Directed Meditation

Take 10 steps out the door,
in any direction.
Take a deep breath and close your eyes.
Slowly breathe out, open your eyes,
and describe the first thing you see.
My first breath met a wind stirring in the trees,
and my lungs caught it, billowing like a sail,
and I exhaled into night.
Opening my eyes, I saw
before the damp unanimous green
of the trees and grass,
a rosebush in bloom,
each blossom a flame
of cool desire,
and a silent cry of hope.

Sometimes I Wonder Why

Sometimes I wonder why
I don't just sink down into it,
without argument or reproof.
One man's life is as tedious as the next's,
when it comes to the material things.
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential... "
(summers in Rangoon...luge lessons)
Dr. Evil, how right he was!
Repetitive desires, repetitive disappointments.
How consistent it all is,
and how difficult to move beyond it;
or take much of an interest in pushing
this old clay into another shape.
God must be bored out of his mind,
having played this game for the better part of all time.
Or has he put us now on autopilot,
in that eternal 7th day; and now awaits,
greeting the saints,
saints with shining faces,
marching in and out through those flaming doors
every freakin' day of the year.

I'm Bad

Oh I'm bad, yes I'm bad.
I wear Hawaiian shirts,
BUT I TUCK THEM INTO MY PANTS!

Love

Love is a great bird,
soaring high on wings named
"he" and "she."
But this bird cannot soar as high
as the bird whose wings are called
"not I" and "not thou."

Apology

Sentences and paragraphs
we know most often to serve the purely utilitarian.
But when we see the poet's lines,
flush left, supplicants lined up in prayer,
we know we must seek higher ground,
and ready ourselves for the visits
of beauty, and truth, and love.

December 31

I sit crosslegged by your grave.
The sun warms my back,
a little breeze chills my face.
Its the last day of the year,
but it feels like early spring.
Ah Beloved, you left too soon.

Promises Kept

Tucked into a picture frame
that still hangs above our bed
(a watercolor from our daughter)
is a note I left on Edna's pillow,
early on in her last illness.
"Dear Edna" it exhorts,
"Let's grow old together."
And below she had answered
"Yes, let's!"
And we did.
But she grew old too soon and died
while I grew old and live
to wonder why.

Up before dawn

Before the bathroom mirror
I find brief repose,
and these words appear unbidden.
I note the stubble on my face
- though is scarcely compares
to the dark, latin growth
I see on my sons -
it's as if, last night, I had lain down in the forest,
and sometime before dawn
a light dusting of dew
had frozen on my face.

Some days I believe in these words,
some days I don't.
I only know to gather them quickly
before they are beaten incomprehensible,
or buried, or erased,
by the events of the day.

Grief comes sometimes

Grief comes sometimes as an eagle, fierce of eye,
captive in a cage too small.
And inside, I can feel those great wings,
beating against my ribs.

Or sometimes as a turtledove,
held within my heart,
whose fluttering wings
shake my very soul.

Beloved, when I think of you,
grief comes sometimes as a bird
and I wonder where I have left the key
that will set this captive free.

Theology Set

Theology

How foolish we are to deny God's grace.
Here we sit on the third planet,
with mass and velocity just so,
and spaced, just so.
And we call it Chance,
all the while resting easy
in the right hand of God.


Theology II

I am a planet in distant orbit.
My sun is Jesus.
His gravity and my mass
held in divine balance.
One atom's change
would send me spiralling in
to his all-consuming love,
or out into the Buddhist's void.
And I muse...perhaps being Jewish is enough.
(To which a friend replies "that's just because
you haven't met my Aunt Sophie")


Theology III

Ah, the fate of Jesus,
a prophet who eschewed earthly glory
(but who earned it anyway),
only to be flanked by others
claiming the right of dominion
or the right of domination,
claiming by blood, claiming with blood,
or claiming through blood,
a secure or ordered world
for the glory of God.
I say the wisdom of the desert fathers is enough:
Keep to the middle, walk to the side.


Theology IV

The Taliban shell the Buddhist statues at Bamyan,
as if blowing up rock
can destroy an idea.
Buddhist thought informed the Sufis,
children of Abraham,
who in turn, dancing within Islam,
love Jesus,who, in turn,
learned to love all.
Cannon shells, religious vanity, and fear (always fear)
cannot break this chain.

Paul Bley on the Jazz Sound

In describing how a jazz musician develops his sound, Paul Bley said: "You get the sound you hear."
The same goes for poetry.

Work in Progress

Early one morning, I was thinking of the differences between my wife Edna and myself, in regard to where we would live and how we would raise our children - and this fragment of a poem popped into my head:

"...to raise them as wolvces to live in a forest I had not the courage to enter."

Later, I had the following thought:

"...while you gave them a grace and gentility far beyond my rudimentary abilities."

People have always gone out of their way to tell us what good kids we have (they are now in their early twenties to early thirties). I have to agree, though I have the usual misgivings, occasionally, that most parents have. I don't know if these two fragments will ever come together in a formal poem, but didn't want to lose them.

Observations at 62

I
Its turning towards Fall again
and I can't decide
if I'm grateful for the change,
or tired of the repetition.

II
I smell myself
and its not too bad,
except certain places.

Invitation

You're invited to the feast.
The table's piled high,
the food awaits by day and by night.
What's your pleasure?
If you're tired, let someone else's fingers
feed you grapes.
If you're hungry, be a two-fisted eater.
Its OK! We're all here to serve.
Right now fresh fruit is being peeled;
the dirty dishes swept away.
Look!
Tiny birds chase the crumbs at your feet.

Pomegranates

You sat across the room, unknown to me.
And then between us
the cosmic axes and sacred geometries of space
silently and gently folded,
and collapsed.

From above, a branch laden with fruit descended.
And we picked each other!

At first we were hard and content within our skins;
then, swollen with summer's heat.
Finally, battered by a late autumn storm,
We broke against one another.
And found inside, to our surprise,
Sweet ruby kernels we could share.

The Arms of My Eyes

Out in public,
the arms of my eyes reach out,
and women suddenly adjust their clothing,
tugging this way or that,
to cover exposed flesh.
They don't know why.