Another untitled poem from the 80s…
wood and water
the wave of
fragrance so perfect
we seek to
obtain it as
if we could
be windows open
to a light
the gentlest cloud
would obscure still
spreading like one’s
final exhalation which
travels only to
disperse and become
at last another’s
This first appeared here in June 2017.
In the Fifth Chamber Lies the Hour’s End
To fairly allocate irrigation resources, the Persians measured time with water,
sinking a bowl in a larger vessel and tallying the count with pebbles.
And what is time but counting, determining the number of units within a set?
The sum of beats between silences and their diminishing echoes?
Its symbol in the West grew from fig and ivy leaves, while early medical
illustrations depicted pine cone-shaped organs.
In most reptilians, the aorta receives only oxygenated blood.
Qanats pump by gravity. The hagfish’s second resides in its tail.
Recognize the empty as full. Squeezed shut, we open.
Contraction and flow, ejection, inflow, relaxation.
Emotion as electrical impulse. Murmuring valves. The color red.
The fifth chamber remains silent and undetected.
The primitive fish’s chambers are arranged sequentially, but in an S-shape.
Ancients believed arteries transported air through the body.
The Buddhist figure, too, originated in leaves, symbolizing not love
but enlightenment. The ache of failure confounds us.
“In the Fifth Chamber Lies the Hour’s End” was first posted here in May 2016.
The Art of Flight
What wings accumulate is not air
but space, an exemplar
of restraint defied. I listen
and hear feathers
ruffling in the shadows,
a vibration that swells
until it becomes flight or
regret, the retrieval of our
bodies from this dream of ascent.
The art of flight is one of
disturbance, of angles and lift
and touching what can’t be seen.
What we hold carries no meaning.
The beauty lies in the gathering.
I wrote this piece in the mid-80s, and posted it here in 2015. I’d forgotten about it, until I found the original moldering in a box of old papers. It’s okay, for an artifact from another life…
Cardinal
Question: what is air if not
the means by which we
see and feel? Sound creates only
itself, another version of the original
sense. I move from shadows to a deeper
darkness, hoping to find that point where absence
ends. But there is no end, only
continuation, a cry for those
who offer their hands in ambiguity. Sometimes
a cardinal’s call fills our
morning with questions. So
little of all we touch
is felt. We are the air. The air is.
Another poem from the 80s. I was obsessed with birds even back then…
When Shadows Hide
I breathe when you breathe,
and watching me,
you capture each lost molecule.
This book blinks whenever you turn the page.
I see you between the words, between the white threads.
You are the adored chapter, the one I read in bed before
sleep, and after I wake, before the first wren announces
dawn, then in the afternoon’s highest point, when shadows hide,
and later, as they emerge to stroke your bare shoulder.
What’s on the other side, you ask. What do you hear?
Your breath, I say. Your name.
“When Shadows Hide” was first published in the print anthology Epiphanies and Late Realizations of Love in February 2019.
In Gathering Light
1
I sit in darkness
my back to the words
gouged in stone
and wonder what
phrase the stars will
utter tonight,
what wisdom
one finds in dreams
or the widening circles
of the hole that was
there
in water,
in earth, in the common tongue
of all things.
The tree speaks
a different language.
I hear
whispers, a bone-flute’s
whistle, the sound of metal
striking dirt striking
wood,
but nothing, no words
I can gather.
2
I have lost my shadow
among the weeds
of this place.
Somewhere
it wanders,
a thin, grey shape
waiting for light to give birth
to the blackness
I call friend,
itself, shadow.
My fingertips trace
the lines, hoping
to draw something
from the stone –
an unknown word,
the druid’s
small bag of dreams,
the lyrics of the stars.
* * *
Another poem, another artifact from the mid-80s, rediscovered last year.
Inevitable River
Transparent beauty, I adore the way
your mind filters and reconstructs patterns,
waves transcending straight lines through
color-drenched nature and the coming days.
Like a second page cleansed of words,
or a bulldozed path through a mine field,
we start our separate lives together, anew.
Even the winged beings admire us.
Our pasts hover behind,
shadowing our drives through lost towns
and lonesome adolescent dreams,
falling further behind each day, as we
flow forward, inevitable river of we,
opening to the future’s unclear certainties.
I read “Inevitable River” yesterday at my wedding to Stephanie L. Harper. Follow the link to find her poem “Trace.” Poetry keeps giving!
“Inevitable River” first appeared in November 2019 at Twist in Time Magazine. Many thanks to editors Renee, Adrienne and Tianna for accepting this piece.
Tree
where you go
the wind follows
as if no
choice remains but
that of sun
and oak an
attraction such that
limbs curve to
light a certainty
which cautions us
to intrude lest
we lose all
sight and sense
of beauty you
are this tree
Written in the 80s, “Tree” first appeared here in December 2014.
Love in the Time of Untruth
They look through us,
fingers scrabbling
through the soil
of a neighbor’s lush garden,
saying “we do this for you.”
Uprooting plants, desecrating
history, palms out, demanding more
they exchange trowel
for shovel,
hoe for explosives,
concentrating on their return
on investment.
Bewildered, we hold hands and watch.
“Love in the Time of Untruth” made its first appearance at Clementine Unbound. Many thanks and much admiration for editor G.F. Boyer for taking this piece and for being so kind during a difficult time.
Saltwater
What if you close your eyes
and your throat relinquishes
the morning’s bright
fingers, freed from bruises.
Suppose that particular night
never happened, the way
a wave crashing ashore
empties itself and trickles
back in separate communities,
mingling yet aloof, a
diminishing cortege. What
is the question? Take this
spoon. Fill it with saltwater.
Upend it into the pail. Observe.
“Saltwater” was first published in Nine Muses Poetry in May 2018.
O at the Edges 