You ask where I am from?

A recent contest on another site challenged us to write on the subject, "Where am I from." I didn't know my entry would center on my mother, but that is the way it turned out:

You ask where I am from?

I am from a woman
who stretched out her breath
upon a hundred years,
and strikes upon this day
a distant voice,
a thunder tympanum advancing
low across the sky,
a heartbeat rising from the earth,
more eloquent because she is and was
a symphony without a score...
a dialogue of resonance within
that stretches out the years instead
and makes their number meaningless.

I, a part of the premiere,
partaking of the air that left her nostrils,
of the milk that drained her breasts,
am from a heritage of love;
a quiet patience that was her bequest,
adorned her like a jewel
too lovely to display its fire
but from her open heart.
~

Errant Scalpel

Delighting in my bliss
I split my personality today
as if to look aside
and find an argument
that I could follow through,
and win.

Alas, my adversary
had outsmarted me
and also sliced himself
in two.
~

At the Mountaintop

I asked the wisest man I know
just what it was beyond the word.
"Could it be God?" but he said, "No.
We used that up, millenia ago."

"But I have seen it,
heard it,
tasted it, not with my senses,
but with more!"

"For awhile, it seemed I died.
but then I realized, the I
behind my eyes, just didn't matter
anymore...the universe
was magnified, and all I knew
was love."

My mentor looked at me.
"For everyone, it is a secret
ke may see and not describe,
nor understand--not you,
not I,
nor may it ever be."
~

Elegy

A man stands on a hilltop, weeping.
Come and see.

For he has watched a nation unaware,
chipped away to just this memory.
We'd found that we could meet a war,
and through a sacrifice to find its end
and then in one obscenity, (a burst of light)
attended with our souls the foetal cavity
of madness--gave to the world
a blood-besotted flag,
and yielded up its ghost.

His tears come hotter, will not
be assuaged.

It was where love existed.
Beauty quietly confirmed itself
before our eyes; we had a god
and ate his flesh, and drank of him.
And once we lost ourselves in moonlight.
Once we sang.

We may not turn away;
such grief is unconsoled
and ever shared.
The man has tears enough for us.
The nation, swept away by greed,
left us this hilltop.
Come, and let us weep with him.
For all eternity.
~

To Reminisce

To Reminisce

It was as if the old ones re-appeared
to die again, to write the words within
blank lines-- to show that history
had carried on beyond my sight,
where vapors moved aside, made way
for breezes daring to intrude
upon a hot, dry summer afternoon.

How many stayed behind,
to age as upstarts, unconscious
of my wanderings, keepers of the town--
and then the one from college
modeling with his fingers
on the faces of the dead?

I sit here, looking for a reason
I should make a journey back.
They'd look at me, and not remember,
nor would I, but then perhaps just one
would look again

and for an instant there's that vapor
with its strange caress, the steeple clock
just chimed as school let out;
he'd see me step across the street
with my familiar gait,
and entertain one transient thought;
have I seen him before?
...No, let it go; it's late.
(I too, would never know

we once flew kites together,
made milkshakes at the time for rest
and always were the very best of friends.)
~

Childhood Tree

He was supposed to be there still
in forty years when I returned,
but then of course, a boy's home town
is metamorph and tolerates
old maples patiently until
old homes come down and new ones rise.
I'm glad I wasn't there the day
my old friend could no longer kiss
the skies, but fell and shuddered
on the earth, and bled in green.

Though not unique, this grandiose
old fellow was my first true friend;
I mourned him more than any human
that I knew, and though I hold
no faith in spirit trees, I was aware
when I came back, of his success
in taking part of me away, as well.

It is forever I have lost
the sostenuto of his loyallty.
Forever that his thunder of lament
is still...in heaven's now
and in the glade of hell.
~

Omega's Death

What have I done--
to crash the dome of heaven
upon the head of sweetness...
to turn a loving moment into pain?
It was a time to stand alone,
creating evil on the universal page
of paradise; I would not see
that there was no retreat.
Instead I seized the power
to banish innocence,
and by myself ignited
all the fires of hell.
For this, a pennance is too late;
no thought of magnitude
may temper it to save
the devil in the sky,
for he is I.
~

China God

Homo erectus, from the moment
that he looked into the dome above
and knew he could not stand to be alone,
raised up "El" in his own image,
let him step between our weakness
and our fears, then prostrate,
groped in vain to reach a new reality
that seeks escape as its device,
that glories in the niceties of elegance,
of twists and swirls,
baroque enhancing of an argument
now creased with time.

And vanity it is, all second sight,
all flowers in the night
that we had breathed before
and loved,
and fell upon with tears.
It is these pinpoint moments
flashing at us, that contain
a universe, a glory
to sustain a life, an era
made of breath, a now
that may not fade away.

The hunger does it...the holy lust
that drives us to ascension
in the mist of morning,
some kind of rapture
we were called to,
back within the cave.
~

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.
~