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.
~