My Beloved glides through the room in light.
A flick of her hand, shadows dispense.
Her form beams shapely, vibrant and bright.
One sharp look wilts my world, weak and dense.

She is as fragrant as hyacinth at night.
She turns 'round; my willpower’s spent.
I reach for her arm; she’s fast in flight.
No coquettish flirting to make me wince.

Her inward freedom exposes my plight.
I am lovelorn, hard stricken. No defense.
Rising skyward, she claims heaven, her right.
Living earthbound, I maintain my poor sense.

Still, I yearn for her beauty: heart's light.
My pursuit is authentic. No pretense.

-- For Laura

Come hither
O Thou,is life not a song?
-- E. E. Cummings, "Orientale I," Tulips & Chimneys

1.
i lay the book down
bookmark in place
still shivering with
possibilities still
vibrant in the after-
glow of literature's
vitality words bloom
like daffodils the
white space around
them the clay to
reshape a living
persona of the dead
poet he populates
the page like rain
on fertile soil like
pennies on the
dollar hear him
holler i am here
his heart broad-
casts his feelings
his feelings broad-
cast his voice

2.
i sense e. e. ***-
mings
singing each
chanson innocente
each birth of spring
each burden
of love
joyfully borne
he is there in
the sounds
that echo
in my skull
that slither
down my
spine an
anatomy of
meaning
that even the
harshest critic
cannot dissect
muscle and
bone united
to lift the weight
of puddles
meant for jump-
ing stretching
to tie jump ropes
into knots of
playfulness
still taut
today

3.
it is always
spring in the
dewy meadow
it is always
meadows that
cushion the
poet's fall
o father how
i've failed
you
how i set
free the
body that
hypnotized
the greeks
that still
shifts its
weight
in marble
of oh so
innocent
white

4.
the poem
passes
judgment
on the
pompous
on
repression's
hosts not guilty
are the children
laughing
and skipping
past the
latex
meadows of
the goat-footed
balloonman
who paws
the mud
like well a
tied-up
goat
e. e. whistles
a chanson
from far
and wee
i lay the
book down
and whistle
back
the reader’s
*chanson
de merci

I hurriedly push past myself,
watching my body from above,
feinting with consciousness,
fainting into the Spanish black.

Velazquez's Las Meninas
jack-hammers a tunnel
of ek-stasis, pulling me into
the painter's dark studio,

weighed down by overwhelming
curtains, curtailing the senses'
sense of majesty and control.
This is not trompe l'oeil. This is

tricking the soul into the artifice
of the palette, of paint on board,
of black that illumines perfect
placement: the spectator on the floor.

Stendhal's sensitivity is no virtue
or vice. It suckles the sublime,
sated on illusion, art for art's sake,
delivering a blow to the solar plexus.

I gasp as my body trembles at tremors
of terror, annunciations of angels
bearing paintbrushes as paltry wings.
Their back feathers stained a Spanish black.

Painting owns no one, owes no one
comfort or joy or pedantic instruction.
The cherubs in the foreground radiate
innocence, wonder, humanity's blank heart.

At my feet, my body wriggles skyward,
wrenches for a transplant. Paint on it
Velazquez's black moustache, then part
the velvet curtains. I will rise to new life.

Darkness devours the gibbous moon.
Its final sliver shivers in the freezing void.
Pockets of pock-marked light spill out of dusty craters.
Prints from space-age boots deface iconic astronaut signatures.

Colonies of phantoms have settled on the surface.
They sacrifice stars in elaborate rituals of absolution,
then aimlessly amble in circles around the circumference.
They squeeze water from recalcitrant rocks.

In darkness they decline to speak to one another.
Mutely, they await the daily rebirth of solar flares.
The moon generates nothing on its own. Cosmic
passivity mimics social order. A fiery Logos descends.

I follow the droppings-dappled sheep trails of Exmoor, veering right
toward the hills. A ***** white flock nuzzles the close-cropped
ground, but gnaws only humid air. In the dim light of evening,
a presence looms on the uneven horizon: the world of my
future and former selves, fitfully revealed and obscured,
first liberated from, then confined to the clinging veil of illusion
that clutches the dark English countryside, legacy of my birth.

I detect through the flattened corona of the monarch moon
outlines of a troupe of Shakespearean ghosts tottering my way.
Revealed and obscured, like questions in Hamlet's tragedy, they
mime the news of my heritage and inheritance: sin and ambition,
deception and pride. Emptiness reigns within me like a ruthless
queen, ****** and shorn, painted an otherworldly white: Elizabeth.

All this once would have been enough, but the soaked smell
of sheep reminds me I am still alone. No one comes to England
for solace or comfort. Yet the recipe for lasting identity, for a
significance of self, abides in the dark hills of Exmoor, launched
from sodden sheep trails, trammeled by a gaggle of ghosts who
juggle the jewels of Elizabeth's crown, sparkling in fog before me.

— he died. Though hard I strove, but strove in vain,
To rend and gnash my bonds in twain.
Even from the cold earth of our cave.
  — Lord Byron, “The Prisoner of Chillon”

1.
Like an invisible maelstrom, toying
with its own survival, preying on
the Good, pure nothingness in itself,
pain plunges into the recesses
of my ragged hip, races down my thigh,
scorching one side, numbing the other.
Flesh becomes kindling, becomes petrified
wood, all excess bark singed into flaking embers
that flit through my dull, dank cellar, alone.

I push up from my intricate Victorian armchair,
vowing to escape this onslaught, this lightning
torment -- my leg pummeled by staccato left jabs
from tiny gods, which sting like hailstones in
a summer storm, clinging to the battered lawn:
piles of white rocks, of snow and ice, emblems
of the surety that lasting damage has been done.

2.
We all walk into the world with a faltering gait, unsure
of the rhythms of our wandering ways, or the wisest
guidebook to carry for gaining ground. A crooked
back wrenches my flimsy progress, flings my steps
into a crooked dance, off-balance, rude with vertigo,
flailing to regain my footing, fighting to find my
footprint cast in papier-mâché, tissue of the Earth’s
tenderness toward this wayward, mutant child.

Lord Byron carved his name into the limestone
of Chateau de Chillon as his pledge, wielding poetry,
to liberate the 16th-century Swiss prisoner who
lingered there, lost amid his habitually gnawed chains.
The metallic taste never left his mouth, bitter as bile.
Lac Leman surges beneath the isolated dungeon
window, shuttered by three iron bars, defenseless
against the winnowing light that sweeps across
the manacles hammered into a post, now void
of any aching limbs, of any useless fists, the hollow
trophy of the tiny gods’ ****** foxhunt of justice.

3.
Justice has no name but mercy now, the grace
of pardon and rest for the crooked soul. My spine,
twisted into stenosis, choked by constricting bone, pushing
ever closer to itself until it fuses into a gargoyle’s face,
spewing rainwater on the madding crowds below,
striking matches on my sense-less skin, imprinting
rough, blackened stripes with each flash of flame.

I would steal this fire like Prometheus. I would eat it
like a big-top performer with an asbestos throat. I would
digest this fire, then excrete it on the hailstones. I would
burn within like a primal fire, and let the gods burn with me.
Only then would I reclaim my rightful balance. Only then
would I rebuke the grotesque justice that rules this
fire-filled, shadowy fiefdom of my body’s minor gods.

Sunlight ricochets off the blanco bell tower
of Iglesia de la Asunción, landing as a spectral
ball lodged in the iron-barred windows across
the narrow lane. Light splays its rays onto
an outdoor café, which bustles with excitement
at the arrival of perfect weather for the perfect
pueblo blanco of Spain, a grand fiesta of white.

Priego de Cordoba revels in its inheritance
of white, the picture-perfect, pristine village
elevated above abundant olive groves and
the crackling, undulating earth. Here, you
gaze upon the arid land with the all-seeing eye
of God, never bloodshot, never blurred,
crisp as a hawk's flight to prune its prey.

Approaching the village, giant, arthritic roots
of ancient trees sprawl atop the shallow
soil like crooked claws. Farther ahead,
a 19th-century goatherd leans on his long,
weathered stick, whistling beneath his
beret, as his garrison of goats clatters
down the massive, twisting row of rocks.

Serenity seeps into your bones as you stroll
among the potted flowers, bursting with red
and white into the Barrio de la Villa. My
wanderings reach from door to tiny door,
touching nothing but the spotless white paint
that bathes the tall, stucco walls. I fly above
the strictured street, wide enough for a donkey's

passage, laden with burdens of the quiet life.
Like a condor, my broad wingspan brushes
the facades of these run-on homes, whose close
proximity propels the principle of shared
existence. Now we must live face-to-face,
mano a mano, shadow-boxing the hanging pots
as they lovingly labor to sprout laurels of victory.

I narrow to the lane's end, where lies buried the
barrio's secret map to the alleyways of Paradise.
I spy an aged senora sweeping with a stumpy
straw broom to gather up the beaming bits
of white and sprinkle them into the faded folds
of her patterned apron. She stares at me, just
another incorrigible source of refuse, bearing

the crudely unwrapped gift of a devotee of beauty,
breathing in the barrio's florid scent of security,
blanco a blanco, endless white on white. I turn,
incapable of tracing my steps, of tripping right
or left, traipsing to the fringe of the barrio,
where streaming waters wash away all colors
save the nakedness of white. Neptune towers

over the concrete pools of Fuente del Rey,
a king's ransom of swirling waves that imprint
the reflecting cradles of sky, wrapped in cotton-
thin clouds shredding the afternoon into white,
rose-tinted white. An unfinished canvas of
monochromatic color fields blends into
the blinding white. I cool my feet in bubbling

ponds, peering out at the outlying jungle of
bushes, dwarf trees and twisted vines. I need
rest, the rejuvenating powers of Neptune's trident
hanging above my head, ready to knight me as
the Quixote of Cordoba's rippling region. He
splashes me into intimidating fountains of
life, of light streaming its tranquil rays into

basins of sheer delight. Here, I lay my burden
down, dip my feet into the cool, white flow of
Epsom baths sans the salt. Renewed, I use
my flatfoot tools of travel to trigger my trek,
my pilgrimage into the white belly of Spain.
Still in the barrio, I ogle the outdoor café, then
take the first step to tread all sin underground.

Before the Euro, you were -- swirling light, sitting pretty.
We kicked it at night along the grungy lanes of Ile de la Cité.
Notre Dame loomed large and long, a battleship on the Seine.
An exoskeleton of Gothic bones, what could it ever do but win?

Hunger hung out among us, an unwanted dog on a wayward walk.
Frenchmen directed us au centre. In those days, I could talk the talk.
Still can, still do, but who needs "J'adore vos diamants de luxe,
calme et beauté" when you must bow down in a row sans your ducks?

Serendipity, man, that's what la Cité seeped. Evening an ermine
blanket tossed effortlessly over the spires of the medieval vermin
that Haussmann hacked into Euclidean lines of parallel charms:
more ordre, beauté et calme. Organic geometry. What's the harm?

Dusk draped us in l'amour du mystère. Cafe awnings as exotic
as Flaubert's Egyptian tours, plump with mistresses for the neurotic
novelist who poisoned Normandy with naturalistic despair. He's
no Parisian, no architect, no monk. We absorb le mot juste; a star flees.

On the sidewalk, a 50-franc note calls out beneath the weeds.
We look for an owner, see nothing, feel nothing but the need to feed
on crepes, chocolat et confiture de fraise. I imagine Camus and Sartre
at Les Deux Magots, nursing black café, pouring noir into your heart.

(After Anne Sexton's "The Starry Night")

Van Gogh's "Starry Night"
illumines a damaged heart.
Poetry remains therapy
until the patient is cured.

Pulitzer Prize, parties, men
and accolades galore.
Anne Sexton, the poets' darling,
dances to the darkening sky.
This is how you want to die.

This is how the world ends:
without swirling stars,
without a crescent moon,
stuck alone inside your garage,
door closed, car running.
Inhale the aroma of the blackened night.

The genome tilts on its axis, spilling memes of shame,
mutation and death, tattooed on plasma walls.

Coronavirus latches onto a lowly cell, clamps down,
spews pellets of bubonic plague as fleas flee disaster.

1666. Eyam Village barricades its boundaries: No going in.
No going out. The population dies like convulsing rats,

bodies stacked high in the street: cords of firewood. No one dares
light the flame. Pestilence obeys the border's blockade, contained

behind thick, golden stones. Tiny cottages mutate to infirmaries.
Judgment seeps through window panes. Mercy aligns with death.

We build no blockades, boundaries shift in the wind. Virus obeys
no one's laws, vandalizes the body, sets fire to the human touch.

Eyam beams prettiness now. Neat, manicured lawns, well-swept streets,
no trace of plague save on the village entry sign. Tourists flock like fleas,

soaking up history's survival, sobering on its showcase of blight.
Who deserves to die from nature's aberrations? *Who goes in, who out?

Unamuno wrings his hands, frets over
the Tragic Sense of Life in which we
all die inevitably, inexorably, unwillingly.
And death is simply non-being to him,
and non-being looks a lot like pure
nothingness, which means we can't
even think "non-being" or "death"
when we're dead. It's all one, big,
fat zero. Add it to or subtract it from
itself, and it's still nada, the sum
of all fears. O the woe of being human.

I read him as a teenager in love with
philosophy, and thought him the most
profound thinker Europe had conjured up
in the 20th century. Continental philosophy
was the only philosophy for me, heavily
Germanic. Even Sartre was a closet
Heideggerian, teething on Sein und Zeit.
But Unamuno leapt over the Teutonic depths,
plunged into Dante's circle of death, scratched
out a mirror image of the human face. I took
it and ran, Kierkegaard stuffed in my back pocket.

Philosophy is eros is love is an incomplete connection.
Reality rises like a daffodil in the green grass
of spring. Wordsworth pens an ode; the rest of us
stare and blindly think we know what we see. But
the eye doesn't conceive, it doesn't relieve anything
save a surface tension. The eye can't speak, can't say
that the daffodil is real. Nobody sees reality in the
flesh. Nothing meshes with sensation but sensation.
That's the Latin way, the Mediterranean way, says
Jose Ortega y Gasset, another Spanish wizard of
wisdom, wishing for intellectual love, dancing at Delphi.

Philosophia. You can't see it, you can say it, but it's
all yearning, no release, no peace until the mind
settles on the bottom of the stream, feeds on
jetsam, maybe flotsam, then thinks "Being" and
gushes *******. This is Plato's territory, a long way
from Spain. But there's geometry in the bullring. There's
life and death and nada and sol y sombra in the stands.
Ideas don quixotic cloaks. Cervantes turns them into
literature, the Ur-story of Spain and its millions of minions.
The common man squirms for comedy. Tragic senses
squire hard work, and if life is so short, why not eat, dream

and be merry? Unamuno deserves his fate. Thinking
about death still adds up to nothing. Thought dies, too;
it's not accustomed to rue the end of infinity. It has no
affinity with hard limits. It rises, stays aloof, looks down
on the world, which has only one side visible, and pronounces
it good for nothing. But can't the thinker take a joke?
Incompletion competes with vast yearning like the tortoise
with the hare. No one gains on the other: Zeno's Paradox.
We might still ride Mediterranean Vespas, but the Greeks
kick-started this thing into motion. There's no reason

without Socrates, and he pronounced death a no-fear zone.
Unamuno forgot his Crito, Phaedo and Apology. Irony adds
up to something, not nothing. There's no surface irony here,
folks. This is Mycenean, not Mediterranean, Athenian not
Salamancian. Spain thinks it thinks new thoughts, taking
the bull by the ****** ear that's left behind the horn. No mas.
Only philosophy thinks itself, eternally. It never dies, man, even
if the cosmos explodes to a pinhead, then vanishes like
a magic trick. What's tragic about necessity, certainty? They
rave on in that dark night of the soul. Nada means nada,
but "means" isn't nada. It's todo on the human topos.

So climb it like a mountain in Dante's Purgatorio. Fret
no more, amigo. You are on the top of the world; it's a tricky
move to the summit. Ascend on the wings of meaning,
then see what you think, not think what you see. That's something.
And Socrates proclaimed it enough. Hey, Plato made him say so.

Liquid diamonds adorn the sea,
silver sunbursts of brilliance shine
through the waves, living, heaving,
violent jewels of seaweed and paste.

The sky bares its midriff of pale blue
skin, unmarred like a newborn, a marble
dome of sweetness and smoothness,
restless to immerse the nascent dawn in light.

Under the fierce Aegean sun, we saunter
toward Pireas' port, bags packed, supplies
secure, farewells sobbed, to set sail for Spain,
like Odysseus on his makeshift barque.

The journey demands a lifetime of searching
signs, of casting far and wide to escape
the Sirens' enervating songs, anchoring
the helm in darkened caves the size of yurts.

On the hunt for El Greco, the Greek painter
holed up in Toledo, his home away from home,
his haven of elongated, diaphanous figures,
who rise to the clouds, linking heaven and earth.

We owe the Greeks the fat seeds of culture:
philosophy, theater, sculpture for all, democracy
for the fortunate few, women and slaves stuck
in the kitchen pouring libations for ancient sins.

Shades haunt the past, mounting arsenals of guilt
and accusation. The Greek splashes linseed oil on
canvas, erases his debt, dabs an eerie white in the eyes
of threadbare saints, who elevate to everlasting heights.

Lorca leans into the bullring's skybox,
freshly painted red and green
like blood and grass beneath the Iberian sun,
where poetry composts into compositions
fit for a toreador, whose tights hug his thin hips,
tempting the huffing beast to hook his groin.

Spain's family jewels bulge behind the tattered
red cape, the one tool of the trade that can't
**** the bull, only blindly enrage it to charge
for its pride, its race, for the red light of glory,
as royalty wave their embroidered handkerchiefs,
awaiting the bull's ****** ear, still warm and steamy,

after so many twirls around the packed-sand dance floor.
Each step kicks up a black faux pas, first lunge
along the fatalistic journey to mortality: a pale thigh gored,
an artery gushes. Gangrene seeps in, drenched
in brandy, which disinfects only the guzzler's gullet.
No antidote to sepsis, no darning of the tights.

The toreador dies to fight another day, his banderillos
still stuck in the **** of muscularity, his eyes darting
among the crowds for a sign of good fortune, good
hunting, as in the old days of machismo and torture
and blind lust for the blood of brutes who threatened
no one but the cowardly prince on horseback, wobbly

beneath the weight of his armor. His ardor as fabricated
as his divine right to rule over the beasts of the field,
over the beaten-down brows of his subjects, toothlessly
grinning at the hope of dining on sacrifice, something
the truly chosen people could do only on the pain of death.
Lorca mourns the dying fighter with the duende of

flamenco, the wild, passionate cry of suffering, the blackest
black of Spain, the urge to create and destroy, to undress
the poet's soul, as naked as a newborn, as powerful as
a raging bull, charging without thinking, divining the forces
of nature like a hurricane, an earthquake. To shout down
death is to immortalize art, as long as human history endures.

Like an army from the Great War catapulting
out of trenches to battle blindly with enemy
machine guns and mortar, tourists take fire
on the Great Plaza of Salamanca. We line up
to sip ruby-red Rioja, savor eyelash-thin slices
of jamon, spy on the antlike antics
of the maneuvering crowds, who cross
the square in bunched-up patterns
of inscrutable geometry, of indirection.
They traipse from here to there and
back again on reconnaissance, as castanets
click cacophonously off the concrete plain,
and conversations carry skyward to the sun.

On the walls, bas-relief profiles of Spanish heroes
populate a paneled paean to celebrity, to spirit's might.
St. John of the Cross, Cervantes, even Quixote himself
look down upon us in one-eyed stares of forced patronage,
unwilling participants in the guerrilla tactics of sharing
their World Heritage riches with the disinherited of the world.

Conspicuous by her absence, St. Teresa of Avila
levitates above the maddening mobs to reach
the outskirts of her interior castle, which houses
myriad rooms of virtue that no ordinary mortal can
attain. Her destination: perfection, tilting at
the immense spiritual windmill in the sky. She blesses
me as the waiter carries another tray of wine, endless
libations for the infinite thirst of adventure, discovery,
and the spoils of travel. Winking at Cervantes,
I turn into a temporary resident, unlikely scion of Spain,
and masticate another wafer-thin portion of jamon.
My taste buds dance the flamenco in delight. I sigh.

O how Hemingway loved this sacred soil, his soul
tangled in the bullring, with its ovals of blood and sand.
Newspaper in hand, he stands in the stands to watch
the horses and woo the Spanish black that wraps
around the ring. Mind and spirit settle into the nosebleed
section on concrete benches that radiate heat
in the afternoon. Soon death will follow, not for them,
but for the witless bulls, fierce, innocent victims
of the blood lust of war. Who has nostalgia for this now?
Who kills the monstrous beast within? It rages and rages,
pawing sand, seeing red, seething with hatred
of its tormentor, thinking -- no, feeling -- only "attack."

I have followed the trail of Santiago de Compostela
longingly in my mind, peering over the Pyrenees from
the French plateau that self-abates at the foot of the peaks.
I watch pilgrims scramble through Roland's Breach,
a toothless gap planted in the middle of saw-tooth summits.
Through it shines a light to beatify Iberia. I stand on
the plain, St. James' clam shell firmly in hand,
my walking stick crooked as a branch bearing fruit.
Ahead, only spectacle and absolution await, incense
swinging through the nave like smoke from a failed
mortar round. We stand in waves of penitents, praying
that Santiago still curries favor for the faint at heart.
War is hell, say the toungeless bulls. Listen to them bellow.

No celestial being will ever descend
the misty ether to complement my
wishing and seeking for its eternal presence.

None who are worthy of such adoration
will stoop to move me out beyond myself,
to send me hurtling down the long, contemplative spiral
of the Self, toward the focal point of Existenz.

Identity is elusive. I find no residue,
no center of recognition and acceptance
with which to make my defense.

Identity is infectious, a virus that plagues
without antidote or cure. As with the Fall,
I must disregard the Delphic Oracle. Who
among us has ever truly known himself?

Perhaps I am too tainted, perhaps I am impure.
Perhaps I would be blinded by the brightness of their glory.

No, I am quite certain that those who stir among the stars
will never be moved by pity or suffering to breathe
the breath of Eros that flings me out beyond
this solitude. None will ever come to bestow on me
the presence and embrace I so passionately desire.

I must reshape my future in the image of the Lamb.
I must leap across the world's murderous, polluted abyss.
I must land on the other side in safety, security,
with nothing bruised save the membrane of my porous ego.

I hurriedly push past myself,
watching my body from above,
feinting with consciousness,
fainting into the Spanish black.

Velazquez's "Las Meninas"
jack-hammers a tunnel
of ek-stasis, pulling me into
the painter's dark studio,

weighed down by overwhelming
curtains, curtailing the senses'
sense of majesty and control.
This is not trompe l'oeil. This is

tricking the soul into the artifice
of the palette, of paint on board,
of black that illumines perfect
placement: the spectator on the floor.

Stendhal's sensitivity is no virtue
or vice. It suckles the sublime,
sated on illusion, art for art's sake,
delivering a blow to the solar plexus.

I gasp as my body trembles at tremors
of terror, annunciations of angels
bearing paintbrushes as paltry wings.
Their back feathers stained a Spanish black.

Painting owns no one, owes no one
comfort or joy or pedantic instruction.
The cherubs in the foreground radiate
innocence, wonder, humanity's blank heart.

At my feet, my body wriggles skyward,
wrenches for a transplant. Paint on it
Valazquez's black goatee, then part
the velvet curtains. I will rise to new life.

Robinson Jeffers’ poetry rings as hard as bone,
his windswept lyrics fed by his dark side.
At Carmel, he built a tower of stone.
Wind, sea and storm fostered his rugged pride.
With nature’s fiery force, his skills he honed.
His message bleak, from which he could not hide,
foretold an elemental strife alone.
He wrangled roan stallions only few could ride.
His long-winged hawks over waves would moan.
He joined their wildness with soul open wide.
His poems made me yearn for his coastal home.
Nothing humanly made could pull back the tide.
His poetics read: Etch your heart in stone.
A Zen he practiced till the day he died.

1.
Stone castles float high above the moat,
rising in the empty sky.

Colonnades of clouds pummel the shoreline,
but plunder only Time.

The silver lake reflects the face of God.
Forsake its lifeline,
trace its outline in darkness,
then dive, dive, dive
to retrieve your destiny.

The horizon sleeps at the end of the road.
Light turns, but withholds its blessing.

2.
Pilgrims clamber over slick, thick cobblestones,
combing the ruins of history.
They slip, slide and slither back,
only to lose their way.

A baby-faced mountain bends low
to brush a raindrop off a rose.
The rose reddens, the mountain shudders,
and love blooms —

even as older peaks,
streaked in early snow,
grind their teeth in envy.

Obey your nature.

3.
A crown of fog settles on the silent village.
Wet cobblestones snake back upon themselves,
pooling castles on the ground.

The road plummets to the shoreline; the horizon weeps for no one.

Light turns. Time tires. And infinity seeps into the soul.
Bruised pilgrims withhold their blessing.

Beneath the love-struck mountain,
a lonely traveler gropes homeward.

Patches of empty sky carry scents of welcome:
There, unbidden, tranquility awaits.

*— Chaulin, Switzerland

the black rain
pushes incessantly
against
the window

great dull gray streaks
spread
the ephemeral sun
into
pallid false reflections

ridiculous faces
touching ***** white
wisps of clouds

a narrow
uncertain light
falls heavily
upon a page
I have written

crossing out
an unneeded,
superfluous
word

the room
is illuminated
with a golden
bright appearance

reflected in
four varnished
corners

of the table,
which catches my eye

I look at it
and the faces melt

the whole room is like that
nothing left but great dull gray images
even the cold ridiculous sky
is like that

this diminishing light;
I can no longer write with courage

(after E. E. Cummings)

ALPHA

time's mightiest dream
fills unspace with lowliest freedom

we
choose
NOW to act
in alabaster innocence
we
yes the day
its
magnanimous
blessing

we
skip through
greenvanishing
meadows
leap to
pale
indifferent skies
(while memory
whittles
away
the past)

we
carry little
people's
humility;clouds
drain heavens
gates
of slippery/silver
tears

languid lovers lie
in curly locked *****
their coitus
the rasping
friction
of IMmortality

BETA

onetwothreefour equations
rewrite relativity, tumble down
puddle-licious
wormholes

Euclid inhabits
an ice-oceles
triangle
draws line
A to be

pockmarked
moonrocks
pummel
Atlantis

the universe dances
to canticles
of calculus
out-Zorbaing the greek
outshining
the starz

God lurks
in
unlucky alleyways
plays dice
with
Einstein's
willowy
hair  today
de-parts tomorrow

clumsy rolls
of
snake eyes
whistle down
celestial canyons
signals bleep
f  a  r.....    a  n  d.....  w  e  e

OMEGA

present's presence
courages the future
of illusions
(the
blind
heart
bleeds)
on a magician's
rickety stage

quarters sprout
behind junior's ears
magic, tricks
cut in half
cambridgeladies
faint from vapors
peddled by the
goat-footed
good humor man

kings horses
pull the velvet
curtains
a-side

sunken sailors
saLUTE:
scribble
on the sawdust
ocean
(a
n
c
h
o
r
s
a
w
e
i
g
h)
floor

schools of
spermatozoa
break-dance
toward
a/******/****

fluids flow
freely
to hard
hoed rows

cherubs:chime
a flowerblooms

time turn
s  in its
s l e e p

freedom
kisses awake
a  N  E  W  dawn

dreams
swirl
in the
mirror

a poet pens
his epitaph
the soul's eyes
BLINK

unspace floods
with;beauty

Robinson Jeffers’ poetry is as hard as bone,
his windswept lyrics fed by his dark side.
At Carmel, he built a tower of stone.
Wind, sea and storm fostered his rugged pride.
With nature’s fiery force, his skills he honed.
His message bleak, from which he could not hide,
foretold an elemental strife alone.
He wrangled roan stallions only few could ride.
His long-winged hawks over waves would moan.
He joined their wildness with soul open wide.
His poems made me yearn for his coastal home.
Nothing humanly made could pull back the tide.
His poetics read: Etch your heart in stone.
A Zen he practiced till the day he died.

I have dirtied my hands
with the archaeology of faith,
digging deep to unearth commitment,
smoothing soil to hide despair,
heaping stones as cairns of evidence.

Weary, I have accomplished this much:
Adding water, the dirt turns malleable.
I squeeze a body out of black clay,
delicately sculpt life into it,
then write my name in the residue.
Mud covers all but the letter "A".

1.
Spirits trample the rain-starved
Plains like herds of fattened buffalo.

Cloaked in tawny hides, they pound
the earth: invincible grass dancers.

From the ground spring their harvests
of sickness and health, good and evil.

A shaman ignites his sage bundle,
tosses pebbles on the tipi floor.

He stumbles backward, eyes turned
inward, arms outstretched to receive

the medicine's blessing. He soars in vapor
trails of hawks, surpassing the smoke,

the sky, the spirits' singing to the drum,
the cosmos' luminous fringe.

Eyes on fire like liquid lightning,
he peers into the future, the past,

liberates forces of healing, gathers up
baskets of goodness, effusive with wonder.

2.
Above the dusty brown hills, the turquoise
sky casts shadows on ancestral shores.

All must cross the waters, awaken from
their trances, devour supernatural dreams.

The shaman cries out in ancient rapture,
his flesh on tenterhooks, shredding into leaves

of supplication, tears of blood and water.
Horses snort in the distance. Raptors

circle overhead. The shaman grapples
with the spirits, ***** power from their

dances, grinds grasses' green seedlings,
the growing treasure of the earth.

He calls down hawks of heaven, builds
a bed of red feathers. Smoke wavers

through the night sky, orange as a harvest moon.
In the deep sleep of bears, the dying rise up.

1.
Framed by a well-worn,
wooden windowsill,
we peer down on Purgatory
from our hotel perch
high above the restless shores
of Lake Como.

Behemoth slabs of marble
hang in limbo: rough-hewn
bodies awaiting their savior —
the divinely appointed sculptor
to chisel away the sins of their world.

Reflected in the window’s wavy glass,
the ghost of Michelangelo
glides past — an aging slave to beauty —
humming an Italian hymn to Venus
in syncopated rhythms.

He whispers that the stone
comes from Carrara,
carved out of ragged mountainsides,
carried down muddy, makeshift roads,  
crated onto misshapen barges,
then barreled down the Arno River.

Last stop: Firenze.

2.
In his hands, marble beams
as the body of the beloved,
draped in splendor and light,
draped in radiant form — form
of the sculptor, not the sculpture;
of the master, not the slave.

Beneath the rock-rough surface
of his métier, his soul
struggles to emerge from stone,
rising in rapture toward the divine,
rising on wings of beauty,
rising on wings of desire.

In his hands, marble melds into a mirror
of the making mind.
He levitates, an embodied ideal,
rising higher, ever higher,
toward his immortal beloved —
yearning to be made real,
to be made flesh,
the “coarse and savage bark”
of the artist’s first art.

3.
We come late to all
high lofty things,
he wrote.

And so we peer at the pit of Purgatory,
into its dissonant, disturbing discovery
that art cannot save,
that art cannot rightfully claim the artist’s life,
that art cannot breach the infinite reach
of divine love.

What happens is what is real;
but what is real is what we make happen.

The only choice, then: to go down, down, down into stone;
down into the blood-stained marble;
down into the rough-cut corners of regret.
Inconsolable, sculpture crumples into dust.

First, the patina falls away,
then appendages and organs —
everything but the sightless sea-surge
of skin, the seamless sanctuary
of pagan heroes and gods.

4.
The ideal — immensity, enormity, infinity —
ignites in unrequited desire. The heart strains in vain
to bear the weight of stone.

In Purgatory’s pit,
the master stumbles:
art cannot save him.
The body of his beloved crumbles.

Chiseled above his tomb:
Ripeness is all.

(after E. E. Cummings)

ALPHA

time's mightiest dream
fills unspace with lowliest freedom

we
choose
NOW to act
in alabaster innocence
we
yes the day
its
magnanimous
blessing

we
skip through
greenvanishing
meadows
leap to
pale
indifferent skies
(while memory
whittles
away
the past)

we
carry little
people's
humility;clouds
drain heavens
gates
of slippery/silver
tears

languid lovers lie
in curly locked *****
their coitus
the rasping
friction
of IMmortality

BETA

onetwothreefour equations
rewrite relativity,tumble down
puddle-licious
wormholes

Euclid inhabits
an ice-oceles
triangle
draws line
A to be

pockmarked
moonrocks
pummel
Atlantis

the universe dances
to canticles
of calculus
out-Zorbaing the greek
outshining
the starz

God lurks
in
unlucky alleyways
plays dice
with
Einstein's
willowy
hair  today
de-parts tomorrow

clumsy rolls
of
snake eyes
whistle down
celestial canyons
signals bleep
f  a  r.....    a  n  d .....  w  e  e

OMEGA

present's presence
courages the future
of illusions
(the
blind
heart
bleeds)
on a magician's
rickety stage

quarters sprout
behind junior's ears
magic,tricks
cut in half
cambridgeladies
faint from vapors
peddled by the
goat-footed
good humor man

kings horses
pull the velvet
curtains
a-side

sunken sailors
saLUTE:
scribble
on the sawdust
ocean
(a
n
c
h
o
r
s
a
w
e
i
g
h)
floor

schools of
spermatozoa
break-dance
toward
a/******/****

fluids flow
freely
to hard
hoed rows

cherubs:chime
a flowerblooms

time turn
s  in its
s l e e p

freedom
kisses awake
a  N  E  W  dawn

dreams
swirl
in the
mirror

a poet pens
his epitaph
the soul's eyes
BLINK

unspace floods
with;beauty

1.
My mother hates me!
My father hates me!
Oedipus screams to the
stealthily silent Sphinx.

He scatters riddles like laurel leaves
waiting to be braided into
a playwright's crown. It is too
grandiose to fit his cracked. cramped cranium.

His unconscious mind flies open
like the Sphinx rocketing to the sky.
Sacred haunches soar. Wings beat
steadily to reach titanic heights.

Blind to his murderous fate, Oedipus
cannot know himself. Before the
Delphic Oracle, his life shrivels,  
unexamined by his bleeding eyes.

2.
Freud exults in triumph.
Maternal love births eternal love:
endless comfort and affection
for the newly bloomed beloved.

Soon, comfort metamorphoses
into feral eros, unspeakable, unthinkable,
beyond the bounds of catastrophic evil.
Submerged desire sullies the chastest kiss.

Jacosta embraces her son
as her new living king, her husband's
royal blood bubbling brazenly
on the bitter road to Thebes.

His hands stained, Oedipus strives
to transmute his trauma as our own.
We become him when Freud deigns
to interpret our darkest, direst dreams.

Blindly, we mimic him: carnal union
with the mother, lethal rage against
the father. Mourning Becomes Electra
beckons to the wary second ***.

3.
The Sphinx belies its own riddle:
How can prophecy spring from
the sculpted, smooth stone
of these perfect *******?

Only blind Teiresias plumbs the depths
of Oedipus' fate: Judgement lies blinded,
action lies blinded by the ventricles of
violence, the twisted telos of the mind.

Humans sin against the world, against
nature, siphoned of joy. They sin without
a sacred perch to rise from. Blood and *****,
mud and blindness fashion their Oedipal souls.

The tiny red train clawed its way
up the mountain *****,
clamping on crampons to pull itself
over the ever-widening angle
of ascent. One-hundred-year-old
slat chairs defied any pretense
of repose. Comfort vanished like a wisp
of smoke as altitude rose and rose.

At the end of the line spread Schynige Platte
with its front-row seats to the three tenors
of granite. Pasted with snow, nearly equal
in height, they stared at us face to face,
unapologetic, unconcerned, untamable.
Sentinels over the knife-edge valley,
they penetrated our psyches with
the grandeur of Wordsworth's infinite sublime.

Up from the crest of our hilltop lookout  
swept a vast array of Alpine plants.
Flora flourished where oxygen
grew thin. A band of volunteers
humbly tended the garden
for nine months a year. They stuffed
hay pillows, sifted tall grasses
for hungry Ibex in Interlaken.

When the sun had sunk, they  
joined hands and bowed to
Eiger, Munch and Jungfrau,
the elevated elders of their tribe.

1.
Long, empty days flee into the past.
No agenda.
No impulse.
No telos.
No soul.

My whitewashed angel claps
her silver hands.
I hear a dead man’s cry
sink slowly in the sands.

A mortar round pounds
the trenches at Verdun.
His heart stopped, Edward Thomas
blinks and falls.
Robert Frost tosses an apple
across the mending wall.

2.
Akhmatova mourns a faithless love.
Stalin disfigures her features
with a blood-stained dove.

Poetry extends beyond
the horizon of time.
Its foundation transcendental,
its meat image and rhyme.

3.
Empty days escape into the ticking void:
a metronome made meaningless,
a vacuum of joy.

Seeds sprout inside a driveway.
Dirt blackens in the rain.

Now knows no start or finish.
Eternity tightens its grip in vain.

We trundle down the wooden steps
behind the weathered farmhouse,
headed toward the orchard
planted in yellow grass.

Only one tree still bears fruit,
the others desiccated from unwilling
neglect, the bequeathal of old age,
the dark turning of nature's cycle.

Looking back at the westward window,
I see nothing but its vacant stare,
seeking the setting sun to reflect
its waning light.

You stumble past the lonely apple
hanging precariously above the ground.
When it falls, your legacy of husbandry
will be complete.

I glance into the dull glaze of your
ancient eyes, seeking a light to reflect
my image, hidden neatly in
the folds of your wrinkled face.

I am the only fruit left hanging
from your long, English lineage.
I ****** the wizened apple
and lay it lovingly in the grass.

It will wither with the winter winds.
Next to the sun's slanting beam,
I feel the frisson of autumn's chill.

Dusk settles on the fields.
I stare at your stooping frame,
my arm hooked precariously
through the tree's crooked branch.

1.
Memory blankets the past
in a neon green meadow
dappled with gray bits of matter.
They ooze and coalesce into a brain
brimming with unconscious narratives:
glottal globs clogging the gaps
of personal history. Tales of sound
and fury signifying nothing but the living self.

2.
The Transcendental Ego reigns over all,
smoothing the way for a unity of experience,
smoothing the way for a universe of sense.
I stroll alone through the empty patches
of meadow, waiting for Wordsworth's
daffodils to bloom. Waiting for poetry
to usurp the role of narrative, metaphor
crowned as the foundation of knowledge.

3.
The past besieges the present like Time''s
Trojan Horse, teeming with shadows. At their edges,
light lines the darkness. To try to remember now,
the tabula is a noirish rasa, staring back
through dull, heavy-lidded eyes. We see as we are seen.
Memory dances before a mirror, an image so close
to our touch, yet so far out of reach. Starved for imagery,
we strain toward the black. Only connect. Only connect.

1.
You speak the word
that will hold back
death, muffled along
the forest path.
I seek a clearing
to hear clearly
what was said.
I seek an opening
to liberate
meaning. Nothing
shows itself, save
the flittering of birds.

2.
The poem is not yours to keep,
nor the others, who so eagerly read.

It belongs to the earth,
fated for the forest floor,

sifted through mounds
of leaves, yellow and brown,

buried by a hiker's boot,
unwilling to be found.

3.
Poetry fortifies the bond
between spirit and breath.
Each verse an exhale.

Poems dwell in the dank forest,
silent, thick and dark.
Our hut hovers high in the sky.

In the sky, exhales dissipate.
The word thins, death thrives.
Poetry fortifies the final whimper.

1.
Stone castles float high above the moat,
rising in the empty sky.

Colonnades of clouds pummel the shoreline,
but plunder only Time.

The silver lake reflects the face of God.
Forsake its lifeline,
trace its outline in darkness,
then dive, dive, dive
to retrieve your destiny.

The horizon sleeps at the end of the road.
Light turns, but withholds its blessing.

2.
Pilgrims clamber over slick, thick cobblestones,
combing the ruins of history.
They slip, slide and slither back,
only to lose their way.

A baby-faced mountain bends low
to brush a raindrop off a rose.
The rose reddens, the mountain shudders,
and love blooms —

even as older peaks,
streaked in early snow,
grind their teeth in envy.

Obey your nature.

3.
A crown of fog settles on the silent village.
Wet cobblestones snake back upon themselves,
pooling castles on the ground.

The road plummets to the shoreline; the horizon weeps for no one.

Light turns; Time tires; and infinity seeps into the soul.
Bruised pilgrims withhold their blessing.

Beneath the love-struck mountain,
a lonely traveler gropes homeward.

Patches of empty sky carry scents of welcome:
There, unbidden, tranquility awaits.

Experience absorbs mind, shapes its ethereal body.
The invisible encircles the straining atoms
of thought, expands until there is space
to fill with my mind as your mind.

vapors coat the night
mist rises to the heavens
stars pulse light and life

How many times have I poured heavy cream from a squat wooden bowl
onto a fiery batch of raspberries --- the glory of this medieval
Swiss village of Gruyeres? How many times have I trod its cobblestone
streets, smooth stones scuffing my shoes, stones that fit like
molars in a jaw bone-- polished by millions of soles?

How many times have I spied a ***** blur the road, like an
atom split in fusion? Only once, today: an orange-red body,
windswept ears, toothsome snout, black-tipped tail, torpedo straight,
a rudder perfectly fixed on one course only: Elsewhere.

Repetition is the maker of travel, the reinstantiation of
the essence of our experience, each piece yearning to grow
into a medley with others. Only an on-key tune can capture
the elan vital of belonging nowhere but in memory. All travel
begs for repetition, for affirmation, for like turns to like.

Zen practices the presence of the now, instantaneous,
paradoxical, vanishing as it appears. Travel practices the Zen
of Zen, deconstructing the present into a precious piece of the past.
Travel recedes to remember tomorrow as yesterday’s promise.

I am back there, not here. I reminisce, reconstruct, relish
the essence of travel as I taste the heavy cream, the tartness
of raspberries, and the afternoon amazement as a ***** crossed
my path -- just as Merwin describes in The *****, his masterpiece.

I look back. Merwin's experience gains on me and quickly melds
into my own. His spiritual exercises inspire me. My repetition
of them and his incorrigible wanderlust reconstitutes
again and again his own timeless poetic reward.

Circles of rope, white, grey and bilious, squeeze around
Wetterhorn Mountain’s chest, leaving only its angled
forehead in sight. Like the tail of St. George’s fiery dragon,
the clouds sink into stone, ******* down their grip
until nothing is left breathing, until nothing is left. Stone
emits a feeble cry of fear and trembling. The dragon’s
tail squeezes tighter, intent on suffocation -- severe oxygen
deprivation above timberline.

Rain is the Sancho Panza to the mountain’s Quixote;
the circles of Dante’s Hell mirror the clouds’
constant clinging below the pointed, harpoon peak.
You can climb this mountain as in Purgatory, but its path
is polished to a slippery ***** from the clouds’
constant rains: such a dubious, deadly affair. Only St. Georges
persevere here; only the holy ones manage not to stumble
on the bulky, slick rocks.

Rain is not a baptism, but an ablution.
Rain threatens the clarity of the day. Rain threatens
the clinging of the day to the present. Always, such rain will pass.
Puddles in post holes, precarious ascent to the cloudless light.
Rain clears the path in hindsight but nurtures the future to come
quickly, like cacti with brief, brilliant blossoms.
Let the thorns be your payment for grasping the blooms.

How many times have I poured heavy cream from a squat wooden bowl
onto a fiery batch of raspberries --- the glory of this medieval
Swiss village of Gruyeres? How many times have I trod its cobblestone
streets, smooth stones scuffing my shoes, stones that fit like
molars in a jaw bone-- polished by millions of soles?

How many times have I spied a ***** blur the road, like an
atom split in fusion? Only once, today: an orange-red body,
windswept ears, toothsome snout, black-tipped tail, torpedo straight,
a rudder perfectly fixed on one course only: Elsewhere.

Repetition is the maker of travel, the reinstantiation of
the essence of our experience, each piece yearning to grow
into a medley with others. Only an on-key tune can capture
the elan vital of belonging nowhere but in memory. All travel
begs for repetition, for affirmation, for like turns to like.

Zen practices the presence of the now, instantaneous,
paradoxical, vanishing as it appears. Travel practices the Zen
of Zen, deconstructing the present into a precious piece of the past.
Travel recedes to remember tomorrow as yesterday’s promise.

I am back there, not here. I reminisce, reconstruct, relish
the essence of travel as I taste the heavy cream, the tartness
of raspberries, and the afternoon amazement as a ***** crossed
my path -- just as Merwin describes in The *****, his masterpiece.

I look back. His experience gains on me and quickly melds into my own.
His spiritual exercises inspire me. My repetition of them and his incorrigible wanderlust reconstitutes again and again his own timeless poetic reward.

Two glaciers that once kneaded the neck
of this tiny tourist town have bled
into the mountain -- now twin rivulets of ice
ambling aimlessly up the rocky, grey *****.

Robbed of its tourist prize, the town shrinks
like snow in the scalding sun.
I have not come for the snow nor the ice,
but for the warm-blooded Alpine splendor,
which cannot recede from this isolated valley.

The ghosts of glaciers haunt my path up the hills
into the belly of these bulky peaks, cemented to the earth
like pillars of stone sculpting themselves.
Tourists must settle for such shrunken beauty,
still as intoxicating as new wine.

(For Mary Oliver)

In winter much of the living hibernates.
The dead seek out warmth.
Birds sing only in treetops, serenading
the world beyond. Let us soar to it
on the white wings of your poems.

You have said that one day we shall
live in the sky. but our consolation now
is the green earth, draped in snow.
Our footprints fade as soon as the sun burns down.
You left us in brightness. All your poems
embraced goodness, love and light.

A blanket of feathers covers your grave.
Beside them, a silver pen shines,
the instrument of grace. You wrote
more than we could absorb, more
than our mediocre minds could imagine.

You blessed us with the whiteness
of wisdom. We yearn to follow you
and the tree-top birds into the sky.
For now, we must feed on your alabaster
poetry, nature's hidden calligraphy,
spelling out our names.

The sun limns the crest of snow-capped peaks packed below
a pale, cloudless sky. The faded blue draws out the
steely gray of the three mountain musclemen: Eiger,
Munch, Jungfrau. Alpine white outshines the same hue
of fresh carnations placed delicately in a vase
on the living room table -- as if forever.

Alps wear puffy cowls above craggy faces, drooping
indentations from too many jaw-shattering bouts
with the natural elements. White wobbles always
on the ropes; the countdown begins. Disfiguring
bruises turn into the loser’s crown. Nature tricks
us with its charms of purity and innocence.

Lucerne’s {Kapellbrucke} exists only for us, transported
from the 14th century to now, little changed from its origins --
and all for our pleasure. Yet It is a ruse that anything
eight centuries old would remain in place for
our touristic joy. We are intruders on history, backpacks
replacing 19th-century carpet bags, gilded in fool’s gold.

At dusk, Eiger turns from white to orange, a fruitful hue
whose sustenance is only glory. You can feast on
white Raclette cheese, white wine, white boiled potatoes,
white onions, but not white glory. Nutrition comes in many
substances. Orange stones satisfy some senses,
but leave us waiting for more, night after night,

This is true even in the light afternoon rain of autumn.

Lying down
at the day’s intermission,
I listen to Puccini arias,
and am transported to Lucca,
his walled hometown,
with its *****-white streets,
its darkened straits,
its massive cathedral under
eternal construction.

Life limps along in
effervescent flux here,
beauty kept dormant,
or sprouting like a tree
from the Torre Guinigi’s
grassy roof.

A one-time amphitheater
sports cloned tourist shops.
Only one
sells Puccini souvenirs.
La Boheme survives
on note cards and
lop-sided bookmarks.

The composer’s legacy turned
into trinkets made in China.
A vast, discounted reserve
of memory, kitsch and fame.
Still, they provide me
a precarious solace.

Music without words
charts my tourist mood
of endless angst.
Opera is the grandest art,
some critics claim.
The human condition rendered
thick in symbol and sound.

Happily, I carry
the philosopher’s stone
to decipher the soaring
scores.
They say, passion, foreboding,
no regrets. A fluttering
high C stirs the airwaves.

Ululating sopranos,
searing tenors sigh
heavenward.
The last act over,
the curtain rises on
the dull, restless, repetitive
routines of everyday life.

In the background,
echoes of Tosca, currents
of ruin and rust.
We must embrace our destiny
even on the off-notes.
Opera’s solo signal:
Amor Fati.

Six waterfalls shoot through the viscera of the mountain,
jack-hammering the stone with the precision of
an Excalibur ax. The jet-engine force of the water
cannot be resisted: It is destined for victory,
deep canyons the sign of its easy conquest

We all carry a waterfall within us --
spidery and delicate, or pummeling the heart like
a heavyweight prize fighter. The count nears 10.
The falls are guaranteed a TKO. The heart, a soggy
mess of muscle, simpers in its corner, lost and forlorn.

I shower beneath my falls, which wear away
all my grit and grime, all my stains and soot, for the mere
price of my surface blood. “Vengeance is mine,”
declares the falls, laughing as I stagger beneath the weight
of the water, scrubbed clean again, but missing the heart.

Circles of rope, white, grey and bilious, squeeze around
Wetterhorn Mountain’s chest, leaving only its angled
forehead in sight. Like the tail of St. George’s fiery dragon,
the clouds sink into stone, ******* down their grip
until nothing is left breathing, until nothing is left. Stone
emits a feeble cry of fear and trembling. The dragon’s
tail squeezes tighter, intent on suffocation -- severe oxygen
deprivation above timberline.  
                                                          
Rain is the Sancho Panza to the mountain’s Quixote;
the circles of Dante’s Hell mirror the clouds’
constant clinging below the pointed, harpoon peak.
You can climb this mountain as in Purgatory, but its path
is polished to a slippery ***** from the clouds’
constant rains: such a dubious, deadly affair. Only St. Georges
persevere here; only the holy ones manage not to stumble
on the bulky, slick rocks.
                                        
Rain is not a baptism, but an ablution.
Rain threatens the clarity of the day. Rain threatens
the clinging of the day to the present. Always, such rain will pass.
Puddles in post holes, precarious ascent to the cloudless light.
Rain clears the path in hindsight but nurtures the future to come
quickly, like cacti with brief, brilliant blossoms.
Let the thorns be your payment for grasping the blooms.

The old man clamped onto my hand
like a manacle of stars.
I gazed up at his wispy, white beard
and watched his cheeks tremble
as he recited the Iliad in the
original Greek.

Simone Weil, a French philosopher
who starved herself to death,
condemned the violence of the poem
as a testament to the brutality
oozing out of men's souls. Little
to celebrate there. Plenty to mourn.

Hexametric rhythms caught my
hearing: They echoed in my brain
like exhales from labored breathing.
Life or death lost its meaning.
The will to power conquers all.

Swift movements of being, and
broadswords plunged through
finely hammered breastplates.
Black blood pooled at the victim's
feet. Another triumph for Agamemnon.

The old man, collapsed at the poem's
end, shape-shifted to a marble bust of Homer.
I turned to grasp his missing hand,
But the constellation of stars had vanished.
He had instantly become blind.

Like flowers on a hillside, mountains turn their faces each day
to follow the sun. The radiance from their foreheads proves
irresistible. It is Agamemnon’s golden death mask. By afternoon,
the gray countenance beneath the finely hammered gold
turns green. The peaks are envious of the blumen that beam
the same brilliance throughout the day

Mountains vainly yearn to reproduce themselves.
Avalanches create one pseudo-answer. But they
are messy, ugly, out of control, leaving body after
body in their wake. They destroy life, not create it.
Some mountains have had their DNA tested --
double helix of stone incapable of even rudimentary
cell division. Solitude, loneliness attack
their dreams. They sternly stand guard over the very
flowers they envy. They are virtually immovable, all-powerful.

Weather wraps itself around their mute witness, stirring
up storms. Titanic overseers, they claim a streak of divinity in their
gray strata. No one dares question their beliefs. But I do,
whenever Gatsby’s green light turns pink. The shame they show
reflects hubris, overreaching their place in creation. What
they envy is not color, motion or beauty. They lust for life.

Pink turns to fiery orange. Not only is their DNA lacking,
but so is the color of sustenance: blue. By nightfall, blue turns to
black indigo. Mountains crane their heads together, bow to
the missing sun and dream about biology. But they know from
whispers of those who have climbed them that they are out
of their element. The wind gusts; they sigh. Below, deer graze
in quiet, green pastures. It restoreth their souls.

Sunshine guides my vision

away from the shadow play
of giant cottonwoods and maples,
as a north breeze gently unsettles
them. Clumps of swaying branches.

Shadows, like portrait paintings,
fall onto the pavement. Such marvel.
I must write about it -- an ode
to darkness, yin to the sun’s yang.

But soon I see the face of Pablo Neruda.
Wise, whimsical, a piercing gaze.
Of the ode, he is all-knowing. I follow
the sunshine back -- today, empty-handed.

Blind to the beauty of the world,
he tenderly takes her hand
and brushes a kiss across it,
then blushes at his boldness.

Whatever she cherishes, he pounces
on to rationalize away into the ether.
It is Mars vs. Venus of the spirit.
But when blindness drives him
further inward, Venus invariably wins:

Her love cannot abide the boor,
the bore, the shamefully bold.

The book opens into infinite space,
myriad folios flutter --
parallel universes we inhabit
one person at a time.

Pages read forward and backward,
upward and downward --
no directions reliable,
no compass or rule.

Imagination stretches its
elasticized muscle --
to encompass any object:
Doric pillars on the sea.

The sea swallows itself,
book spines cover dry land --
tread on them lightly to
choose a way forward,

to reach a conclusion,
existential noir --
whodunits lead to a map
of the stars, pulsing

in invisible night ink.

One hand in a field of diamonds,
the other slopping pigs.
You are neither star nor earth,
as Rilke would have it. You are
always in medias res, always
on the way, thrown into the world
toward some dark horizon.

Never settled, never open,
never easy, never found.
Truth eludes you like a fugitive.
Your will evades everything
but pride. You run toward sunrise,
a being-unto-death. Now hisses
In a still small voice: then.
Here means elsewhere, there
means nowhere.

Turn back into the void. It taunts
you, tightens its grip on your gut,
spews smoke in your face.
You eat despair, regurgitate fear.
Where Titans swagger, you scurry
toward safety. You keep searching,
one hand in a field of sapphires,
the other trailing God.

Two glaciers that once kneaded the neck
of this tiny tourist town have bled
into the mountain -- now twin rivulets of ice
ambling aimlessly up the rocky, grey *****.
Robbed of its tourist prize, the town shrinks
like snow in the scalding sun.
I have not come for the snow nor the ice,
but for the warm-blooded Alpine splendor,
which cannot recede from this isolated valley.
The ghosts of glaciers haunt my path up the hills
into the belly of these bulky peaks, cemented to the earth
like pillars of stone sculpting themselves.
Tourists must settle for such shrunken beauty,
still as intoxicating as new wine.