I THOUGHT IT MEET,
BEING BLESSED WITH PRIVILEGE,
THAT I SHOULD SING,
BUT I SLOG HEAD DOWN.
COVETOUS, I STOP AND GAZE UPON
A BLACK CAT’S SLEEK PELT
RIPPLING IN THE SUN
AS SHE CUTS ‘CROSS MY PATH –
FERVENTLY I WISH MY LIMBS
COULD SO SHIMMER AS I STALK —
AH BUT NO SUCH HEEDLESS GRACE FOR MAN,
RATHER SUCH AS A DANCER CAN
WITH HEART AND SWEAT
PUT ON ~~~
Time is simultaneous; so say some mystics. There is a sucker born every minute, says old P.T. But it feels like there is no time left for either/or. We’ve got ourselves by the throat. Our long knives are drawn and poised. We’ve been born every minute in sync with our death. How do we unclench ourselves from this dream? Caught exposing ourselves in public places, We stand accused on the coasts of time. The sun rises and sets according to how we face, And the two oceans rumple the sands at our feet with recurrent hissing____________
Free, condemned on shores of balanced flux In the silence of a thought— Our hearts also, stilled between beats, Minds go white—-
In the silence of this thought, All Time Is Simultaneous (1987)
Moon’s
Light rays
Out over the loom
Of wind-rippled lake.
Light bars flash in the eye of a loon,
That still shore sentinel watching the sand lapped, slaking
It’s endless thirst, hissing. She opens her long mouth
And boldly hoots her runes into the ear
Of the intimate, feathering wind,
Stately spreads her wings
And flies straight into
The moon’s
Cold
Eye.
(1995)
Why do we move at all?
Born we, and some time in
Happiness spend, then dark
Blood begins to move.
Dark blood, bitter love
Of darkness, streams stark
Fears through any stable mien–
Nubile apparitions burst–
Silences exist as null,
And nothing as nothing is.
Echos of the question call:
Why do we move at all?
We stir and cease;
And that is all. That is all.
WALNUT FALLING
Had to shut the tractor down and take a break
in the humid shade of the orchard,
And in the buzzing, ringing stillness
heard
The first nut fall…
KEE KEE KEE
calls the she-hawk,
coursing for the kill;
And black and white magpies
Flit through the floppy walnut leaves-
A wind of mad noise;
But I,
in the ringing stillness
Heard,
The first nut
Fall.
LIVING NIGHT
Open the box;
Take out a match.
Strike fire from the hearthstone.
Twist and turn the burning stick
With slow fingers and watch
Wettish red turn to crinkled black,
The curl of tortured wood
As flame creeps toward flesh.
cigarette.
Go out to the night
Cut to the wind and misted moon
Twist and curl, burning red and bright
As flame moving through flesh
Go out to the night
Sputter and burn
Though owls quest and dogs harry
And black cats twitch their tails
In wait;
Though moon moves quick to meet the clouds
And mist smokes from the creek
And muted birds delude the ear
With soft songs of the sun;
And though flowers flower
And leaves green
And the looming ridge frowns darkly on the valley
And echo-fingers run searching through the grass,
I pass safely
Wide grey eyes bedded like jewels
In my priestly body of the night.
I turn
And see ‘cross the dew-silvered field
The dark trace of my passage
my eyes wet
with grey regret
From Sharon, CTH
Child of My love, lean hard,
And let me feel the pressure of thy care;
I know thy burden, child. I shaped it;
Poised it in Mine Own hand; made no proportion
In its weight to thine unaided strength,
For even as I laid it on, I said,
“I shall be near, while he leans on Me,
This burden shall be Mine, not his;
So shall I keep My child within the circling arms
Of My Own love.” Here lay it down, nor fear
To impose on a shoulder which upholds
The government of worlds. Yet closer come:
So I might feel My child reposing on my breast.
Thou lovest Me?
I knew it.
Doubt not then; but loving Me, lean hard.
–from STREAMS IN THE DESERT, SEPT, 2013
My Chapel by the Sea 