“A Bit of Light”
As we are swirling in this machine of reality,
and bending our saddened bodies quietly,
it is our duty to be mindful of a certain
bright or colorful quality to the night
which visits us daily.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Sunday, October 03, 2010
(To one day be inscribed on the walls of AT&T...)
“All Along the Light Towers”
And so if myths are made of swords and shields,
then bats and bases must be the domain of lesser
fields? A mistake made only among the uninitiated...
After an afternoon at this yard, one tiny hand in Dad’s
and shimmering yellow sun peeking through the other,
grass gleaming Kentucky green, sky revealing Sunday
blue, bridge and bottle and mitt in view, towers rising
over September ships and red bricks and windy bay,
As twenty-four palm trees sway over Mr. Mays in the
balmy lavender ballpark evening, the fates of young
Jacks and Janes, warm breath bated, may very well
be sealed (by Lou too), orange and black backpacks
bounding in happy morning step on the way to school.
“All Along the Light Towers”
And so if myths are made of swords and shields,
then bats and bases must be the domain of lesser
fields? A mistake made only among the uninitiated...
After an afternoon at this yard, one tiny hand in Dad’s
and shimmering yellow sun peeking through the other,
grass gleaming Kentucky green, sky revealing Sunday
blue, bridge and bottle and mitt in view, towers rising
over September ships and red bricks and windy bay,
As twenty-four palm trees sway over Mr. Mays in the
balmy lavender ballpark evening, the fates of young
Jacks and Janes, warm breath bated, may very well
be sealed (by Lou too), orange and black backpacks
bounding in happy morning step on the way to school.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
“In the Crying”
At the top of our silent lungs,
burning in unquenched flames,
returning home from a stint on
underwhelming Neptune, spinning
with indignity, nicknacks and tic-tacs
on our welcome mat, we open the door
and drive our knees into the wooden floor,
Bracing our breaking souls against the forceful tide
of tears behind our dry and swollen eyes. Upon landing
we are cold and shaking, suitcases stationed round living
room furniture, and we are taking in the other’s hands in
common present prayer.
At the top of our silent lungs,
burning in unquenched flames,
returning home from a stint on
underwhelming Neptune, spinning
with indignity, nicknacks and tic-tacs
on our welcome mat, we open the door
and drive our knees into the wooden floor,
Bracing our breaking souls against the forceful tide
of tears behind our dry and swollen eyes. Upon landing
we are cold and shaking, suitcases stationed round living
room furniture, and we are taking in the other’s hands in
common present prayer.
Friday, September 03, 2010
“Foregone Love”
The land was flat. Dry, and arid. The lovers filled it with their bounty, though. Floral arrangements bloomed from their mouths as they spoke. A bin of neatly stacked periodicals rested at their bare feet, connecting them to the world, but they were otherwise lost in the desert home which covered them.
A tulip swallowed the spare living room with its color, a red burst of energy atop a stately green stem. The sun made a long shadow of it, and the couple knew to grab the hand of the other and exit out into the creeping lavender dusk.
Outside they found a perfectly red frisbee, and they flipped it to each other at short range for a nanosecond until a lightning bolt split the sky. They shuddered for a moment but found a home in the other's eyes, making their way back in before the breeze and the thunder could close the banging door on their heels. Inside they felt as though a cotton sheath had lined their quiet bones - it was love.
With simple hands, they held together at their waists and kissed. She spoke to him.
"I cannot be without you," she said. "I am growing older daily and my heart needs to hear yours when it is silent. Beat between me, will you? Expand when I contract. Allow me to dissipate in your embrace... " She trailed off because he had grabbed her, lifted her shirt and began kissing her breasts beneath her yellow t-shirt. Her belly bulged its four-month evidence, and they retired to the bedroom to warm the growing person between them.
The land was flat. Dry, and arid. The lovers filled it with their bounty, though. Floral arrangements bloomed from their mouths as they spoke. A bin of neatly stacked periodicals rested at their bare feet, connecting them to the world, but they were otherwise lost in the desert home which covered them.
A tulip swallowed the spare living room with its color, a red burst of energy atop a stately green stem. The sun made a long shadow of it, and the couple knew to grab the hand of the other and exit out into the creeping lavender dusk.
Outside they found a perfectly red frisbee, and they flipped it to each other at short range for a nanosecond until a lightning bolt split the sky. They shuddered for a moment but found a home in the other's eyes, making their way back in before the breeze and the thunder could close the banging door on their heels. Inside they felt as though a cotton sheath had lined their quiet bones - it was love.
With simple hands, they held together at their waists and kissed. She spoke to him.
"I cannot be without you," she said. "I am growing older daily and my heart needs to hear yours when it is silent. Beat between me, will you? Expand when I contract. Allow me to dissipate in your embrace... " She trailed off because he had grabbed her, lifted her shirt and began kissing her breasts beneath her yellow t-shirt. Her belly bulged its four-month evidence, and they retired to the bedroom to warm the growing person between them.
Monday, August 23, 2010
“The Owner”
Chart our progress on this planet, won’t you, Lord?
Give us an index, a success rate, a letter grade to push
us closer into the dreamworld which awaits, no?
Because the dreamworld awaits, doesn’t it, no? Right here?
Right here on this planet which will be perfected, right?
Which will one day be perfected in the glorious moonlight,
in baths of rain and tropical wind? In the Caribbean
resort where we walk hand-in-hand in sandals with
our one true lover and forget the rest?
Where there is limited apologizing and endless thanking and forgiving?
Where there is sunshine to warm the chilly memories of the cold distant past?
Where waking is dreamy? Yes, yes, there. There in the sand we shall
curl our toes and know we have passed
this class, this class of angels and saints
and scientists and creative investigators...
So that everything could be discovered and we could revel
in it fully, wholly, and notice finally that twilight to
daylight is eternity.
Chart our progress on this planet, won’t you, Lord?
Give us an index, a success rate, a letter grade to push
us closer into the dreamworld which awaits, no?
Because the dreamworld awaits, doesn’t it, no? Right here?
Right here on this planet which will be perfected, right?
Which will one day be perfected in the glorious moonlight,
in baths of rain and tropical wind? In the Caribbean
resort where we walk hand-in-hand in sandals with
our one true lover and forget the rest?
Where there is limited apologizing and endless thanking and forgiving?
Where there is sunshine to warm the chilly memories of the cold distant past?
Where waking is dreamy? Yes, yes, there. There in the sand we shall
curl our toes and know we have passed
this class, this class of angels and saints
and scientists and creative investigators...
So that everything could be discovered and we could revel
in it fully, wholly, and notice finally that twilight to
daylight is eternity.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
“Cast"
Just beyond the blocks and blocks of solid salted rocks and
seas and ships and many masts and ageless gulls and flocks,
a loving lantern light has cast in two the stars in black and bathed
them in a summer's glow that too few pairs of people know, in fact,
The gentle pace of conversation in easy ebb and flow and the not-too
distant sound of crashing above the undertow may convince us that
we've long been blessed, and to fairly count ourselves possessed of
Greatest fortune to witness, with liberty god's best and brightest views,
and to turn ourselves in blinding night, and to follow morning's gentle
hues to steal the beams of breaking light from nature's epic window.
Just beyond the blocks and blocks of solid salted rocks and
seas and ships and many masts and ageless gulls and flocks,
a loving lantern light has cast in two the stars in black and bathed
them in a summer's glow that too few pairs of people know, in fact,
The gentle pace of conversation in easy ebb and flow and the not-too
distant sound of crashing above the undertow may convince us that
we've long been blessed, and to fairly count ourselves possessed of
Greatest fortune to witness, with liberty god's best and brightest views,
and to turn ourselves in blinding night, and to follow morning's gentle
hues to steal the beams of breaking light from nature's epic window.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
"South Pacific"
Discovered time,
in lands unknown,
on distant sand where
seeds are sown on sky,
in song, on radiant shore,
and our daylong sun turns
evenings orange.
And hens are hemmed in next
to us by wire while tropical wind
swirls round our fire, dancing through
my boxers and across her soft skin.
Huts and hedges sway in green under
starlit acres of a hundred golden million,
and out back in sand and grass we sit with
glasses in hand, necks at long last torn off the
earth, tilting toward horizons in our simple wooden
sitting chairs, rocking gently back, hands now interlocked.
We two humans, man and woman, are peeling back, turning our
loving hands over, letting nature decipher night’s ways, and only the
subtle sound of slithering skin on silky sand remains under night’s glow,
legs and aching arms playing games, acting as bastions of eternally
replenishable energy.
in lands unknown,
on distant sand where
seeds are sown on sky,
in song, on radiant shore,
and our daylong sun turns
evenings orange.
And hens are hemmed in next
to us by wire while tropical wind
swirls round our fire, dancing through
my boxers and across her soft skin.
Huts and hedges sway in green under
starlit acres of a hundred golden million,
and out back in sand and grass we sit with
glasses in hand, necks at long last torn off the
earth, tilting toward horizons in our simple wooden
sitting chairs, rocking gently back, hands now interlocked.
We two humans, man and woman, are peeling back, turning our
loving hands over, letting nature decipher night’s ways, and only the
subtle sound of slithering skin on silky sand remains under night’s glow,
legs and aching arms playing games, acting as bastions of eternally
replenishable energy.
Thursday, July 01, 2010
Light
I'm back. Thanks for being patient.
The psyche, on the surface, certainly seems to act like a place. It appears that things "happen" there. Thoughts arrive, vanish, linger... So there's probably a location where psychic contents are presented, right? We certainly talk about it like this. Something's been "in" our head for weeks; that thought just "left" my mind...
Well - as I've alluded to in earlier posts - I don't think it's quite that simple. The psyche continues moving, at all times, but it's not quite as easy as imagining some conveyor belt bringing psychic contents, one after another, "into" the space of the mind.
However, there must be some orienting factor. There must be something that gives us the impression that a thought is happening "now." It will be the task of this post to see whether we can come up with an idea about what this might be. What "shows" a thought? In an earlier post I referred to the psychic "eye," and it is to this topic that I would like to return.
When I refer to the "psychic eye," I am not in the least comparing it to the physical eye. For the time being we must put aside all our materially-grounded conceptions of eyes. The psychic eye does, however, seem to be able to "see" psychic contents. So we might say that it is the quality or "part" of the psyche that enables us to witness what happens there. This observational faculty is not a thought. See for yourself. If you are still, you can observe psychic contents unobtrusively. Actually, all it takes is the knowledge that you have thoughts to know there is some sort of observer. Even that phrase - "you have thoughts" - bears witness to the dichotomy.
So the "eye," we have decided, is distinct from the contents. It is not an object in the psyche (i.e. a thought, image, or emotion), but an attribute of the psyche. It stands apart because it does not "happen"; it does not participate in the movement of psychic contents.
But what is it? How can we begin to describe such a thing? And if all it does is watches, then what is the point of talking about it?
Well, we might decide that it is important to know what this "eye" is because it seems to be connected with consciousness. Ahh, consciousness. That strange, elusive something that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Somehow, we know we know. We have the gift of reflection. But what is that something? Well, isn't that the quesiton. Scientists have searched for some physical correllate to the "observing faculty", but their efforts have proven unsuccessful. The "ghost in the machine" is nowhere to be found. It is not in the brain, the eyes, the heart - nothing!
The discussion of consciousness seldom ends without a peep from the bio- and neurochemistry crowd, so it might be good to take a momentary detour.
There are of course physical substrates to the phenomenon of thought. Neuroscientists have revealed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that some of the brain's electrical impulses correspond closely to the psychological phenomenon of thought. Accordingly, materialists would have us believe that the thought is the electrical impulse. They may also be inclined to argue in favor of the view that memories are "stored" at the cellular level, and that neuropeptides are the biological basis of emotion. If they characterized these findings as the physical aspect of psychic contents, no conflict would arise. But to suggest that neurochemical phenomena explains psychological phenomena reveals a materialist bias.
We don't know anything more about the true nature of memory by virtue of the fact that we have located cellular correllates to the process of memory retrieval. We may say that the memory is "in" the cell, but by no means are we any closer to a real picture of what memory it is, what it comes from, what its substantive underpinnings are. Similarly, we are no closer to identifying the substance of thought in light of the fact that we have correlated it with an electric neurological impulse. Thoughts are still fleeting, and any attempt to materialize them into a process we can understand intellectually is fruitless. They, like all of existence, must remain a mystery. We can only infer their nature by their activity. There is no scientific technique for analyzing, dissecting a thought. We cannot, in the last analysis, know what these things are in their substantive form. They are utter mysteries! They are unknowable, in the strict sense of the word; we are only able to investigate them on their surface presentations.
It benefits us immeasurably to preserve this wonder, this awe. We lose zest for life when we get too mechanistic, especially when the entity under investigation is the psyche. Thoughts and other psychic contents such as images and emotions have a dynamism that we cannot account for! In no way are we in total control of our thoughts - experience has proven this. They possess an autonomy that frustrates us! We ask them to go away but they won't! They have some remarkable, magnetic hold on us, just as the planets to the sun. They clearly have the power to disrupt our daily mental activity, and also shape the material world. Everything we see was once an idea! To deny that this dynamic entity emanates from some Source is egotistic. We are not simply little individual Prime Movers.
This is not a theological argument. A completely secular, non-religious person could accept the premise that it is difficult to account for the dynamism of the human organism, or any organism, without the concept of force, or energy. When evolution is explained as just "nature" running its course, that's dodging the question of a vital universal force that animates all life. This is the same universal force that animates our psyche, and the psyche, paradoxically, is the only tool we have for noticing it. The psyche is a big, energetic machine. It does not work mechanistically, mind you, though it does conform to certain patterns and tendencies, and it is guided by impulses.
In other words, when we reach back to find the Source, we cannot find anything tangible. We are left groping for filler - arguments to stretch over the Truth that we just don't know. When we say evolution is responsible for the way humans are, what are we really SAYING? There's still this gigantic question mark, this elephant in the room that is ignored dangerously - with the health of the organism at stake. We keep talking about the pretty balloon, but nobody talks about the air! We are mesmerized by the form and overlook the material substance that holds it all together. Unfortunately, science cannot measure this life-force. But it can describe it. This is what I am aiming to do.
An equally important, though frequently underemphasized quality of the psyche is its invisibility, or its seemingly ambiguous relationship to our conception of space. Though we can without question see its effects on a person (we know when a friend is anxious), it is, in itself, not apparent to the naked eye. In short, we cannot say for certain where the psyche is. Already we have established (in an earlier post), that "psyche" acts as un umbrella under which impressions from our "hearts," our "heads," our "guts," - perhaps even our genitals fall! So to speak of the "location" of the psyche becomes an exceedingly difficult task.
Instead, we put forth that the factor which distinguishes conscious psychic contents from unconscious psychic contents, and the factor which allows us to observe psychic contents via the psychic "eye," and the factor which produces the illusion of time are all the same. I am referring to light. Psychic light. Light, as an aspect or "quality" of the psyche, is the variable that reveals to us what is "in" our psyches at a given point in time, and in so doing brings these contents to consciousness.
The psyche, on the surface, certainly seems to act like a place. It appears that things "happen" there. Thoughts arrive, vanish, linger... So there's probably a location where psychic contents are presented, right? We certainly talk about it like this. Something's been "in" our head for weeks; that thought just "left" my mind...
Well - as I've alluded to in earlier posts - I don't think it's quite that simple. The psyche continues moving, at all times, but it's not quite as easy as imagining some conveyor belt bringing psychic contents, one after another, "into" the space of the mind.
However, there must be some orienting factor. There must be something that gives us the impression that a thought is happening "now." It will be the task of this post to see whether we can come up with an idea about what this might be. What "shows" a thought? In an earlier post I referred to the psychic "eye," and it is to this topic that I would like to return.
When I refer to the "psychic eye," I am not in the least comparing it to the physical eye. For the time being we must put aside all our materially-grounded conceptions of eyes. The psychic eye does, however, seem to be able to "see" psychic contents. So we might say that it is the quality or "part" of the psyche that enables us to witness what happens there. This observational faculty is not a thought. See for yourself. If you are still, you can observe psychic contents unobtrusively. Actually, all it takes is the knowledge that you have thoughts to know there is some sort of observer. Even that phrase - "you have thoughts" - bears witness to the dichotomy.
So the "eye," we have decided, is distinct from the contents. It is not an object in the psyche (i.e. a thought, image, or emotion), but an attribute of the psyche. It stands apart because it does not "happen"; it does not participate in the movement of psychic contents.
But what is it? How can we begin to describe such a thing? And if all it does is watches, then what is the point of talking about it?
Well, we might decide that it is important to know what this "eye" is because it seems to be connected with consciousness. Ahh, consciousness. That strange, elusive something that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Somehow, we know we know. We have the gift of reflection. But what is that something? Well, isn't that the quesiton. Scientists have searched for some physical correllate to the "observing faculty", but their efforts have proven unsuccessful. The "ghost in the machine" is nowhere to be found. It is not in the brain, the eyes, the heart - nothing!
The discussion of consciousness seldom ends without a peep from the bio- and neurochemistry crowd, so it might be good to take a momentary detour.
There are of course physical substrates to the phenomenon of thought. Neuroscientists have revealed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that some of the brain's electrical impulses correspond closely to the psychological phenomenon of thought. Accordingly, materialists would have us believe that the thought is the electrical impulse. They may also be inclined to argue in favor of the view that memories are "stored" at the cellular level, and that neuropeptides are the biological basis of emotion. If they characterized these findings as the physical aspect of psychic contents, no conflict would arise. But to suggest that neurochemical phenomena explains psychological phenomena reveals a materialist bias.
We don't know anything more about the true nature of memory by virtue of the fact that we have located cellular correllates to the process of memory retrieval. We may say that the memory is "in" the cell, but by no means are we any closer to a real picture of what memory it is, what it comes from, what its substantive underpinnings are. Similarly, we are no closer to identifying the substance of thought in light of the fact that we have correlated it with an electric neurological impulse. Thoughts are still fleeting, and any attempt to materialize them into a process we can understand intellectually is fruitless. They, like all of existence, must remain a mystery. We can only infer their nature by their activity. There is no scientific technique for analyzing, dissecting a thought. We cannot, in the last analysis, know what these things are in their substantive form. They are utter mysteries! They are unknowable, in the strict sense of the word; we are only able to investigate them on their surface presentations.
It benefits us immeasurably to preserve this wonder, this awe. We lose zest for life when we get too mechanistic, especially when the entity under investigation is the psyche. Thoughts and other psychic contents such as images and emotions have a dynamism that we cannot account for! In no way are we in total control of our thoughts - experience has proven this. They possess an autonomy that frustrates us! We ask them to go away but they won't! They have some remarkable, magnetic hold on us, just as the planets to the sun. They clearly have the power to disrupt our daily mental activity, and also shape the material world. Everything we see was once an idea! To deny that this dynamic entity emanates from some Source is egotistic. We are not simply little individual Prime Movers.
This is not a theological argument. A completely secular, non-religious person could accept the premise that it is difficult to account for the dynamism of the human organism, or any organism, without the concept of force, or energy. When evolution is explained as just "nature" running its course, that's dodging the question of a vital universal force that animates all life. This is the same universal force that animates our psyche, and the psyche, paradoxically, is the only tool we have for noticing it. The psyche is a big, energetic machine. It does not work mechanistically, mind you, though it does conform to certain patterns and tendencies, and it is guided by impulses.
In other words, when we reach back to find the Source, we cannot find anything tangible. We are left groping for filler - arguments to stretch over the Truth that we just don't know. When we say evolution is responsible for the way humans are, what are we really SAYING? There's still this gigantic question mark, this elephant in the room that is ignored dangerously - with the health of the organism at stake. We keep talking about the pretty balloon, but nobody talks about the air! We are mesmerized by the form and overlook the material substance that holds it all together. Unfortunately, science cannot measure this life-force. But it can describe it. This is what I am aiming to do.
An equally important, though frequently underemphasized quality of the psyche is its invisibility, or its seemingly ambiguous relationship to our conception of space. Though we can without question see its effects on a person (we know when a friend is anxious), it is, in itself, not apparent to the naked eye. In short, we cannot say for certain where the psyche is. Already we have established (in an earlier post), that "psyche" acts as un umbrella under which impressions from our "hearts," our "heads," our "guts," - perhaps even our genitals fall! So to speak of the "location" of the psyche becomes an exceedingly difficult task.
Instead, we put forth that the factor which distinguishes conscious psychic contents from unconscious psychic contents, and the factor which allows us to observe psychic contents via the psychic "eye," and the factor which produces the illusion of time are all the same. I am referring to light. Psychic light. Light, as an aspect or "quality" of the psyche, is the variable that reveals to us what is "in" our psyches at a given point in time, and in so doing brings these contents to consciousness.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
“June 23rd, 2010”
The Commander cut McChrystal
on summer’s third day while
World Cup and Wimbledon
waged on continents away.
Donovan scored so quickly;
Isner and Mehut took seven hours...
Across the Atlantic at the All England,
and also in Africa, we watched our men
do so well. The world also won Wednesday:
two sports and one united winner.
The Commander cut McChrystal
on summer’s third day while
World Cup and Wimbledon
waged on continents away.
Donovan scored so quickly;
Isner and Mehut took seven hours...
Across the Atlantic at the All England,
and also in Africa, we watched our men
do so well. The world also won Wednesday:
two sports and one united winner.
Saturday, March 06, 2010
"New Gold Spring"
... And into the great dawn, with hope that the earth’s
axis collapses and disturbs our hazardous slumbering...
Round and round the horses would weave
a hundred and forty busy circles and
fireflies would burn their way toward
orange hills with their once ignored,
now glorious light, and into the great
Awakening we would proceed, where men
slumber in hammock shade lightly
and women beat pancake batter and
children climb over wooden fences and
scrape their legs on leaves of poison ivy.
It is true that the unenviable loneliness of only Earth
would disturb everyone, and that everything
would feel the weight of living, but the ancient,
aging archer might peel back his bow and send
out a burning light to the towns, rescuing the cold
and freezing masses, and the wild moon’s blue night
light might be enough to subdue the blazing fires.
There has never been a Today, or a Together or a
Yesterday to celebrate this Tuesday or
Wednesday or Thursday properly, yet
morning owning the world as it now does
will alleviate this particular headache...
The navy blue Yankees’ gathering would soon turn
into Dixie red picnic springs, and white
Rocky Mountain heights visiting starry
desert bowling alley nights in dry Cali
valleys would leave us gawking at the
apparently gaudy apparel...
And we are all watching spritely lions,
long since retired from fighting,
marching tall and proudly forward on
even small, long roads with bright robes and
gleaming scepters in their paws, and hyenas,
scurrying sneakily under covers into proper hiding,
who are leaving the sacred duty of laughing to us few
who mourned when things were worse than just askew.
The motion, the temptation to rearrange and
scuttle across the differentiating and
debilitating descriptions would be
deemed a distraction and we would
make peace in between, the place
and the reason hearts and homes
never fail to be rendered warm.
The children among us would reach with spray to
clean windows with rag-wrapped hands and
golden beams would stream into living
room floors and onto kitchen machines.
Elsewhere, trees would bend into being
and feathers would float ‘round quiet
dogs that frantic barking made free...
But we would all be ex-slaves now, we would all
be released to the sound of metal spoons
clinking in potter’s bowls from the kiln
and we would only leave drops of milk
as the leaves leaving the wood of trees
would scatter below and our words in
wind would be known as undertow.
Nestled into our homey lives, nestled
among our fairy tales would be
outlines of great civilized nations,
ones that swallowed swords
for reasons no longer clear...
And forgiveness? This would be practiced
above the rest. This force, this last
art of great men and lost art of men,
would summon the various forces
of dawn into the strange and often
overlooked miracle of continuing.
Continuing, continuing with all or nothing
or some featureless reading in
territories of between. Laundry,
lashing, losing, these would remain
but fail to do the bleeding we were
once accustomed to them doing.
Neighbors wouldn’t be, they would be family,
and heaping mounds of sugar would revel
in their availability in buckets on the street.
The meddling of meadowlarks would be
negligible, and Saturday morning antiquing
would yield stories of ancestry only.
Hearts would still break but wet lips would seem near not
only to Shakespeares, and the romantic few would
ensure the Montagues and Capulets make do with
food fights. There is no need for romancing here,
since trust is in the cool air and our belief in final
relief keeps it there.
And the children fall asleep...
And our dog rests by the sliding door window into the kitchen.
And we hear a neighbor’s dog barking through our open window.
And we caress each other’s faces. And she touches my eyelids.
And I swallow, and we drown in love, and my hands sink below
her waist and crawl up her back, and I cup her neck, and feel
her hair on my fingers.
And I whisper to her softly that I love her, and she
is smiling, inhaling, a moment before
we fall softly into our shared sleeping.
... And into the great dawn, with hope that the earth’s
axis collapses and disturbs our hazardous slumbering...
Round and round the horses would weave
a hundred and forty busy circles and
fireflies would burn their way toward
orange hills with their once ignored,
now glorious light, and into the great
Awakening we would proceed, where men
slumber in hammock shade lightly
and women beat pancake batter and
children climb over wooden fences and
scrape their legs on leaves of poison ivy.
It is true that the unenviable loneliness of only Earth
would disturb everyone, and that everything
would feel the weight of living, but the ancient,
aging archer might peel back his bow and send
out a burning light to the towns, rescuing the cold
and freezing masses, and the wild moon’s blue night
light might be enough to subdue the blazing fires.
There has never been a Today, or a Together or a
Yesterday to celebrate this Tuesday or
Wednesday or Thursday properly, yet
morning owning the world as it now does
will alleviate this particular headache...
The navy blue Yankees’ gathering would soon turn
into Dixie red picnic springs, and white
Rocky Mountain heights visiting starry
desert bowling alley nights in dry Cali
valleys would leave us gawking at the
apparently gaudy apparel...
And we are all watching spritely lions,
long since retired from fighting,
marching tall and proudly forward on
even small, long roads with bright robes and
gleaming scepters in their paws, and hyenas,
scurrying sneakily under covers into proper hiding,
who are leaving the sacred duty of laughing to us few
who mourned when things were worse than just askew.
The motion, the temptation to rearrange and
scuttle across the differentiating and
debilitating descriptions would be
deemed a distraction and we would
make peace in between, the place
and the reason hearts and homes
never fail to be rendered warm.
The children among us would reach with spray to
clean windows with rag-wrapped hands and
golden beams would stream into living
room floors and onto kitchen machines.
Elsewhere, trees would bend into being
and feathers would float ‘round quiet
dogs that frantic barking made free...
But we would all be ex-slaves now, we would all
be released to the sound of metal spoons
clinking in potter’s bowls from the kiln
and we would only leave drops of milk
as the leaves leaving the wood of trees
would scatter below and our words in
wind would be known as undertow.
Nestled into our homey lives, nestled
among our fairy tales would be
outlines of great civilized nations,
ones that swallowed swords
for reasons no longer clear...
And forgiveness? This would be practiced
above the rest. This force, this last
art of great men and lost art of men,
would summon the various forces
of dawn into the strange and often
overlooked miracle of continuing.
Continuing, continuing with all or nothing
or some featureless reading in
territories of between. Laundry,
lashing, losing, these would remain
but fail to do the bleeding we were
once accustomed to them doing.
Neighbors wouldn’t be, they would be family,
and heaping mounds of sugar would revel
in their availability in buckets on the street.
The meddling of meadowlarks would be
negligible, and Saturday morning antiquing
would yield stories of ancestry only.
Hearts would still break but wet lips would seem near not
only to Shakespeares, and the romantic few would
ensure the Montagues and Capulets make do with
food fights. There is no need for romancing here,
since trust is in the cool air and our belief in final
relief keeps it there.
And the children fall asleep...
And our dog rests by the sliding door window into the kitchen.
And we hear a neighbor’s dog barking through our open window.
And we caress each other’s faces. And she touches my eyelids.
And I swallow, and we drown in love, and my hands sink below
her waist and crawl up her back, and I cup her neck, and feel
her hair on my fingers.
And I whisper to her softly that I love her, and she
is smiling, inhaling, a moment before
we fall softly into our shared sleeping.
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