TRANSITIONS

Lay down expectations like boards

Build you a bridge to inspiration

Hammer these down with nails of patience

Paint them in colors of inevitability and change.

Stand in doorways where the transition

Of forward & back will balance your brain.

Find my hand in the total darkness of eclipse

Pull me into that pregnant moment of emerging light

Frail is it may be

Enlivening all that ever was.

IN WINTER

I find a west window of sunlight

Sit down, facing my back to it

As my neck warms and my hands,

I write poems

A tiny flag of incense curls

In the light

Music knits an afghan of sound

For a simply singular afternoon.

All I “should” be doing goes undone

In favor of these words flowing from this pen.

RIDING THE RAILS

May get me places,

But all journeys

Are made of expectations

Foregoing familiarity.

When only the scenery changes

Is change enough?

My life seems a layby off the tracks.

(Twinned steel cutting the horizon, glistening.)

UNEXPECTED PRESENTS

The habit of gifting

Is one to cultivate

I have been on the balance beam

Of gifting & receiving

While meditating on insufficiency’s

Pyramidal center…

I have pierced these veils

Of unknown power sources

Skirting the edges of vortex

Many other times.

RSVP

I have invited crucifixion

By my own emotions

And intransigence of purpose.

If all these beginnings

Lead to similar endings

Why even ask the questions?

I am the hapless beggar

In the Promised Land,

The starveling at the World Feast.

I have wandered the Lost & Found of life long enough…

Even when no Path appears,

I shoulder my pack,

I move on.

SECOND STORY

I am in Soul Rehab

Stripping walls of flocked paper strips

Snapping bowed valances to sweep velvet shreds

Of conscience

I tear at curling floorboards

A stale, sour smell of old wood

Rising from the sawdust cloud

I have no idea how to rebuild this!

I have only the belief I can.

The house groans, settles,

Creaks; obligingly dismantling itself

As windowsills tilt & slide

Down separating walls

I pull nails bare-fingered.

Standing, I push support beams

With strengthened shoulders,

Digging in my heels.

For all this determination,

There is no center to demolish.

Only a guess at what will bring

This structure down;

Only a hope it will not take me along.

CALENDAR YEARS

In all this time of walking forever forward

Of wearing out shoes in differing directions

The compass whispers me to north & west

South & east

I do not heed these siren songs

I am a turtle with a rock upon its back

Thrusting forward my head, neck & finny legs.

Swimming stillness.

MORPHOGENESIS

Off to a rough start:

The bloodletting of loneliness

Collapsing my fluid body

To knots & gnarls

Tanned to roughened leather

A wrinkling purpose

Overlaid a pristine map.

“But,” I argue with the mirror,

“did I ever know? It was given to me:

‘Travel, stop, begin again’ over & over.”

These I did: a trio of begettings.

Would you have me make a list of my sins?

There are few enough to recall to my forgetting mind

I do remember toting buckets of them to

The confessional incinerator

Where sparks burst & flew

Into heaven.

FACING MORTALITY

Dying is one of the best things I will do.

I don’t know how I know this…

Perhaps informed by intimate experience?

I am content to blossom as a rose,

Exploded of scent, explored for color

Curled & peeling petals taking

Flight for faraway –

Plucked to die, dreaming,

On a kitchen table,

Beheld with love each glance.

Not knowing how it knows this…

The chance to return

As a miracle on the Tree of Life.

But I say this not being in line for

Predestination

Not really believing in death, per se

Remaining the nonbeliever, tho afloat in

A sea of total incrimination of

Evidence & experience

Responding to more of what I would not do:

I would not regret or mourn

I would be as fierce in death

As in death-defying life!

Cherished as the moment of breath

Breathed out after the intimacy

Of circling the heart

Form into formlessness

An eternity of time

To dip into life once again.

 

JUXTAPOSITIONS

Momentary fulfillment &

Long-term lack

The land that once rolled toward me

Traveling up & out-away

Impulse decentralized

Purpose diffused

Once measured in steadying mileage

I am disengaged from movement

Bereft of directional impulse

Uneasily content to be part

Of a landscape

In favor of making landfall.

AGAIN, MORTALITY

I would be bold before the Throne,

Demanding face-time with God,

A hug from Jesus,

A fig from Buddha’s Bodhi Tree

A tear from Guanyin

A knighthood with the sword of St. Germain

A high-five from Michael Archangel.

I would sleep for a thousand-thousand years

Each dream the petal of the rose

I would return in.