Hors de Combat

Hors de Combat

This is where the river forms...
from out of that which seeks
a new defining..that which dares to look
across the battlements thrown up
throughout the night.

Streams are like that.
They flow most readily
along the lines
of least resistance.

Like love.
~

'

A Song for Abraham

A Song for Abraham

My feet leave blood upon this mountain path.
They seek the stones that tear at them--
that tear away my thoughts of Isaac,
far ahead of me,
effusive in his lust for the unknown;
these stones that speak to me alone
of an ineffable command.
Of sacrifice,
of love I do not understand--
are they already stained with irony?
My son! Come back! The light is fast away.

Here are the stones as we might cause
to be the table of the Holy One...
see how they fit together!
Now you and I will labor in the night;
it is more suited to our task...and then
the labor is of God, please Lord, not mine!
Not mine, the lamb:
not mine, the shadow of the day.

But as it must, darkness capitulates:
the leering altar stands complete;
the last reluctant wood in place--
the morning sun upon that empty bier,
a tremulous Abraham,
an anxious son,
a knife still restless in its sheath.
No ram in sight

Whose act was it that arrested.
that bare arm's descent that morn...
Satan's caprice? Or do you plead
the changeless word of God?
~

The Shadow of a Stroke

The shadow of a stroke
For all the damages
there was no pain
but for the thought,
I am the person that I was,
and knowing that I'm not...
A Wanna Be, dog-paddling
on the surface of my intellect
and decked in silence,
just to play it safe.

It is a confraternity I viewed
from just a step above,
or so I thought. But now
I need not think at all. I'm told
that I can get it back.
Perhaps.
But suddenly I'm old.
There seems to be
a niche for me upon a field
of reminiscences but please,
not yet;
grant me a plow,
a whirlwind or two
and just a touch of irony
to force a reach just past demise
into the endless now.
~

Where Angels Tred

Where Angels Tred

The altar showed anomaly,
an orb of light,
a foil for small realities
that I could easily forget
for that twilight cast,
to things I touch or dream--
that spirit song sequestered
where I cannot go.

Thoughts of relevance
...of insight
...of perceptions being reconciled
with the mundane
then smiling at myself:
all those are imprints on the mind
vibrating in the here and now
and possibly across the isthmus
in the place where peace prevails.

Orbs are discreet and diffident,
and when you chase them down,
they're gone. No peace remains
this side of consciousness,
yet on the journey of the open heart
an awe ineffable, a resolution that a dream
would trust and understand.

Or a dream within a dream?
Reality is ill defined. Yours, mine...
until the breath is gone
and consciousness fights on
to redefine the light.
And you and I will take awareness
to the end of day--and bless it,
certain that the night descends
to claim its own dark benefice
and decorous ecstacy.
~

Richard's Outrage

Richard's Outrage

Reading my good friend's poetry
caused him somehow, to burst through it
and he was alive, fully alive,
as if he never really left.
Perhaps he didn't.
He was always larger than life,
always giving away himself.
And now he's at it again,
chipping away at an image
and in the process taking a shot
at his favorite mystery
called resurrection.
~

Parable for Obscurity

Parable for Obscurity

Mere purity may not abide the breathless dawn
that even in its birth proclaims not innocence
but the virginity of time.

Yet with the rising wind, a shudder, all despoiled,
as in its hope for humankind is hopelessness for God.
The trees take up their compromise, frail fortitude
to greet with silent song a scene
already temporal. Man alone may speak,
and man alone makes prophecy of death.

It is the dawning unadorned of eloquence
that is the source of awe.
To speak of love or sacrifice,
of beauty hidden by a mountain mist
is to profane it in a house of age
.
For the marks of what is real
are not defined by birth and death
or by the footprints of a God
left by a careless tide.
No, there is more than beats upon our consciousness,
surpassing art, and making sport of good.

To shun the call that echoes out of reverie,
or not to know the nameless cavity
the heart reserves for stillness, is to set aside
a truth we did not carry in.

An afternoon's reflection on a hillside meadow
may leave empty hands and intellect,
but for the human spirit still spread forth
unseen star trails on the journey home.
~

Half a Ghost

Narcissus dwells
beside the stream,
content to gaze, and not to be.
In all those wonder years--
consumed in self-indulgence,he
limped through snatches of reality,
joined hands with infant consciousness,
then slipped away into himself.

He's back,
left-brained and prideful,
his image unenhanced and lost
beneath the roily surface of desire.
His seeking is the storm,
the passion clarity denied. So too,
the space for any denizen of paradise
to read the beauty lurking there,
for ego never visited the fathom sanctuary
of compassion and of peace.

His fingers touch the water,
but the universe is far away;
there is no god at all
or even self to smile at him--
no contemplation of a purity he could not know.
Alone, he could not weep.
~