The meaning of Eucharist
is not empirical. The bread,
the wine, the priest in his
splendid robes hovering
over the Host. We can see
them, hear them, taste
them, touch them. But
the mystical essence
escapes our senses.
It is accessible, revealed
only to faith.
Faith encounters the body
and blood of Christ
in glory at the altar.
Faith beholds the bread
and wine transubstantiate.
A daily miracle, hidden
from the unbelieving,
the unenlightened. Faith
fuses all, makes new
the covenant of Jesus,
who proclaimed, "This do
in remembrance of me."
The bread is tasted and chewed;
the wine is sipped and swallowed.
Our body remembers, but
only when informed by faith,
the pinnacle of the unempirical.

Muscling past yards and yards of clothes
over yards and yards of shoes, I reached
the back corner of her closet, dark, dusty,
deserted. I gently moved the shoes
out of my way, looking for what might
lie there, hidden, in boxes long forgotten.

I discovered a fiery red opal, once
the centerpiece of a magnificent
ring, but now lying loose from its
setting, stuck amid the collected
detritus of a long, luxuriant life.
Opals were her favorite gems,

After diamonds. So I picked it up,
wiped the dust away and dropped
it in my pocket, where the opal
seemed to burn with zeal to
see the light again after so many
years of darkness. I could feel it sparkle.

Its beauty reminded me of hers,
fiery, bubbly, lighting up at
the slightest hint of wit. She laughed her
way through life, perennially
an optimist, finding the future rich
with possibilities of goodness

And love. Out of her closet at last,
I walked into the front room
and placed the opal on the mantle.
It shone, as expected, in the low-
lying rays of the late-afternoon sun.
It would be the perfect stone, I knew

to lay on her grave.

We die of ennui and boredom,
blind to the cosmos’ resonating
with a revelatory repertoire
of marvels and wonders.

Our spirit intermingles
with Spirit, history’s unseen
hero, pushing the dialectic
forward to its inevitable conclusion.

Art is no easy accomplishment.
The Muse descends in silence.
We listen for her secret command,
shaping words into the integrity
of the poem. Spirit imprints spirit
on the open page.

Spirit rises with spirit to the realm
of the Titans, muscular poets
crowned in laurels and draped in multicolored
sashes. They have shown how
willpower can decode the Muse’s
cryptic command, and how poetry
is eternally reborn.

We die of ennui, boredom and blindness.
The cosmos enriches itself without us,
counting billions of stars, not hundreds
of poems. Consider the Muse like
the Delphic Oracle: Ignore her at your
own peril.

She knows that glory awaits
the courageous. She knows that there
are laurels enough for everyone.

For You, justice remains mercy.
Your will shines as agape love.
And still darkness reigns.
Out of the whirlwind, You
spoke only mysteries.
There is no rational answer for evil
this side of the grave.
Yet faith overcomes all, a gift
of the Spirit. Let us cling to it, like Job.
Let us trust and obey.
Let  us lean not on our own understanding,
but cling to the mighty bulwarks
of Your everlasting mercy.

.
I have burned myself out
in the struggle. I am no longer
a man and it is right that I should die.
-- Albert Camus

casting the mended net forward
what will i find? you ask

some woman who has visited me
in this dream
where is she now?

in this dancing dream/play of dharma
she has opened her hand to me
she has offered

yes, i have seen it

some woman who has touched me
with her silver shining palm
and i did not turn aside

she does not wander --
somewhere amid the swelling,
crashing tide she is waiting still

perhaps i should only listen

again you ask, casting the broken net forward
what shall i find?

only that there is no longer darkness
in burning oneself out

Sun
blankets
tidal waves
heading to shore.
Sky turns orange-grey.
No one in sight means this:
Nature embraces you whole.
You will doze on the shore, baptized.
The ocean is one; you are many.
Peace infiltrates. waters your bone-dry soul.

vermilion sky bleeds
into my heart as
traveler crosses Sonoran Desert
dappled with saguaro cacti
he bends his head in fatigue
or prayer
turquoise bleeds
into vermilion
from this London outpost
I cannot reach him
I cannot teach him
isolated and cold
I can no longer write
with courage

I walk along Cannon Beach at low tide.
The sea lazily laps my legs.
The tawny sand firmly packed, pockmarked
by seagull prints. On the hunt for food.
Tiny ***** scurry past; orange-pink
starfish cling to black boulders,
plump, distorted sea creatures
inured to the tidal pull.
A lavender-red sky signals twilight.
I head toward Haystack, a towering,
natural icon of coal-black stone.
Ahead the path is strewn
with flotsam and jetsam.
I scan the horizon,
then unhappily turn back.

.
After "Sometimes"

1.

You call your dog home
from the mystic woods.
Larks land on branches.

You've built your final home
out of love and faith.
Clouds tear apart in branches.

You say that you're at home
with melancholy, because
it leaves you breathless.

You have God in your pocket
as you clamber up trees,
lodged safe and high in branches.

2.

A field of sunflowers blooms,
the crown of creation.
Simplicity, domesticity --
you lived the way your poems sang.

Death waited for you,
but you were unafraid, unamused.
You followed your own
instructions for living:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

You left beauty and wisdom
for the rest of us, as we
walk slowly with you
and listen.

Love is the thing with feathers
-- it flies to the poet's song --
straight to the heart of God.

Ulysses sailed for 20 years
to reach Ithaca from Troy.
Mastermind of the Trojan Horse,
he and his warriors leveled that
fabled city; and he emerged as one
of Greece's greatest heroes.
Yet Dante consigned him
to Limbo to waste away
his afterlife. Heroism, apparently,
is not a holy virtue.

On the flat edge of the horizon
a purple-pink glow beckons me on,
across empty fields dusted with snow.
Trees raise their hands in praise
for the end of this day, plump with possibilities.

I have accomplished nothing.
Yet I turn the lathe one last time,
cutting metal, cutting bone,
with a wound too deep to plumb,
too dark to lighten, transfused
with blood that stains the sun.

Sorrow trails me like a bird dog
sniffing out her prey, startling
quail to take flight. I watch them
pass overhead. I am not a hunter.
They are safe to flee, coveys of comfort.

"The world is too much with us,"
Wordsworth proclaimed. I contemplate
his lament, but see no way out.
Ancient faces watch my route --
aimless, famished, still
seeking out transcendence,
still hungry for God.

I embrace the horizon as it bends.
Purple-pink sky leads me on.

First, give all your money to the poor.
Then gather your other possessions
and burn them, breathing a prayer
of contentment as smoke spirals
to the heavens.

Write farewell notes to all your
dearest friends and nearest relatives.
Keep the notes clear and concise --
no euphemisms for death and dying.
No saccharine clinging to the world.

Find a reputable carpenter to build
you a simple coffin -- most likely
a plain pine box. Meditate on your coffin
for days, imaging yourself laid inside it
with no way out. It will be your temporary
home. Keep it sparse and Spartan.
Look beyond it to the void.

Ritually bathe your body -- the last thing
you own -- cleansing it of sin and regret.
Repent. Rejoice. Reunite with your Source.
Bask in the glow of requited love.

In the sand, write with your finger a haiku;
make it jump like a frog into a pond of
lilies. Make it land on your heart
with ever the lightest touch.

Pray for grace to board your passage.
Only the living guess at its true nature,
unknowing on this side of the grave.
Read the Crito by Plato. There, Socrates says

Death is either a deep eternal sleep or
a reunion with other departed souls.
You do not have to choose. The reality
will come straight to you like a messenger
from afar. Be open to its meaning.

Finally, step into your coffin, fix the lid, and sleep.
When you wake, you will be on the other
side of dreams. Do not look back. You will
have entered the domain of the dead.
Make it your new abode. Clamber toward the light

Enervated, unenlightened,
I trudge the path to the Cirque
of Gavarnie, lodged high
amid the French Pyrenees.

Sheep cluster on the *****.
Mud and muck mar my way.
I must will myself forward,
weary unto death,
yet soon to rise up above the Earth.

brilliant sky
trees grasp the sun
January warmth

silver sea recedes
pink horizon plunges
black boulders full frontal

moon white face
fiery red lips
perfect female beauty blooms

The world is a vast library
with seemingly endless time to read.
I know my time is ending, on the brink of the void.
So I stroll the stacks of fiction,
dislodge Dostoevsky's masterpiece,
The Brothers Karamazov, rich in drama,
good vs. evil, and grand, probing ideas.
The book weighs more than my brain.
It weighs on my soul: Who creates
ultimate value in the cosmos, God or man?
Here rises the perfect question to ponder
before gasping into the grave.
I turn the first page and begin.

The blue of a glacial lake lures the hiker to its shores.
He shivers from the water's icy touch.

Reflected on the lake's mirrored surface,
blue mountains rise to the sky.

Sky, too, is blue, a paler version,
burned daily by the sun.

Blue impasto cakes the canvases of Van Gogh.
He marries blue to yellow on his sacred color wheel.

Wallace Stevens wrote "The Man With the Blue Guitar."
It is a modernist classic. Who reads the poem now?

Joni Mitchell sang "Blue" -- Songs are like tattoos/
You know I've been to sea before.

Bluebells, blueberries, blue wings on the jay.
Who says this is not nature's true color?

The dead turn blue before they creak into rigor mortis.
Blue eyes shed tears at the loss of the living.

Blue sapphires glitter in the blue-blood world of high fashion.
Blue blooms the hue of life. No one blinks twice at it.

The green light still shines
at the end of the dock.
It is the deep color of my regret.
Daisy, my first love, now married
to another, casting me out, alone.

My persona, so sharp, proves to be a sheer lie.
Violence and death mar my lavish lifestyle.
I have realized the American dream
in all its purported glory. Only to
discover how fraudulent and empty it is.

Mirrored mansions tower across the bay.
We look past each other,
Daisy and I. How I continually
long for her, willing to sacrifice all,
yet how far she remains out of reach.

Deception and defeat haunt me like Furies.
Without lasting love, I have achieved nothing.
The green light still glows on the horizon.
I stare longingly at it and know that
soon I will see nothing but doom.

carry your heart
with love's full bounty
feed everyone you meet

I welcome the new year
in all its vagrant glory.
Absurdity may follow in 2019,
or a blissful beauty unimaginable.

Either way, we remain at fate's mercy.
Either way, our choices seem anemic, naive.
Yet that is not how time transitions:
It opens ever-new fields of fresh possibilities.

I must commit to plow those fields,
using all the strength and courage I can muster.
Everyone faces the same challenge:
Any clear path ahead wallows in obscurity.

Is this new year really happy, as they say?
Am I only kidding myself that I can choose?
I see a lonely road before me, full of pain.
Even so, I welcome the new year again in all its glory.

Your heart shatters
like a plate of china
smashed against
a grungy tile floor.

Pieces scatter like spiders,
impossible to retrieve,
impossible to rebuild,
impossible to contemplate.

Your heart is bruised, bleeding
drops of unrequited love.
The viscera of your body
tighten like a noose. You could slide

your head into it, if you choose,
but what would be the use? Love flees
like deer bounding in a forest.
You are too broken to give chase.

Yet the heart yearns
for completeness;
it is the foundation
of all desire.

Like a baby's cry
in the night, the heart wails,
begging to be heard. Echoes
permeate the dampened air.

So listen: You must breed
a new heart, with new desires,
tightening it together with
a titanium plate. This wound

will not be opened again,
though it aches and aches
in your jaded memory.
Let poetry be your guide; its love

is eternal; it seeks the ideal;
it comforts the sorrowful;
it inspires the helpless mind.
It raises you above the broken pieces

of existence. You have the choice:
Live or die, wallow in remorse,
or claw your way out of your battered shell.
You can decide now: Let poetry be your new heart.

It will not bleed.

The Flame of Life arrives
on a second-class coach.
He comes to cauterize my wounds of time.
The excessive heat can't last.

orange dragon clouds
swirl in the dusky, baroque, winnowing sky
the once brilliant day dies within me
still I cling to a rocky pinnacle        alone

Alice tumbles
into wild wonderland
looking glass stares back empty

Suddenly Satori!
Mountains remain mountains.
Moon remains moon.
Infinity in a grain of sand.
Awake!

Monk sweeps earthen floor,
mindfully makes jasmine tea.
Everything is as it should be.
All illusions shattered
in clear light of awareness.

A wise painter once said to me,
"Make every day New Year's Day;
resolve to start each new day
afresh, full of possibilities."

I retreated to my Stoic cave,
meditating on 2019, and all
its dark, ****** turmoil. I vowed to start
each day fresh in inwardness, beauty, peace.

battle fatigues
empty cup
war on homelessness

light of sorrow
journey claims its end
red rock stains clouds

It is not a pipe.
It is not tobacco.
It is not a match.
It is not smoke.
It is not smoking.
It is not a man smoking.
It is not a painting of a pipe.
It is not oil on canvas.
It is not paint at all.
It is not an image.
It is not three-dimensional.
It is not two-dimensional.
It is not brown.
it is not black.
It is not a bowl of smooth wood.
It is not a curved stem.
It is not readily at hand.
It is not to be bought or sold.
It is not an object of desire.
it is not an object of perception.
It is not not.
It is not.
Ca n'est pas quelque chose.
It is. Not.
It is naught.
It is not to be trusted.
It is no man's art.
It.

Take a capital V,
balance it on a lower-case l,
rivet the pieces together,
and you have created Y,
an outdoor sculpture
made of polished steel,
that gleams in the noonday sun,
and beckons children
to climb its two slick branches.

Y makes tripodal creations
look anemic. Y towers over
the Earth, casting on the lawn
its skinny shadows that move
as if mimicking a drunken W.
No other letter is so susceptible
to toppling over as is Y.
The heavy V outweighs
the straight-up l, 2 to 1.
Gale-force winds can twist
it on its axis. It can be uprooted.

Even when it stands tall,
Y often comes in last,
at the end of words,
a fractured exclamation point
missing its downward dot.
Y waves its arms for attention,
but it clings to the lower-case l
slowly, coolly, gently, lonely.

Y has only Z to talk to,
a self-cloning, open-ended
triangle. Y never knows which
end is up. No matter.

Outdoors, Y continually invites
purposeful play, a standing
funnel of fun for all.

It gleams in the noonday sun.
It beckons children to climb
its two slick branches. That's
why Y rises up, never alone.

The sky wavered orange and gray,
as dusk settled over the Mayan ruins,
the Yucatan scrub land, the cooling
tiles of the archaeological villa
outside Chichen Itza, where we stayed.

I sat poolside, contemplating the fading,
fiery orb of the sun, musing on Kukulcan,
the sacred cenote, the Mayans' murderous
ball game, their majestic pyramid,
and rows upon rows of chiseled skulls.

When suddenly an epiphany engulfed me:
I saw my life come together as a perfect whole,
from beginning to then, and it showed one thing
only: that I would be and remain a writer. My soul
rose in ecstasy. I have never failed to feed it since.

The yellow cross
beams out white rays,
splayed into splotches
of orange red.

The blue edges bloom,
soothing, But deep inside,
I am color blind. No
harmonious hues will do.

Discord haunts me like
a ghost at its grave. My
promise is waxing; my
life a pale gray.

I will die by my own hand,
despondent and betrayed.
But before my misery ends,
I will cling to the yellow cross.

The Man in the Moon
stares down at us,
craggy and cryptic,
a closet curmudgeon.

His face shows all
the bumps and wrinkles
of the lunar surface:
cosmic age spots, growing older.

He is isolated, stuck circling
the Earth all day and night,
cast into outer darkness,
blinded routinely by the sun.

What he doesn't show
is his vast loneliness. Until,
that is, he discovered a gift left
behind from the moon landing:

A huge, cuddly hare, hopping
over moon rocks, flopping
its big furry ears. O the Man in
the Moon is lonely no more.

orchid blooms
sun limns petals
winter beauty

The New Year looms,
a blank page
awaiting the first
wondrous words of winter.
The poet sheathes his pen.

The poet sheathes his pen,
an instrument of imperfection,
awaiting the first
incisive inspiration
of the looming New Year.

The New Year looms,
the depository of the past,
awaiting activation.
The poet sheathes his pen,
practicing a passive role.

Practicing a passive role,
the New Year awaits
consecration: December 31st
whitewashed of all its sins.
The poet unsheathes his pen.

Find the divine point of contact
within you. Reach out for encounter.
It comes in many disguises.
You will recognize it
by its self-revealing presence.

Mount Hood fails to show
clouds swallow peak past snow line
ancient one hides face

gushing strong waterfalls
surge to Indian Ocean
Kipling called it greasy-grey
on the horizon: Mozambique

The night is bright
with colored dreams
flitting between synapses unseen,
cinematic fragments of my
overflowing netherworld,
dancing on the big screen of my brain

1.
Gentle waves wash across
the tawny, packed sand,
as crab skeletons litter
our path toward Haystack.
The gulls pick at the shells,
praying for any last,
clinging piece of meat.
Even fully alive, the *****
make for small morsels.
What lies under water
may be tastier and more
nutritious to the poor,
omnivorous marine predator.

2.
Haystack looms, a giant
half-cone shadow pressed against
the lavender-pink, dusky sky.
Barnacles and starfish cling
to its face; amid the crags
a touch of color: red-orange, light gray.
A landmark, icon, natural wonder,
Haystack forms a filled-in archway
to pass through – or around –
on your way back to more
wave-washed beaches and tiny *****.

3.
It’s not doing that counts here,
but being; the behemoth
black rock overshadowing
humans in the distance, as tiny as *****.
National treasure, natural marvel,
Haystack exists purely to be seen
from all watery perspectives.
Close or up, far or down, its bulk
blocks the way for the beach’s
minuscule inhabitants,
scurrying homeward,
as waves scour the shoreline
time and again — their backs turned
to the big, black beacon
that never shines, but only absorbs
the light meant for souls lost at sea.

"Y not"? You say.
Y is a singular fork in the road,
and you always choose
the road less taken.
(You've read your Robert Frost,)
The road less taken is full of beauty,
discovery, adventure and an
unpredictable walking surface.
But you cannot take it.
The more you are tempted to,
the more the road becomes more taken.
You must follow your Y like a Euclidean puzzle.
The fork offers only one tine to you.
The road less taken cannot be taken by you again,
or it will turn into the road increasingly taken.
And your journey by foot will turn trivial and
banal. By taking the road less traveled, you rob
it of its mystique. That, shamefully, stands out as
a mistaken use of this very special road.
Triviality, shame, silly self-indulgence all
mar your journey. Y would you risk it?
Y directs your path like a whirling English
traffic cop. Watch for the telling hand signal.
The one that says, "You, begin." Follow the
lonely tine and be on your way. You will
have traveled the right road, leaving the
less traveled one to its Y-ly mystique.
From here on out, walking in the woods,
when you come to a crossroads,
you will never have to ask Y again.

bright floral bonnet
young lovers nuzzle, silent
Eros' kiss; first blush

I cannot grasp myself:
I elide through my fingers.
I cannot face myself:
one pair of eyes eludes my look.

I am intended by consciousness,
still surpassing myself in passion,
still reaching beyond my grasp.
In what is not, I find myself.

A water lily opens,
an orange hand atop
a murky koi pond.

The flower's pad floats past
like a slim man's buoy.
No one notices.

Beauty is of no value
to the practically minded.
Soon, the orange hand closes.

Buddha peace blossoms
beside quivering koi pond
suddenly, Satori

Your searching eyes
scour out the blank pages
of my being and shower
them with kisses of kindness,
tendrils of tenderness,
the grand miracle of mercy.

Love leaves an invisible
imprint on my imagination;
care-filled caresses of sweetness
and affection fill my fickle heart.

We stand as one beneath
the grand waterfalls of heaven.
We stand as one because I know
I owe my life to you.

But you say, My life
is your life. And I weep
hot tears of humility as
I search my wayward ways
for your searching eyes.

1.
The dead hover over their graves,
an unsteady flame flickering
wildly like an inferno.

We cannot ***** it out.
Kaleidoscopic shadows splay across the earth:
brilliant oranges, yellows, reds, and a fatal greenish-gray.

The colors inexorably build to a crescendo.
At midnight, a moldering movement begins:
the dance of resuscitation, desiccated and brittle.

I cannot dance, a lesson lost to the absurdities of youth.
Levity does not lead to levitation, anyway;
my feet are stubbornly stuck to the ground.

The dead despise the living, they say,
always chirping and harping on the day’s
annoyances, dullness and anguish.

How soon the deceased forget their own past.
How desperate we are not to lose ours.
How uncanny when we meet, cheek to cheek.

The dead blame us for their failings and unrequited
desires. They long to plunge into Dante’s Inferno,
mumbling, “Absolution.” We mumble back, “All must pass.”

2.
I flounder through Flanders fields,
mourning the great fallen poets of The Great War.

So many sensitive yearnings skewered at the end of a bayonet.
So many bright, vibrant promises shredded by shrapnel.

Machine guns mowing down row upon row of militarily naïve Englishmen. Red-hot bullets rain about their heads,

lodge in their eyes. All for God and country. The soldiers shed
their own colors: brownish gray for the muck, ***** khaki for the clay,

trench green for the woolen uniforms, alabaster white
for the shocked, dying faces. Our mantra: “This, too, must pass.”

But it doesn’t. Generations of the living long to plunge into Dante’s Inferno, mumbling, “Absolution for all.” The dead answer back: “Patience.”

The delicate smell of marzipan wafts
through the room, as the nuns push
their specialty candy through an
ancient iron gate. I pass them
a handful of euros in exchange.

Inside the entrance to the cloister,
we move in slanted lines of shadow.
Outside, the sun, blindingly bright,
awakens the day to everything
but quiet and contemplation.

How sweet these primal gestalts
of darkness and light. Secular
and sacred. Prayerful and profane.
You cannot invent such memories;
they simply spill through the maker’s
hands – not like sand, but like clay
begging to be subtly shaped into
a figurine.

First the noses, then the arms break,
like fragments of an antique statue.
The pieces vanish, but you can retrieve
them, hold them spellbound, pull them
from the depths of forgetfulness.
The past does not exist; it’s true,
except in this powerful kind of willfulness
that holds on to brokenness no matter what.

Time moves like thoughts move,
unidentifiable in the body. Time moves
on its own, eternally trapped in the present.
Here, now, is all we can say.

We can resent time, mourn its passing,
but we can never stop it from moving.
The eternal now that moves like cattle
across a field, like clouds across the
lavender sky. Once we aim to taste
the marzipan again, it flees before our eyes.