Tag Archives: philosophy

Morning Suizen

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Morning Suizen

Boundless, it sips direction in the way of all music,
tonguing each note for its salt.

We call this ecstasy. Or peace.
Follow, and they still escape, always beyond
our outstretched fingers.

Exhale slowly. What do you know?

That long tunnel, ribbed in silence.
The scent of burning cedar.
Days framed in darkness and birdsong.

 

* * *

Note: Suizen is the practice of playing the shakuhachi, the traditional Japanese bamboo flute, as a means of attaining self-realization.

 

“Morning Suizen” first appeared on Nine Muses Poetry. Many thanks to editor Annest Gwilym for taking this piece.

The Draft (with recording)

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The Draft

All memories ignite, he says, recalling
the odor of accelerants and charred

friends. Yesterday I walked to the sea
and looking into its deep crush

sensed something unseen washing
out, between tides and a shell-cut foot,

sand and the gull’s drift, or the early names
I assign to faces. This is not sadness.

Somewhere the called numbers meet.

 

* * *

“The Draft” first appeared in Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art.

In the Key of Your Hour

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In the Key of Your Hour 

The words I sing are draped in silence,
wedged between notes yet flowing forward.

Stop-time presents the illusion of interrupted tempo and meter.

Perception informs our spirits.

The old guitar hangs on the wall and seldom speaks,
preferring instead to lightly hum when the wind blows just so.

The conceit of two right hands. A slamming door.

Music enters my room by subterfuge, but exits boldly.

If simultaneity is relative, how do we assign primacy
to an overtone? One voice, one whole.

We must respond to our bodies. In kind, with trust.

I ask you to listen without considering the requisite commitment.

The broken circle represents common time replete with imperfections,
linking the measurable to the internal well.

Gather what comes, no matter the source.

Mark time and repeat: harmonics, the quivering string. Breath.

 

 

* * *

“In the Key of Your Hour” appeared here in September 2016, and is also in my chapbook-length work, The Circumference of Other, which is included in IDES: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks, published by Silver Birch Press in 2015.

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Tree

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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

 

 

A Walk Through the Live Oaks

 

Written in the 80s, “Tree” first appeared here in December 2014.

Mayflies (with recording)

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Mayflies

Having no functioning
mouths, adults do not eat,

and live their lives
never knowing

the pleasure of food
and drink, the bitter

bite of dandelion greens
with the crisp notes

of prosecco rolling over
the tongue. Instead,

they engage in aerial
sex, often in swarms

above water, many dipping
to the surface to lay eggs,

some submerging, while
others die unfulfilled,

eaten. Who’s to say
which life burns brighter;

even knowing these facts,
still I dream of flight.

 

 

“Mayflies” is included in my chapbook, From Every Moment a Second. It was also the inspiration for the artwork gracing the cover. I am in debt to Stephanie L. Harper for providing such a vivid and appropriate piece of art for the book. Available at Amazon.Com and Here

 

 

Japanese Gardens

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Japanese Gardens

how natural the
lines falling so
purely as if

with a single
stroke we walk
through the opening

and see space
the white center
composed of sand

and gravel later
a gate opens
to another garden

its lantern and
stone so carelessly
arranged so deliberate

 

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“Japanese Gardens” first appeared here in January 2015.

 

My Poem “Maps” is Up at Green Ink Poetry

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My poem “Maps” is live at Green Ink Poetry. This previously appeared in Riggwelter, and was originally drafted during the August 2016 Tupelo Press 30-30 Challenge. I owe its existence to Ken Gierke, who sponsored the poem and provided the title (which I changed) that sparked this piece.

 

 

I Praise the Moon, Even When She Laughs

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I Praise the Moon, Even When She Laughs

I got drunk once and woke in Korea
with you watching over me.

Odd, how you spend seasons looking
down, and I, up. If I lived in a cloud,

could you discern me from the other
particles? Perhaps your down is

peripheral, or left, or non-directional. I can
fathom this without measuring scope,

yet I feel queasy about the possibility
of being merely one vaporous drop

coalescing among others, unnamed
and forgettable, awaiting the particular

atmospheric conditions to plummet to my
fate. As if we control our own gravities!

One winter I grilled pork tenderloin under
your gaze, unaware that the grass

around me had caught fire, and when I
unwound the hose and turned on the

faucet you laughed, as the hose wasn’t
connected and only my feet were

extinguished. Dinner was delayed
that evening, but I praised you just the same.

I look up, heedless in the stars’ grip, unable
to retrace all those steps taken to this here,

now, but still you sway above the branches,
sighing, lighting my path, returned once

again, even if not apparent at all times. Every
star signals a departure. Each is an arrival.

 

*  * *

“I Praise the Moon, Even When She Laughs” was published in Sourland Mountain Review in January 2017.

 

Two Poems Up at Grand Little Things

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My poems “Another Goodbye” and “Flinch” are live at Grand Little Things, a new publication that “embraces versification, lyricism, and formal poetry.”

Thank you, editor Patrick Key, for taking these pieces.

 

 

Love in the Time of Untruth

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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.