Volume

The world seems large
but we seldom consider all of it
trapped as our perspectives are
in the flat plane of surface Earth—
but think of the vast volumes
within her and above her; think of
her molten iron core, which makes
mountains when it sloshes in the cup;
think of the infinite spacetime expanse
though which she slips in lonely grace;
think of this beloved, beveled ribbon
between the lava and the vacuum
where all our love, and war, and
our only hopes have thrived.

August 2019

Skin to skin

Skin to skin, we align
your fevered heart with mine,
its chills and sweats expressed
within my arms: in sleep or panic,
even frantic at the doctor’s touch,
fighting everything, including me,
eyes wide in confused terror and
your fists pounding on my chest
; all of this, my own body will absorb
with its skin and blood and joy.
Rest here, small friend; allow me
the honor of beating for your heart,
the privilege of maintaining you,
while raspy cries and shaking breaths
become still, and whole, and calm.

August 2019

Blurring

Why do we move so fast
the world is only blurs?
A season, a year,
beginnings and ends
and the humans within
—smeared, like slow film
that cannot catch the frame.
My boss says, looking up,
grabbing his old gym bag
almost surprised, “it’s been
a fat four years, and...”
but we blur that too,
even the recollections.

August 2019

Why mourn?

“Why mourn,” I judge my friends
when the Now is full of laughter—
but I am a hypocrite, watching
each season change approach
foreboding and fearful, casting
the darkest shadows on the walls
of my expectations. I always have.
As a kid, when home alone, my
imagination would scald my heart:
my family has had a wreck and died,
I will be an orphan adrift evil tides,
and justice will scorn my pleas—
tears fell, rational mind aghast
that my sobs would express
real grief for imagined things.
So, now. My sons—best friends
each to the other—approach a chasm
they cannot expect, and my heart
breaks for imagined loss. But,
“Why mourn?” I ask myself,
when the Now is full of laughter?

August 2019

The endless gift

Despite our flaws
you set the clouds aflame
in beauty every night—
or should I say, you give us
eyes and minds capable of
understanding Beauty. Also
tragically capable of evil
whether real or imagined,
but you didn’t have to give us
a sense of Beauty; yet you did.

August 2019

Hawaii

Violence can make beauty;
sunlight burns our atmosphere
or its radiation dances with
Earth’s magnetized iron core—
but also violence ends beauty,
as cathedrals found in 1942
or Pompeii lovers discovered, too.
But, speaking of volcanoes—
sometimes we find violence
clears old beauty for the new
and casts an island
as a gem in the Pacific.

August 2019

Social observations of sea critters

The fish in schools don’t care
neither do we acknowledge them
until we nearly collide. Not so,
the solitary crabs: they see us
from afar and scuttle out of the way.

August 2019

Static beauty

I envy this of objects—
a beautiful thing
will be so forever
until it is no more.
Not so, my soul: which
thrives, shines, and sours
all in turns & often
all at once.

August 2019

Sunsets on blue

Your horizon fires,
an open door to my cage:
extinguish in haste
while Earth watches
colors flame the sky.
There is a rush, seeing you
in your prime, painting
humans with your charm;
sink, sink below my horizon,
fade from view, depart—
I am caged. Therefore
let me be. Allow me
this conceit, to live
upon this Earth as she is:
desolate, perhaps, but daily
basking in your fire’s glow.

August 2019

Unstraightened paths

The path
is not always straight
nor flat, nor even
together. Yet it goes
on and on, inviting us
to follow—so—
curious hearts carry on
occasionally just to see
what’s next for
better or for worse.

August 2019

Lovers at the pillbox

Lovers at the pillbox
whispered secrets, I guess;
we couldn’t hear them.
I wonder if they expected this
years back, Army engineers
pouring concrete in a block:
an art show, a bench for
sweethearts & deep emotions,
a place for hearts and children.
Or did they expect a shell
from an enemy battleship, then
death amid dust & bent metal?
We bothered them, so
the lovers moved; we stared
at the panoramic sea, briefly,
and nobody thought to ask
the pillbox what it’d seen.

August 2019

Dark oceans at night

I am staring down
the longest horizon
black water under dark skies
hearing a woman’s laugh
lifted up to me on a breeze.
I am not amusing, anymore:
my brooding mind invents
excuses when asked
where it is occupied. But in
truth, I am myself quite often
that far dark horizon, distant
and grim for reasons
difficult to clearly see.
A bird calls, out of place at night
to arrest my self absorption.
How dare I be persuaded thus!
When animals, who live and die
with little notice, still call at midnight
against the unyielding sea with hope
and what amounts to joy. How
little I regard myself, or the universe
of souls around me! I sit in silence,
chastised by myself, until at last,
accepting darkness that persists,
I rise and leap into the morning
we all know follows close behind.

August 2019

Hillside fears

We are frightened
when we look at you too long:
your sheer scale reminding us
of our impermanence. Below,
mountains pile up over millennia,
above, clouds match their volume
in an afternoon. Both prick the edge
of the Sea. And we watch, feeling
significant, until we look too long.

August 2019

Jet lag

At five we rise with Sol
but our bodies recall the hour
as eleven. So truth follows us
from yesterday into the morning:
it is both the sunrise and the noon.

August 2019

Travel

We let Honey, with her beautiful tattoos
take our picture, pour us Mai Tais,
recommend lunch, the way friends do;
we’ll never meet again. Later,
the salty taste of snorkeling still
in my sinuses, I thought—it is hard
to be sincerely Here: this hospitality
is no more my community than
these mountains are my home.
But consciously, I set this aside.
I am, Now; brief though they may be,
these hours and people full of beauty
are worthy of my attention.

August 2019

Worship

Trees lift their arms
as if they are fed up with us
and how we catch them in
their slow worship of the sky.

August 2019

Alone: chapter three

It is a gift
sometimes
to be alone; others
a curse, but
it is never unnoticeable.
Silence falls upon us
like snow in winter,
blanketing our world
in solitude and calm.
What will you do
with this, what meaning
shall you give it, for
deep within us
this has always been.
Now surfacing, we ask
whether it is loneliness
or deep companionship:
we are with ourselves:
what does it mean?
But the inner eye sees
and the inner voice tells
of life shared richly, given
to another and received.
We cannot forget this dream.
Yet we find ourselves alone
with ourselves, and think—
“Well then, here I am,
and it is good to have
the here and now,
together with myself.”
For we shall always have this;
nothing else, indeed, is promised us.

August 2019

Highway thoughts pt. 295

Down the chute of nature
shoot we complicated machines
humans cased in metal boxes
fighting for inches. Speed
along in bubble galaxies,
my comrades: let the slender V
of open sky above, and fog
on the early morning highways
remind you of your souls.

August 2019

Isolation

See how we are all alone,
Moons apart and set adrift
in orbits looped on one another:
a symphony of separation.
Yet like Luna, who does not know
the tides she casts upon the Earth,
we too must overstate our hanging
high and isolated in an empty sky.

August 2019

Impurities forgiven in a sink

My son dips his brush
bleeding color into clear
as do we all; all of us
into one another. Whether
poison or beauty, into jars
murky or crystal clean: we drip
our paints together.
When the jar turns inky dark
my son grips it with small hands
(but we are all clumsy
with forgiveness) and
dumps the water in a sink,
refills, and starts again.
There is a blue stain
in the yellow paint pocket
carried by an innocent brush
to smear a scar on paper;
it cannot be undone.
I dab the yellow with a towel
and it is pure again. But
the towel is thrown away
and the paper saves the stain.
And my own soul, murky
with selfish poisons: does He dare
drip this into His oceans?
Or can His son dip his brush
into my jar, film rolling backwards
to absorb my inky sins
and deposit them in
some unspoken place?
Or pour me out in Heaven’s sink
and drain me into Hell; only let me
be clear and start again.

August 2019

Perfection

Instead of perfection
give me your broken things,
your scars and flaws and cruelties.
I know myself well enough to see
the rest is forced. We are
by nature deeply flawed;
still, give me nature: I’d rather
the blisters and splinters,
the hail and the thunderclaps,
than landfills piled high
with disposable perfection.

August 2019

Massive life

It’s hard to tell how big the sky is
glimpsing just its whitecaps
above a parking lot horizon, but
it is fatally massive. Life, too,
seems short and can be cruel
but in the end I think we all find
it to be the longest thing we know.



August 2019