July 27, 2007

…and he strictly charged them that no one should know this. Mark 4: 41b

To renounce the fruits of one’s labors, to live in love with splendid indifference, the high irony of God: To Be, and not to demand, not to control…to allow to be in the full spectrum of possibility beyond plausibility, the blasphemy of pondering theodicy.

To move from small town through small town, from village to village—to be touched, to allow oneself to be touched and the power of one’s self seeps out through a posture of vulnerability.
And the wonder is just where in this bright, blue-faced world he might be safe. There is none, no absolute safety; there is only compassion. The he is everyone and every creature, the ribbon snake.

Color : May 9, 2007

I began the day reading
an essay on Pink
Floyd, then from Wisdom, Romans,
the Psalms, shall I say of David?
the Gospel of Luke, Merwin:
(very late [early]
I have heard a kind of whispered sighing)
in the course of this a list
(no mark of genius, here) a list
coursed across synapses
of memory: names: Rob, Tom, Bill, Carol:
ordinary names of ordinary people
I know: an offense, cirrhosis, AIDS, breast cancer….
Memory: and just of yesterday

The weight of a day … sighing … even the roses
seem to be weeping, to be withholding
their joyous, transcendent effervescence.

I turn behind me, On Being Blue:
A Philosophical Inquiry, Wm. Gass.
Though brilliant, is too irreverent
to cite the moment : ah,
the velvet bridge the color of ripe gold.
Subdued, ripe, the morning with its sweet faces.

Home : May 6, 2007


Am trying to write a memoir of the dawn:
the first morning home in a week--
The beach was majestic, the gulf comforting,
but here I sit out to birdsong,
where I stayed, there was none;
here there are flowers,
where I stayed, there were none.
I am quite overwhelmed by what I have done:
wonder...and life...and beauty;
I recognize it as home: it nurtures.

I walk the stone path past the Canadian hemlock
to the small vegetable garden in the woods:
six tomatoes, four peppers, a white blooming
perennial sage, thyme, hot oregano, spiky chives,
three Spanish lavenders with blue fluff balls for heads:
all a mere suggestion of a garden in the woods.

Above this, past the hydrangeas returning
after the burn of the April freeze,
the grapes thrive, the peaches, two pears,
two quinces all planted: thrills with superabundance.
The freckled violet has no bloom.

The magnolia, one lemony bloom;
on the deck out back,
the Meyer's enhanced lemon with nearly ripe,
nearly grapefruit-sized globes of yellow.

I read, sadly, on the beach and in the yard
where I stayed, a sad, lifeless yard where I stayed,
a depressed chaotic space that bore to mind the imperative:
O, blessed rage for order...I prayed....
I read there even a disappointing book,
Jim Harrison, Returning to Earth: in our reveries
on death, must we seriously entertain notions of
bear-reincarnations? Here out with the redolence
of rose, the slightly pumpkin color
of the Stella d'Oro day lilies, pineapple sage,
while in the lambent light past dawn,
while seated at the small teak table, a magnificent
beautiful book, if even sad in that tragic, inevitable, human
way: House of Meetings of Amis: intelligence, order.

The green lawn is not yet fully awake to the spring,
the warmth, the sun, the light, yet it provides
repose to the eyes...the soul...the heart. Happily,
gratefully, we are home: jiggety-jog.

April 27, 2007

Separating the fragments from the whole:

Thinking about how to care: the grape
vines planted a month ago, when
still there was frost in a world of hearts
of limited compassion. Immersed as I am
in the watery milieu of morning, cold river
against the skin; dawn’s high above
100 y/o oaks birds skim pale blue sky we are
mortal after all, what call is it
that draws my eyes up always? Each morning
from the azure there comes no harm…canon
of surrealist catechism. Hydrangeas burnt
back by those cold and heartless dawns
indifferent to blue, iced, now green-up new
shoots. I bang the uprights two feet
into clay to string the wire branches
will follow purple Concord, red, green remembering
melted paraffin poured all those years ago
on top of jelly made from grapes the wasps
left us.

April 26, 2007

On the breeze last week came the scent of irises. (The scent … is one of the most complex and elusive, weaving in metallic violets and snow covered roots. It is a melancholy fragrance by its nature.) Now sitting out in the dark morning, the gentle breeze plays bar keep and mixes its aromas, raises the possibilities, metallic, rooty iris with the cinnamon fruity-damask of the Lilian Austin rose in all its labial salmon.

The complex of morning began within this complexity of fragrance and a Marguerite Duras story about an ancient woman from Bugue on the Vezere River. Then having completed the morning’s ablutions and other nurturing chores such as misting the Bonsai and orchids, I felt an upward call. And so with the birds I recited the prayers reading: Mene mene tekel parsin: You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting. It is a verdict worthy of most all.

The weight of things, men with failing livers in hospital beds, others with severe pains in places of dishonor consequent to treatments for deadly diseases, women with Alzheimer’s, deployed soldiers: the demands of saying you are in my prayers, the vertiginous, the muscular, and the precarious walk across the velvet bridge where everyone feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh.

Vertiginous dawn


O vertiginous dawn
and the silence of things
shattered by song
of a thousand syrinxes.

Moon’s pale flesh absent
the sky. Lifted words of peace
and death and the giving
of life for another: thoughts
turn to soldiers, young men
young women taking aim
needlessly dying ... killing
sons … daughters

O seasons, O chateaus .
O vertiginous dawn:
O those who lay down
their lives for another
the Christ of them.

Each morning comes: symbol of redemption



Saturday: it is morning; it is not yet raining; it will rain;
it is not yet dawn.
Then these words
Glorify the Lord every shower of rain and fall of dew
all winds and fire and heat
then I stepped out into the cat birdsong
Birds of the air, glorify the Lord
praise him and highly exalt him forever.

Ah, gray sacrament of the mundane, and not just the sky
and not just the cat birdsong: Awakening to gratitude
in this generous Eden.
If both sleep and love are little deaths:
Each morning comes: symbol of redemption
Day One after the 7th day…all over again.