Maureen

You have no idea

how sweet your face is.

I will never know your limits.

Evergreens casually sway

through the depths of your eyes.

No one else is left alive.

Those pines, whispering perhaps, or

murmurous? or am I, simple man, not able to

conceive the piercing clarity of their song?

For lost I am within your eyes,

the vaporous forest there that’s set outside

the sheer plane of truth or the lies of the wise.

And I am lost without your eyes.

No woodlands, no clouds. No shifting vista. And

sudden as light, now! — no thought

that can be set to words.

Meditation or its like in the days following

cyclones in Burma and the

Tang Shan earthquake in China

It is not consciousness which directs (or rises

frothy from) a true moment of pure perception

So you’d hope too no nausea need ever thread the

belly of the greatest or even the least conception, but...

Civilization’s result is inevitably chaos

The process of culture’s a consuming force

No serenity either here in “non-being”

Balance and deeper truth derive from commitment

to your gaze emptied of all

the paraphernalia of time,

and existence perceived outside

the furnace of creation

What surrounds me then, blossoming, like light? And

what is this, maybe the same, dank as a dead calf’s innards?

Too much to feel, too deep, but how can I turn away from

the massive incomprehensible energy that perpetually

somehow derives from a still and empty center

Spiritual Reflex

Cool of dawn, the dusky forest soaks in silence.

Tawny flecks speckling the wary hazel irises of her eyes.

Her poetry brims upon the sponge-like sky,

replete with will yet free of advice.

Once poetry ruled the hearts and thoughts of women

and men alike, and filled the soul of every child.

But music, that was her sight, her memory, music her mirror too.

And I sing her now because she told: meaning emerges

solely from the music whole. She coddled no prospect that

words solo could ever unwrap the meanings we have made.

There was a time, she once said, when music and its rhythms were

all any of us needed. Alone, complete, they embraced the whole.

(Though we all know now, do we not, know there are times

music sheds no sound? and sometimes, in the darkness

of light, only words are there, only these fleeting clambering

ragged thoughts, engaging with a void to translate

or reclaim all the music we never hear —

perchance to discover meaning, even hope.)

Never so much was it love limned her eyes, or drove her.

Perhaps she was never known for those eyes, even less for

her palpable honest love. Then drag me back by my hair from death,

I’d still know Charlotte most because she intrigued me to live:

immersed within each moment, yet outside of time. Once

upon a time, in lives discrete from remembrances wrought then

entangled, we all had clear intent, and passion, and dreams,

not a one of us

beaten down

by ambition,

nor at war

with the world.

jan died 40 years ago today

tiny wings for you today

healing any disfigurement

none of us ever noticed and all

the other withered gardens

that curtain your face now

today sweet wings un-numbered

drift down from the down

from the clouds

they celebrate and

hold you aloft

and like an ancient dream jan

or mythic poem

you flourish again

your flight is exquisite

the moon breathes only for you

ghettos give birth to angels

all wishes become one

as your boysenberry ‘n cream eyes

for a moment glisten again

you were always so giving and true

yet now the moment nears

again I know when no more

for a time will I see the special way

to sing to the gleam and the beat

of your special tiny wings

but I will not forget you jan

the forest of your heart

will continue to grow

like children as cross-legged here

on a quilt of fallen leaves I

continue receiving intricate

evasive instructions at the feet

of time

— 22 Juin 2008

before dawn, homage to Han Shan

searching the sky for the sky

no hint of mist or star nor hawk.

the night was as dark as wisdom.

beyond silence, vanishing with every glimpse.

enlightenment is like the moon – it comes

and goes – always there, always rising, always

somewhere else. alone too, I vanish, like an

old mountain recluse, or a pale snowflake

into the cold stream,

or tangle of dust subsiding.

I disappear into the poem,

and the poem into fragrant moonlit dawn.

Homage Of Day To The Years Passing

Dawn approaches our sleep

like a bell softly touched

that will echo throughout the day, and

so intimate the distances we’ve passed in life

to gather a few withering petals scattered

along with our sorrows and joys.

No mist obscures the open air today, but still I don’t

see so far, in this engagement with immediacy.

I recline for a moment below the winds and read a verse

I’ve often read before. Sometimes I’ve liked it,

other times I revere it less. But I always feel different,

the words always lift my senses or shift my view,

every time I read them.

Clarity and repose, these are nice, but

not always foremost in my life. Lost as I am

in the search for no-mind, should I place them

higher than the clangor of the million moments?

My head aches, a bit, but I see through that,

just as I strive to peer through silence also.

What seems empty and still

may prove to be a storm preparing.

Still no haze, though the view is far from clear.

I strive not to question this instant’s vision.

The light of day gleaming all around me is gone.

And yes this is dust, but it is fragrant, and as it falls

softly onto my ears I hear the chimes from other times

settling in with us for an evening of poems and talk.

somehow I know this.

Not that I tell myself so.

How should I? And you,

how will you know?

— My face

may leave you speechless.

When the words depart,

I am a being more ancient than

adult or child.

Lonely lake. Utter sun. Gleaming sky.

Dappled butterfly poised silk on a small purple stone.

absolute silence

as though no one around here

ever knew of sound

Meditation And Homecoming

Mulling the masques of air and light

through which we live our days —

the colors of Spring become no less

hard to bear than its sounds.

A blossom opens on some quaint other star,

brilliant, blooming into clear blue air with a scent

I sense even from this distant land, where betrayal and

ruin appear along every path.

No moon to see reflecting in

a river of dirt or the flooding mud.

Cascades of blood won’t render you immortal, nor ever

make whole what is not, in this lush outrageous world

— This world which others have noted before me

is too beautiful to be true, too beautiful not to be.

My eyes turn to the sky.

Once I dreamt of eternity, but eternity is blinding.

And even the lightest satori does not rely upon

profound inspiration. It all resides in the day at hand.

I think only of this moment then, maybe the next,

ponder the newborn clouds.

From just across the room your gaze reaches

out, enveloping me like a slow clear river.

shadow — path of the dream

dawn at my knee yellow lizard

poised on a tawny leaf

souls like lotus seeds pepper the path

whatever I chance to see

seems so far away

wherever you believe you’re bound

you always sometimes lose the way

the young ones in their silvered livery

laugh to think you ever thought you’d have

some sort of say in this heart-strewn play

the course is formidable

the stately roar of the sky innate in every voice

intention becomes diffuse

cognitive dissonance the natural design

as mere belief becomes religion

and science superstition

yet somehow the journey

nearing its end left us smiling

for our successes (possumwood persimmons plummet

to nestle by the wayside, shaded by rose periwinkle) though all

I carry with me

for all my time on this road

toward a village of clouds destined to

steal away before the next moon

are letters

for old friends who have already slipped off

and will never return

(Shadow): How To Compose A Poem

...lives like lightning, flashing in the wind.

Our wings will not help us now, old friend.

The willows and elms of the ancient city may seem stalwart, strident

even, rising beside the crumbling towers, above the plazas eroding...

Minds become residue becomes the loud creation upon which we reside.

As my pleasure in being deepens my thoughts grow sadder, wilder.

How can this be? I believed that I would hear voices

ringing, the sky would open until the very end. Clearly, it

would appear, this world that is only our breath is possible.

At times. (Our lives like lightning flash through the wind.)

The century here, all say, has just begun. Yet the precious grasses

blow browner, the rivers all flow dull, like sullen sludge beneath

the fading flare of civilizations which claim to notice all the pain.

Thoughts become residue. (Warriors practice the old soft shoe.)

To myself I am both mundane and a miracle.

I sit and read, or recline among Spring’s soft reeds, fashioning thoughts,

dreams one by one. (Wind, voices, willows, breath.)

Until they subside, and I weave them carefully into a light summer shawl,

a fine mist, or a luxuriant vale of pebbles and rubble perhaps,

later to exhale, or wrap ‘round my shoulders, or hike across. Until

the moment comes at last to laugh, and show

everyone my new poem.