Invisible

Visible and Invisible

The first forgotten
(non erit finis)
was the I,
(non est)
and who would not,
(in phasmatis reverentia)

for my
(Et credo)
expanded world
(universitas)
climbed in
(saecula saeculorum)
and even God
(pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria)
was dwarfed
(et homo factus est)
by nothingness.
(pro totus universitas)

Come, see the light
(et vitam venturi)
of knowing,
(saeculi amen)
for there is no other truth.
(amen)
~

Mission

Molten steel
is what I wish to pour
from all the gray confusion
of the liquid wall inside me.
I want to see the mountain tremble,
to hear the roaring nether earth
assert its consciousness, to join
the yeomen of the mind who travel
on the higher ground of light.
I want to call the seraphim from out the East
and taste upon my lips, refiner's fire,
to sing the Wisdom choruses
the prophets heard.


Let me engage the beasts of reticence,
the somnolence of hordes bemired
in hedonistic clay. Let me cry out
upon the day, a sanguine joy
in triumph over lassitude, conquerors
and endless kingdoms of desire.

There seems to wait within, a page
inscribed by messengers who
having heard the throbbing song,
will fly through time with me
announcing through some spirit grace
the stunning news of love.
~

History's Elegy-a peaen to monism

Slipping through the fingers of my mind,
all those vague perceptions of the "I"
inside this body do provide a strange parade
behind the mirror of my life.

If I have learned from growing old,
the fallacy of endless plodding
from one victory until the next--
celebrating notches carved
down to that last bouquet
upon my grave, then it's no journey after all,
but an immersion into truth.

Make of the day, the captaincy of night,
a starship traveling from light to light
when time is one. Let wonder settle in
where hammer blows are dieing.
Stand off upon the crest of doubt
and watch creation groan,
a universe in manifest;
see the one, the present moment
coalescing in our hands,
for that is where the glory lies.
That is where the resurrection waits,
and only there beside the hidden God
the Alleluias ring.
~

The Ghost of Schrodinger's Cat

What is this thing that I may do,
that at this moment is no thing at all
...and cannot be until the it is done?
Thus having done, I must have nothing
for my rivalry with God.

This poor tormented cat
in every lifetime poured
but half a life and to this day
will play within a shroud, or worse
invisible.

She skulks around
the bleak, convenient pretense of a time
that knows not of mortality
nor falling of the hours.

Half a feline ghost, she mourns
the absence even of the now
and maddened both by science
and by time,

entrapped within her whimsied box,
in irony, may righteously lament
but we, the watchers,
still will never touch

her quantum-spiked magnificence.
~

War no More

May that faint light go out
upon a world that wrestles
in the fetid swamp of tears.
May the last uncompromising stream
expose the foul enormity
of battle screaming for
a darkened consciousness,
a day stopped rumbling
through the night
to gather strength for its return--
a wild imploring of death's benediction,
impetuous to cast off God.

Those are the glory days.
There is the refuge of the patriot.
There are the songs of victory,
the roll of drums
above the boxes in the earth
where children sleep.
There is no silence to a nation's pride,
but marching bands, flames across the sky,
the bugle calls, the guns
to break the irony of peace.
May I have surcease?
May I decline the folded flag,
the hand across my heart--
May I pledge instead my love,
my loyalty, my honor
to an island in the stars--
the mother of my brothers, sisters
and the breath that we were given
to share and cherish,
not to take away.
~