Worn, Reworn
I would go exploring
on a green and stony trail.
Downward, downward
to a time when I
was so much smaller,
eight or nine,
into cool limestone and
the prickle-smell of pine,
and the thump-thump
of my steady steps
that pull back and
release forward, fighting
and chasing the slope,
deeper into the wonder
of a remembered world
I’ve suddenly never touched before.
Life
Let’s say I’m my own
experiment, some attempt
my consciousness makes
to understand
itself, the world, goodness
or evilness.
The Why, The Truth,
the dot on the i of this life.
An experiment attempted
through the clumsy,
scratched, dulled, and limited
instruments of my body.
And let’s admit that
the experiment is flawed–
awash in uncontrolled-for
variables, hopelessly
subjective and forever
ongoing with only
the squishiest hypothesis
to drive its questions.
How could this experiment
be measured, understood, trusted?
And how could it matter?
What rational mind would propose
or engage in this work?
What sentient creature could
ever do anything else?
No One
I run until I am invisible
and free from the tendrils
of the day and the treadmill
and the others who fill this space,
free of my ghostly reflection
that dances like a metronome
on the window, until, until
words are distilled into the thump
against my eardrum, the hip-hop hum,
the rhythm of heart and foot sung,
the lonely drone of breath, and breath,
broken down into the euphoric no one,
the untethered base note tone,
the glowing glowing, solo, vibrant Ohm,
at one with the only unspoken one. Home.
On Strike
Of course the dishes are piled high,
teetering over the edges of the sink
and creeping onto the counter like
some kind of porcelain growth.
What do you expect when the muse calls
in its expectant tone- write me, you fool,
write because there can be nothing else,
and helplessly, I obey, I obey, I obey.
Are you really saying I must turn my head
toward the mundane? As if vacuum and dust rag
could ever speak to eternity, as if feeding
the cats could ever equate to feeding the soul.
I beg you to stay your harping commands,
put aside your dull domestic demands.
I must be free from the constraints of
rubber gloves, wash tubs, sponges and drains.
Leave me to my silent, mystical drifting,
my lifting myself above the earthly surfaces,
and allow me the quiet, dusty spaces of my mind-
a mire upon which to build a mighty legacy.
We forget about the library
and its towering stacks--
the ordered labyrinth, the lines
that wrap around corners and
zag from top to bottom like
the path of an antique typewriter.
We forget we can travel from
Aristotle to Aristophanes, then
Herakles and Homer, Juno and Jove
and the collapse of whole civilizations
that lurched toward our own.
Ebbing and flowing. Exploding slow.
We forget we can get so lost in
the corners where no one has pulled
this history of textiles or that bible
of southern cuisine for maybe fifteen
years, but there they are, the voices
whose particular passions preceded us.
We forget there are treasures buried
in silt at the bottom of rivers of books.
We forget the lost cities sunk under
the weight of new cities, and thoughts
branched away from and returning to
themselves. We forget that libraries
remember.
Through a Crack in the Door
Think of those times late at night,
really any time in the long expanse
of life when you are walking down
any empty hallway, alone, but trying
to not draw attention to yourself, as if
you were an interloper progressing
deeper into the heart of a shadow.
Maybe you are six years old and awake
and padding through a sleeping house.
Maybe you are older and lost in
an unfamiliar wing of a glass and
green formica office building, or
maybe this is a dream, a dark corridor
of memory and archetype and symbol.
Note the many doors, some locked,
some dark, some lit from within, all
shadow and yellow glass, some ajar.
Imagine the slivers of otherness,
the temptations of other stories, an echo
of music, a whispered argument,
a red shoe, the click of a typewriter,
some slow flickers, some sudden flashes.
Imagine the absence of invitation
and the guilty refusal to look away.
New Year’s Day
Today the work
is imagining the days ahead-
a waking dream in which
we wander through our hopes
for ourselves and let loose
this crusty psychological
accumulation.
Today is a long stretch
Of a day. Today is
a warm cat napping in our lap.
Today is a tall glass of clear water,
effortless and essential,
a winding tide that laps
at the best and gentle part of us.
