On growing deaf

Each year
my world is muffled
just a little more. I watch
the ones I love, whose pique
grows more transparent
when I ask them to repeat.
I see them drifting somewhere,
and I know that I may not presume
to go along.

Behind the spongy walls
around my mind, I watch
this process of invisibility
that comes with my retreat...
how soon will they be unaware
that I am even there;
the ease with which I fade,
now sets in sooner, cued
by changing leaves not welcome yet
to crowd upon September.

No, martyrdom is not for me.
This padded universe affords
too much of spirit realm
to carry in despair. I leave you
bit by bit, abandoning my cares
with every crumbling sense
and thus prepare to navigate
the larger world within,
and there take refuge
in the silent consciousness
of truth.
~

Another plain

defies relating, near as breath,
as far as imagery capitulates,
and no one knows who has not visited
the is that cannot be,
nor ever seized within.

I touched its edge, full knowing
that it could not be contained,
or grasped, or even sensed
in its completeness. Nor
would begin to satisfy,
else its embrace might be defined
as love, or truth, or God,
or any such shortsighted blasphemy
our tiny words might throw.

No, it transcends all that
and if there be an end
we shall not apprehend
the roaring comet's rest
or find the consciousness
to see it sweep away the stars.
~

Directed by

We are illusionists, you know:
each molding fantasy
on opening night
for an indifferent crowd,
but mostly for ourselves.

That's not good news.
For when the curtain falls,
the morn will bring us no reviews;
the critics' faces will suffice.
How nice.

But I can try again...
this time.
~

Why

I never greet discovery
with all the joy
that it deserves,
for standing in the way is fear
that I will violate
its pure integrity
.
I may thus become aware
of danger
that my own protective shell
grows thinner still
when others look at me,
and fear to see
my own endemic sores
contaminate the world.
~

Closure denied

When they ask, I tell them,
"Yes, I have three sons--
and two are still on board."

Ten years are past,
and I may speak of you with ease,
with the knowing still inside me,
you are more alive than they;
more thoughts of you are churning
in the day that never ends,
in such a time that is for you
forever disappeared.

Point present is your heaven--
earth, the love you spurned.
Your spirit being
crowds upon my consciousness
as if to say that endings
may not cede surrender
to the falling dust frail fingers
will release--may not celebrate
eternal peace as if it were
their rite as well, to die.
~

A personal note

A beloved friend died yesterday unexpectedly. He was a
priest, a poet, a superb homilist and teacher, and a
loving man to everyone. The following is not a very good
poem, but expresses how I felt at the news, since I had
never realized how hard such an event can strike.

Richard

Yesterday you took away too much:
your eloquence, your passion,
and your love, but then today
you gave me something quite tremendous
that I never had before--
that certainty of knowing,
just how much I cared.
~

Horizons

I seem to be a malcontent;
my restless eyes scan to the East,
across the plain and then beyond the hills
to where the night beats down,
to where the past surrenders
to the winding earth.
But then the throes of agony,
create the day.

There is some irony
in such a gaze upon the past,
hurrying tomorrow--
some parallel to every warrior's
pleading for the coup de grace
to set it all apart.
There is the I-ness, I forever own,
the consciousness we share,
that I may never dare renounce.

No darkening wisdom, here,
likewise no flashing joy
from the transition.
There is no spirit reticence,
no fear of time, or death,
or loss. Not for me
the sunset of a cross,
the headless tumbrel ride
back from the guillotine;
it is the East that draws me
through the night,
and may within its grace
requite the day with still another
gracious birth.
~
~

Insight

Perspective has that gift
of being present when,
though nothing changed,
and it is not,
then everything has changed.
The quiet started and
there are those strange
interstices between awareness
that how like a butterfly,
permit the gentle resting
for the moment,
of a non-existent thought.
~

~

Time Out

What is it?
Something stirs within
and while I look upon a scene,
then I become aware-- emotions roil;
memory kicks in, nostalgia follows,
the raw material for poetry is there.
No event has called it forth,
but still there is that tightness in my belly
that I may not throw aside.
There are no words as yet,
no formula for wisdom,
not a mountain waterfall or tear.

The scene itself is just device.
There are thousands of them,
all of one reality, blending in a moment
and the call to consciousness
becomes the phantom muse.
Somewhere a quantum flashed,
and in its tiny universe,
a bold electron jumped its orbit
'mid a festival of the unknown
to make me turn my head
and see.

So that must be.
And I must write,
not of that which I may know
but of that microcosm never stopping
at the field before my eyes,
for it is singing exaltation in the dance,
its antiphon surprise,
its destiny, romance.
~

Castles in the Sand

Gray warriors entertain
the myth of pride in victory
or sacrifice of love drained out
and running red into the ground.
Tradition's heroism.

There is a way to settle it.
There is a way of timeless honor still available
to set upon the course of peril--
a soil to stand on, still unknown.
It has the purity of loss,
and is pristine enough to foil
the hypocritic sands of artifice.
Sometimes.

I dream of sands that will prevail
to mold upon the crust of earth
a work of art, a restless texturing
to make the spirits cry in ecstasy,
to resonate with every heartbeat
from the deep, awakening
the serendipity of joy
.
Direct your longing out beyond the cliffs
where all the winds begin;
where that which sculpts the earth,
that mothering, may speak of elegance,
that everyday enchantment from within,
proactive as the benefice of innocence
from royal children frolicking
upon the beach.

How many feet will race the tide,
first to efface their handiwork?
How many tears will still preserve
the matrix of the insouciant sand?
~

Water World

There is the constant danger we may drown.
One learns
to take a promise with serenity
for waves of bliss in any victory are short.
Events move in
like unexpected flood tides on the islands--
pressing on attention,
stealing from contented images
built in the past,
demanding burial at sea.

And we must let them go,
for were there not an ocean there
to hide the present to the moment
when it suddenly appears,
there is no voyage,
no suspended triumph
and no thrill of doubt.

Will you drink with me,
the wine of God?
May we celebrate uncertainty,
the ports of call we may not see,
and yes the turbulence
that we ourselves create
in transient souvenir.

If that is not enough
there is the fury
of the rain,
the tempest,
and the blood
diluted in the deep,
the gift to sponge away
the curse of time...
before the tide returns.
~

First Day of College

The syllabus was likely to arouse
vain sentiments of a nobility
he never felt before.
Eight o'clock on Monday morning,
books and pencils not yet burdensome,
and down the hall, the classroom
where he hoped to be inspired,
would seize his body and his mind
and shake them, make them scorn
the adolescent scampering,
and he still not aware.

How dare the prof presume to teach him
how to take his notes...
how to detect his nakedness.
So much for sociology--
so much he did not see!

And that is what it was to be,
the years to dawn aware
of cavities, not knowledge,
wisdom just to contemplate in awe,
nor in presumption dress
yet late that night
six tender new-born men
will sit together in a tiny room
and speak of Rabelais and Eckhart
unconcerned about a rest
surrendered to the looming day.
~

Oblivion

The flight is past, the crane is gone
and there above the silt and clay,
the scattered reeds and sticks
of sheltered birth,
the precipice and promise of a life
are disappearing, soon to leave
no trace of the wild delta's mothering,
no echo of the cries of flegling hunger
tearing at the heedless skies.

She will return another year
to co-create her own;
her semi-conscious faint remembering
begins crescendo of the urge within
to gather once again
the transient nursery
to host a miracle, and fly away.

The delta too, endures
the smolderings of consciousness,
it also throbs within
to host its god of genesis each year
and then to watch him die,
to feel the sterile winds
clear everything away
in their escaping irony
without so much as a goodbye.
~

Another Way to Grieve

Is a memory less real
than the event that it replays,
or the video that seized its light?
Death trifles with them both,
powerless,
not of itself twice born.

I see a picture of my son;
the image on my brain sees life
unfading, and I may
immerse myself within that vibrancy
assuring me that death
becomes the more elusive lie
though as I sift
his ashes through my fingers.
I know he did not die.

There is no past, no future,
and the present gone
before my consciousness accepts it--
this photograph performs
the thin totality that shines
upon my mind
through each forever,
giving birth within an avalanche
of still another trillion worlds
behind.
~

Poet's song

It is in the first of morning
that I sense my magnum opus--there
among that which is most mundane,
and like a ghost that I
may never see or touch--
of which I know no thing at all,
except that he is there.

I said it was not fair
that he should haunt me,
said that he is mine;
let him emerge from shadow's shell
and ride my lips,
my mind, my passion,
then release from spirit realm,
no matter how diaphanous,
another breath of truth.

I know.
As Adam felt a universe implode for him
within his consciousness
and as his sinews formed,
he gave us God
creating in the endless dance
among the stars,
co-creating in our midst
while light shone down

his own magnum opus,
(and for me as well)
a pathway for retreating night,
and all the painters, sculptors,
physicists called out for light,
became aware of texture
and the price of tears...
and time and years
could disappear.

He is my friend,
this little formless god
who plods along with me,
not big enough to share.
Come on, a little farther,
there is starlight here, he says,
and you
have not yet learned to dance.
~

Aware of Awareness

That I know,
that I have insight
is a grace, so I am told.
But how much more
may wonder yet abound
when I become aware
that I have known the world
to stretch its shore for me,
disclose its mystery
behind the mists
else I should be
confined forever
in cold certainty.
~

Taking Stock

Three years to go
and if I fill them all with breath
eight decades will click in, complete.
Already I may pinch my skin
and see the ridges stay
when I release.

It is a curious thing that I observe,
not at all my self, this body
dancing with old twigs, smooth rocks,
and closet skeletons.

I don't hold much
with praying anymore,
would not reclaim decaying youth
when I was much too dull to see
that every now is all there is,
and all there needs to be.

Is that not risible?
That life may not afford
another hope at all? Shall I
one moment after death
be loathe to die?
~

Fantasies

Do they invade our consciousness,
or are they merely mental paintings
of our unfulfilled desire?
Always, the happy endings
add cloud fluff, and drift away
a little while until we call them back.

Little comedies, they are,
for just an audience of one.
No budget, no critique,
no lines to memorize,
no little boy to stand outside,
his nose pressed to the glass
and wondering.

Just now, however, I am looking back at him
and wishing, oh so very much
that he were really there
to watch these pictures all go by
and share his insights
molded from the womb, sparing me
the dark-begotten gains
of my sophisticated greed.

Move on, young fellow.
Flirting with the dead is not for you.
Here is your brush and canvas.
Go on and paint for us reality--
paint only what you see.
~

The path behind my eyelids

The path behind my eyelids

The inner course contains
a happy irony.
for as I seek the higher self,
I see the breakaway
of little pieces of the I
and there is no regret,
for even self
is locking up his empty house,
content to evanesce.

There is no question of nobility;
no self-effacing sacrifice.
There is no loss,
for though the all we know
be just a child of mind
it is complete forever;
you and I are none
that may contend, are one
to consummate a universe
without an end.

There is a single refuge
from the storm, the fire, the enemy.
There is a single element
that will surpass desire,
to place reality beyond pretense.
It is the only certainty I know,
the antidote to strife,
for love alone one day
will take me by the hand
to cross the bridge of death
from life to life.
~

A stitch in time

Somewhere the watcher sits
upon the instant moment's edge--
there, where spirit smiles, as if
to punctuate the order of the day.

And all the while, the breath is pending.
All the while, the heart rests,
time dissolves, and God may sleep
upon a throne still etched in light.

Might that one trillionth of a second
mark a new eternity? The concept
dressed in fantasy, becomes fair game
and I must step within.

Any photograph will do.
A present simply gifted,
storms the battlements of history
with just the turning of a page.
Enter
.
With a click of will there is created
life forever, sweeping down
upon complacency, a Narnia
upon a timeless stage
to touch, to resurrect,
to catch upon the air another now,
another living tapestry
of consciousness--quite enough,
I think, to fill a restless soul.
~