How much like dying
this change seems –
the agony of cells’
reshaping, one tissue
expanded, another withered –
the loss! the loss! we weep
for that which is no more and writhe
with joy in the unfamiliar
thing we are becoming.
I know hard eyes like those, stoney and burning.
When they go out, they don’t leave
a void, like other fires. They leave something akin
to black holes, dark and gaping maws
of fathomless cruelty,
slowly tearing apart
anything stupid enough
to cross into their event horizon.
A couple ambles in after their day of foster parenting.
A lawyer brings his teenage son. Another couple
has been packing for a trip. Someone else showered after a run.
All have come to listen to a friend read from his new book.
In the back of the store, between cookbooks and children’s books,
a few rows of chairs face the wooden podium.
As the audience settles in, a late arrival collapses a molded plastic chair.
The loud crack sharpens our focus.
The space is tranquil as words pour out in measured phrases.
The poet banters and connects with his audience,
who smile and nod as they relink to their own experiences.
The poet dryly comments on his unchanging tone.
His friends murmur in appreciation.
A child curled up in a chair looks up from his book,
wondering at the serene mood of the store.
What secrets might he overhear?
After the reading, friends wait for a book, a signature,
congratulate the writer, linger in this marketplace
of heightened feeling.
We savor leaving our own bodies for a few moments
and entering into the mind and soul of another
before we slip back into our own day,
breathing a bit more deeply
into the inner space
of imagination.
(for Mark)
I go to Clear Creek
to brush away cobwebs,
walk sideways to Eva’s arbor,
hug my walking stick,
put fear under the nightshade,
read my Jing Shin Jyutsu
(the art of god through man)
I take off my shirt,
tight-walk over a chasm
on a fallen oak,
climb West Pinnacle,
investigate mushrooms:
structures more fragile
than clear thoughts
She talks with her husband,
a sign of a strong marriage.
Their conversation cover hours,
continents, millennia past and yet.
He’s been dead ten years now.
The young couple on the south farm
think she’s a sad and lonely case.
The old widow to the north
understands, is both jealous and sad.
Her kids think it’s all quite right,
and her friends are so happy for her
for the happiness he still brings.
1) don’t worry about writing
worry about living
2) the mind and stomach
work best when empty
3} turn over rocks
they might turn me over
in return
4) never say things
happen for a reason
5) i run this same path
every morning/but i’ve
not been here before
6) treat Monday as if
she were a guest
from out-of-town
7) its gossip about me
mostly true,
this covey of crow
murders the silence
of my run
