Descent

Be prepared for darkness

to overtake you unawares,

from the heart of the white sky.

Think how it flows

down the dark mountain,

rubs out the rock face

with its broad thumbs,

erases the edges of leaves

and moistens the bark of the maple

with absolute color.

It closes the door of the clearing

without a sound.

Think how it seeps

into the pores of your skin

and strokes your clavicles

with the touch of fingers

caressing the strings of a harp.

And think how your body

must resonate

with unseen rustlings

and with the myriad questions

filling your bones like mist.

Pinesong: Awards 2009 (The North Carolina Poetry Society)

The Neighbor

“The most we can say is that

 the world is lila, God’s play”

                          —Huston Smith

The neighbor-lady’s mad.

They say her name is Lila,

but she always speaks in tongues.

Some days it’s beetles

that come flying off her tongue—

that tongue gray-green and curling

like the fiddlehead of a fern.

They put me in mind of Granny’s jewels

I pawned so long ago, them beetles,

the shine of their hard wings

so many colors in the lamplight.

They rattle loud as hail against the windowpane.

Other times she speaks nothing

but starfish and the house smells

of salt. They scuttle over the sandy floor

and under them wide blue skirts she always wears.

I don’t mind the butterflies—some purple,

and some with wings clear as glass—

but other days her tongue’s like pink elastic

and shoots out teeny frogs bright as sunrise,

only louder.               I never know

what she’ll be speaking next—

snakes or peacocks or some great beast

with tawny shoulders and a wild green eye.

It ain’t natural.          So I says to her,

I’m moving back to town—

I got to get away from the everlasting

clatter of your tongue.  She just throws

back her head and laughs

birds.

Earthspeak Magazine 9, Autumn 2011

The Rosewood Bird

summer mornings

your whistled tune

a bridge

into wakefulness

the valley echoes

tying the kite

to the lilac hedge

to sail alone

all afternoon you fashion

tethered dreams

fragrant shavings

curl from the planer

the child fancies

manes and beards

for a plywood menagerie

the birds you made

feeding their young

and flying

somehow

on mahogany wings

shape engrained

already in the seed

your hands

that guide the chisel

at the lathe

fitting the brass lid

on the memory jug

blue and white crockery

shattered into shards

your scarred hands made whole

summer evenings

the glow of your cigarette

under the elms

your gaze

far down the river valley

still folded

in a trunk

the sweater I wore

the day I learned

what you had done

 Twenty Years Tanka Splendor, 2009 (AHA Books). 
Three-way tie for winning sequence in the 20th Tanka Splendor Awards Contest.

Quantum Dreams

Waiting for rain at two a.m.—

not these paltry, separate drops

pinging one-by-one on the metal roof,

but the sleeve of heaven

sluicing away whole days of dust.

Longing for rain at three a.m.—

instead thoughts come,

pinging against the skull—

no clear distinction

between observer and observed—

the act of looking

changes that which is.

Peek into the void

and a quantum particle pings

out of its dreamy, wavy state

into the hard reality of time and space.

(Does it manifest, perhaps,

in the eye of a goose,

or in some feathered tentacle

waving in the sea?)

So the mind that watches

alters what is real.

Can mind-states, then, move matter?

The faith, say, of a Mother Teresa—

bone-hard faith with feathers

like a flight of birds—

can it cause Way to open?

Write down these thoughts

in darkness.  Use a quantum-quill

dipped in invisible ink.

Show no-one.

Rain begins at last.       

Anatomy & Etymology 1:4, November 2011

Lord God of Bread Dough

Pray to the lord god

of bread dough

that your life rise

like a new loaf

to be eaten warm

with plenty of butter,

salt or sweet.

Pray to the lord god

of bread dough

that when words

with tiny wings

on their shoulders

flutter like strange angels

out of the night air,

you have pockets

full of bread crumbs

to lure them

onto the white page.

Pray to the lord god

of bread dough

that you never

be caught listening

to the left side

of your brain

when the right side

is trying to tell you

something

known only to the yeast.

Pray to the lord god

of bread dough

that you stop needing

and start kneading

until your life

is firm and elastic

and does not stick

to anything at all.

Praise to the lord god

of bread dough

for unseen bubbles

that leaven this eternal flatness

into the delectable

multiplicity of forms.

Savor every crust.

Shawl of Stone

 

Deep beneath the solid pavement, sense this spinning ball of stone.

From the spine of distant mountains, hear the silent call of stone.

Somewhere past Orion’s belt, across the corner of the eye,

Out of nothing into darkness, burns the briefest fall of stone.

Is winter coming to a close?  Walk the fallow, frost-heaved fields—

This heart where scattered shards lie broken.  Build up the crumbling wall of stone.

Take one pebble, round and flat, skip it on the silver river.

See how many ripples echo, echo from so small a stone.

Well for water, hearth for flame, arch for passage, slate for name.

Lantern light on grave and bone:  a sacred circle, all of stone.

Camellia petals at her feet, a Jenny-wren’s nest in her hair,

Who watches from the wildwood’s edge, with heart of magma, shawl of stone?

 The Ghazal Page Stone Radif Challenge issue, 2009

Cipher

Braille lines on a dry leaf,

a scribbled epigram of ice,

the roots of trees in boldface underground,

and the doe’s bones—

knobs and facets written in the snow,

the lovely long articulation of the spine

hugging the dear earth—

a closing parenthesis.

But snow keeps falling,

each new flake

a word unspoken,

soft against the tongue.

 Avocet: A Journal of Nature Poems Winter 2008