Buddha peace blossoms
beside quivering koi pond
suddenly, Satori

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.
On 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 wide-winged hawks over the waves would moan.
He joined their wildness with soul open wide.
His poems made me yearn for his coastal home.
Nothing human-made would pull the tide.
His poetics read: Etch your heart in stone.
A Zen he practiced till the day he died.

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.
On 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 wide-winged hawks over the waves would moan.
He joined their wildness with soul open wide.
His poems made me yearn for his coastal home.
Nothing human-made would pull the tide.
His poetics read: Find your heart in stone.
A Zen he practiced till the day he died.

1.

dawn
grayness turning pink and orange mist
upon the crooked vines, the fragrant rows of trees

i see only a wasteland, as my brother's face brushes past
"i am human,"
"i am free,"
i breathe
in and out

in and out
Abel is crying, sobbing softly,
broken in the fields
ever so faintly the echo fades

"Murderer, murderer,"  my conscience screams
screaming into my daylight dream of guilt and remorse

i bolt upright in flames of pouring sweat
the finger of God pointing
firmly at  me

2.
the serpent will not visit me now or again
of this i am certain

but with elongated, ***** fingers
i have given shape to the swirling
shroud of blood that surrounds me

i am encapsulated by regret
with a curious ambivalence of the will
i cast off
the cloak that splatters
into a thousand drops of wine-red liquid

reminiscences, shadows and reflections:
sorrowful leaves sparkling with the glint
of the dazzling morning light

all this and more lies scattered on the wind

my struggle is so heavy; the flames consume so much

wearily i lay myself down to rest
to breathe deeply in this stark, elusive silence:
the silence of the moral void

rest in weariness, rest
and the unpredictable predispositions of divine justice
will expand and divide ever so slowly
with the course of my dreaming

i am  human; i am free; yet i still cannot scrub
the blood stains off my hands.
they leave a mark
that will never leave me

murderer, brother, i am resigned
to suffer the plight of eternity
alone

i am human
i am free
no longer

My brother and I stood three years apart.
We stood toe-to-toe, fists clinched,
each of us angry at the world, each of us an avatar,
each of us angry at the other.

One carried the mark of Cain, a discrete tattoo.
The other wrote poems, an acceptable sacrifice to the gods.
I never recovered the ink he stealthily stole from my desk.
i never recovered his confidence. My fist never unclinched.

At night, we frolicked in Bacchanalian revelries,
in psychotropic highs only poetry could eclipse.
Yet he never respected my temple of books, desecrating pages.
The written word was not his friend. Nor I, in the end.

He had a son out of wedlock; I dedicated poems to the boy.
But he could not speak English; his small tongue would not fit
the hieroglyphics on the page. My brother chiseled them off.
He died in middle age, unsung, poorly read. Still angry at the Word.

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.

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.

In the dark womb
of the forest, sun-
light filters through
the canopy like
a mountain
shower. Its progress
is microscopic. A
photon bounces
from branch to
branch. A wave
wraps itself
around an
unsuspecting
leaf.

On the forest
floor, shadows
rule the kingdom,
painting over
the middle distance,
pointing to organic
geometries of color,
where long trunks
of timber lie shorn,
where streams
shimmer past
boulders stained
with orange lichen,
where tawny deer
flinch at the first flick
of danger and
flee on their delicate,
toothpick legs.

This is not Eden.
Decay creeps
across the leafy
floor. No living
creature can escape
its grasp.
Decrepit trees
fall without
aim, buried above-
ground, their
roots like gray,
broken
skeletons,
their bark like
naturalistic
wafers. This
is my body.

We wander
through
the forest
amid pungent smells
of water, earth
and wood. Decid-
uous limbs convert
the moss into soft,
buoyant beds that
nurture us, shelter
us, inspire us as
we arise into
shards of light
and fight our way
along the path
of survival.

The struggle won,
we follow myriad
paths, packed with
a labyrinth of
choices, and so
we mark the paths,
make them
temporarily
our own, only
to discover that
they have
already
permanently
marked us,
imprinting through
our coarse skin
the primeval
genome of the
soul.

We stride
toward the misshapen
mountain that
halts all progress
of the paths.
A glacial lake
reflects the crest.
Forest birds perform
Beethoven's third
symphony, Eroica,
to hail our epic
journey homeward.

Soon we will be
cast out
of the inner
darkness
of the forest
and into the
teeming world
of pollution,
viruses and
the machinery
of hate.

Wounded,
we will keep
our focus
forward,
having gambled
on the path
not taken.
With a sweet,
green shoot
between our
teeth, we shadow
the light, bouncing
from branch
to branch. Abstract
patterns in the sky
write our way
into intricate
vistas of color
and delight.

As sap
seeps from
the wounded oak
we left behind,
our progress
is microscopic,
our canopy
dense.

Barcelona pays lip service to Spain,
Which tries to claim the city’s favorite son:
Gaudi, architect of modernista fame,
Whose wavy designs of nature, faith are one

Thing that will never turn this Ciutat tame.
His mystic genius saw geometry’s sun,
Which shines through all his creations the same,
Whether secular or sacred. He’s won

The heart of Catalunya, his primal aim.
Yes, Catalan: Forever will he be one.
When the old folks dance the Sardanes plain.
They raise hands so independence will become

The new reality for them, not Spain.
The fight for Catalan prowess is never done.
The people yearn to stand free of Spain's chains.
Gaudi inspires their struggles to be won.

He invented space anew,
painting subtle cubes in bright colors
flattened by a wide, gray light.

Critics called him the creator
of the modern age. He did not listen.
Shuttered from the trappings
of artistic success, he eschewed
the Parisian salon scene with its
sophisticated circles of envy and lies.

Fiercely perfectionist, he destroyed
canvases that fell short of his
extreme, exacting standards.
But he would always begin again.
The essence remained; only
the execution had faltered.

His art mesmerized many of
his fellow painters; they saw
the world with new eyes.
Yet he sacrificed the reactions
of others to achieve an impossible
incorruptibility of life and art.
They intertwined like a
double helix of DNA,
companion contradictions
seeking a final synthesis.

A cramped wooden door
in a rough stone wall in Aix-en-Provence
leads to his studio, a humble
hovel where modern art began.
We live there still.

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. cummings
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

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

In the checkout line again behind someone who has forgotten:
her wallet
a photo ID card
cash, check or credit card
an item to purchase
a coupon
her loyalty card
a note to self to not forget
to ask for cash back
forgotten

Ah, how simply the simplest things
turn complex.
Buying groceries is not brain surgery, of course.
If it were, the patient would be dead,

and once the mortician arrived
to collect the body,
the checkout line delayed
even longer.

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

Like a stroke of genius,
of just plain blind luck
rising from the jungle floor,
the majestic rubble of the Maya calls,
at once the founder and judge of all Time.

First as the serpent whose plumes turn to wings,
then as the eagle boldly eyeing its prey,
and en fin! as the jaguar, sinewy and sleek,
El Castillo looms
against the hardened, sun-baked sky --
the shifting citadel of Kukulcan,
its shadow splayed across my days.

All of them numbered,
all of them too short,
all of them fading
in the cold, hard light of distant failure...

Perenially
built and rebuilt,
like the Church,
El Castillo stands
to meet the need of holy obligation,
to meet my need for initiation,
bounded only by the firmament and the underworld,
final triumph of the dead.

And so I stand,
alone upon the sacred causeway --
enervated, unenlightened,
the bitter taste of dust in my mouth.

Until I, too, will be turned
to stone --
the languid chac mool,
sated in sweet repose.

I will drift toward the sunken cenote,
drink deeply from its oasis of evening cool,
where the memory of man and grain and god is sung:

An anthem of order, power and vision,
the great Mayan hymn of meaning.
I will hear, at last, from the porous depths of Yucatan,
what it is to be called human.

bonfires seep across the heath
orange flames flit like fallen stars
harvesters rake beds of straw
lay their heads on stone

earth cools the indigo night
heat pools beneath splintered scythes
faces rise in dreams' sure might
light lacquers stone

we have charted nature's hopes
from unloved loss to deep delight
wrapped in darkness we covet gems
buried in rugged stone

your eyes trail me to the meadow's edge
neon colors ooze down the ridge
we paint them as flames snuffed out
in chiseled fields of stone

French revolutionaries guillotined God at Cluny, but He exacted
His tithe all the same: one-tenth of their bad ideas tossed back
at them. The tyranny of terror, cheap dream of heaven, in ruins.

A vast emptiness swamps the nave; stumps of pillars stained black
and gray and black again by age and rain and blood. Only one tower stands intact. I scan the burnished hills behind it; they do not look back.

“The birth throes of liberty,” cried Thomas Jefferson. “Rejoice!”
Despots toppled; authority crippled for a future that never comes.
Terror and waste; waste and terror. The desolation of faith.

On the tiny town square, a high-tech bistro beams. Lights
surge behind the bar, sending out distress signals of the mind:
the throb of synapses firing wildly in the wind. Material infinity.

Old men saunter in to down a beer, and harness their dogs under tables.
Parents and students slurp pricey shots of caffeine. Emancipated energy.
Above the din, they cannot hear the Earth’s foundation crack.

Freedom leaves a sacred void in its wake, watered by the blood
of worldly martyrs. On the menu: égalité, fraternité, fissure and ruin.
Thunder in the hills. Words crash around us like cannonballs.

Liberté lingers outside in the municipal lot. A van propped up
on wooden blocks for the night. No hassles, man. Free parking.
Let’*******another beer to Robespierre. His dog strains at its leash.

I thirst fiercely in the desert;
I spy oases in the sky.
I've come to the edge of Mosaic Canyon.
There's nothing to drink
but the surface of stone.
I try licking the tiny pools
of rain water filling cracks
in the boulders.
But they, too, are illusions
packed tight below the sky.

If I could survive on colors, I would
be sated. Reds, browns and tans.
A subtle gray graces the front
of the stone where I sit.
I must try to **** it dry.
Foolishly, I set out hiking
without my water bottle.
Now I hallucinate streams
and gullies in the sand.
I can't go on; I must go on.

Cirrus clouds swirl around
palm trees. Camels linger
at a bubbling pool, settled
on their knees. Cold water
spills from their gnarled mouths.
They have forgotten nothing
to survive. I have forgotten
everything. Soon I hear
my name being called.
It echoes down the canyon.

I stumble backward, ankles
slanting on the stony path.
All along, I keep my eye
on the sky. The vision never
wavers, only intensifies.
The canyon walls box me in.
I cannot catch my breath.
Behind me, my wife calls
and calls me to safety.
In her hand, a cup of cold water.

I thirst fiercely in the desert;
I spy oases in the sky.
I've come to the edge of Mosaic Canyon.
There's nothing to drink
but the surface of stone.
I try licking the tiny pools
of rain water filling cracks
in the boulders.
But they, too, are illusions
packed tight below the sky.

If I could survive on colors, I would
be sated. Reds, browns and tans.
A subtle gray graces the front
of the stone where I sit.
I must try to **** it dry.
Foolishly, I set out hiking
without my water bottle.
Now I hallucinate streams
and gullies in the sand.
I can't go on; I must go on.

Cirrus clouds swirl around
palm trees. Camels linger
at a bubbling pool, settled
on their knees. Cold water
spills from their gnarled mouths.
They have forgotten nothing
to survive. I have forgotten
everything. Soon I hear
my name being called.
It echoes down the canyon.

I stumble backward, ankles
slanting on the stony path.
All along, I keep my eye
on the sky. The vision never
wavers, only intensifies.
The canyon walls box me in.
I cannot catch my breath.
Behind me, my wife calls
and calls me to safety.
In her hand, a cup of cold water.

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.

Mysteriously, like a seed
growing underground, consciousness
spreads into the world
seeking a presence to devour.

Like a lion lurking in the Kalahari bush,
consciousness crouches, hidden
within the body, not merely the brain,
waiting for its prey to emerge
from a field of nothingness,
to reveal its essence.

An act, a desire, a pure intentionality,
consciousness pounces on its prey,
embracing its whole presence,
filling in the many sides unseen,
teasing out its eidos.

In itself, consciousness is nothing,
a darkened grain of wheat
buried in the ground. It awakens
only at the stirrings of
the next manifestation.

Always, eternally
a consciousness-of,
it roams my room,
zooming past the myriad
items cluttering my gestalt,
fixing on the single form
it has come to inform.
Consciousness waits
for no one.

Uneasy until it grasps
the one thing necessary,
consciousness expands
and expands, actively roaming
among the wonders of my world.

It acts, but I cannot take hold of it.
It has me in its reflexive spell:
All consciousness is self-consciousness.
And I, in myself, am nothing.

infinity reigns
his ways are not our ways
hope blooms eternal

I wander into a dark wood.
Nothing familiar crosses my path.
I am at a crossroads in life.
Middle-aged, confused, seeking beauty, delight.
Which way to turn is achingly unclear.
Immediately, Virgil appears,
A bright, transcendent presence.
Bemused, he understands my predicament.
Heading straight into the darkness,
He turns and says, "Follow me."

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.

the seventh angel
carries the book
of days even-
numbered and blue

feral cats lead
donkeys to the
crow's-nest crest of
window-box bougainvillea

an angry priest swings
a golden censer
at pagan worshipers
up early he tends a tiny

garden in the sacristy
stained-glass laurel
trees spring up
over bejeweled pews

i count the orange
fishing nets caked
in cork larger pieces
breathe like fish

gills in neon purples
and greens piscine
hearts anchor
the poet's heart

possessions prove
useless on nudist beaches
flesh presses sand
presses flesh

i chant the cloning
of yellow dawns
the bearded archangel
guards the beads of dna

harbor-front havens
open wide their gates
tourists rush in
laptops aglow

all is even-numbered
and blue on this
endless dawn of angels
and ouzo and open hearts

Charcoal, silver, sea-blue clouds muscle up
in clumps of dark impasto, caking the arch
of the spherical nave of the northwestern sky.
Cloaked in clusters of paler blue, the gods

of Olympia push eastward. They buckle under
the weight of this mortal firmament that hems
them in with the force of towering thunderheads.
Perhaps only Titanic heroes can survive the

titillating sizzle of lightning strikes. Naked
filaments of electricity hurl holograms of color:
a tangle of negative ions, radical brush strokes,
and Nietzsche's will-to power. Eradicate and destroy.

Golden-green fields of ripened wheat ripple
in the dying sunset, the final line that fierce
Titanic warriors dare not cross. They no
longer belong to the Earth: The mortal-divine

divide that once made them flourish now opens
into an absurdly widening chasm. No landing
place, no welcome space. Redundancy redounds.
So they don their ancient armor and pointed helmets

again, swinging butcher-sharp broadswords
in the sky. Achilles drags his blood-smeared blade
through the clouds around and around Priam’s
blood-rich frame, mocking the way Hector's

ravaged corpse circled mindlessly in the sands
of Troy. Today, such hate-hewed heroics are but
buried shards, fragments battered with blatant
disregard. Now, these violent vistas lie visible

only to the Tiresiases of millennia past. Savagery
has sown the wind, reaped the whirlwind: cyclones
of blind, wild urges cutting up moral character
into bite-sized portions. Rank desolation flees,

sublimated, subjugated to the mind's many-
splendored mansions of poetry. Homer chants
hymns to Troy, to the Hades-bound heroes, experts
in evisceration, in swift evasion, in black-blood death.

The glory of war today rots into nothingness,
sputtering under charcoal clouds pouring rain.
Once Leda waddled behind Zeus like an imprinted
cygnet. No longer. Below the sunset, humans hover

free above their handiwork, suffering from the humid
heat, striving to attain a semblance of household pride.
Their gods-slain ghosts adorn the family crest, as they enlarge
the world's unbelieving chasm with each new shock of wheat.

Weakness of will plagues the poet:
Misery he can’t slow down.
Find talent; he tries to grow it.
His scratchings issue no sound.
His Muse is mute; his heart knows it.
His vision of art ground down
Like Leibniz’s lens. Sloth shows it.
Light dims, could still come around.
A poem builds steam, then slows it.
His gift a gift the void crowns.
One time he wrote well. He knows it.
Now passion cannot be found.
Whence Dante’s raft? He will row it.
Fragments of rhyme underground.

"ad astra per aspera"
how many times
have we heard it
repeated ad nauseam
how many times
has it been floated
like a balloon
above our leaden dreams

"to the stars through
difficulty" yes and so
why the stars
we aspire to them because
      they are there
maybe if mallory
had been an astronomer
maybe if he had been
a star climber

at least everest
welcomes
you to the top
of the world
at least mountains
may try to **** you
with great height
at least elevation
mimics transcendence
and who doesn't like
a good mime now and then

stars offer nothing
but distance
their light has long
gone out by the time
we reach them
and for good measure
if their light were still on
we would be toast
burnt not buttered
not jammed not jellied
crisp cinders of toast

stars are so many suns
they burn like black
furnaces they scorch
the synapses
of the soul
a consuming
inferno wild
and explosive
and dead
to us

we grasp for them why
they are not planets free
from ourselves
and all our space
detritus they are not
life not light
that illumines
more than more
stars then goes out
for good
and all this
after difficulty

never has inspiration
smelled so sweet
like smoke from
a raging wildfire
leaping over
mountains
to try to **** us
under the
canopy of
dying stars


(that's not writing, son,
that's typing!)

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".

I have dirtied my hands
with the agony of faith.
Digging deep to find commitment,
smoothing soil to hide despair,
heaping mounds as facsimiles of evidence.

Add water, and dirt turns malleable.
I squeeze a human body out of the black clay,
breathe life into it,
then write my name in the residue;
mud covers all but the letter "A".

Wordsworth tends his daffodils; Coleridge rhymes.
Rydall Water circles, slow in the rain.
The poets compete -- friendly, over time.
Coleridge finds ***** eases the strain.
Each writes beautiful verse of his own kind.
Wordsworth favors daily speech, spoken plain.
Coleridge bows at imagination’s bright shrine.
Wordsworth’s sister, with them, divides the twain.
Her journals paint the joys of simple climbs,
Or walks through the fields: Dove Cottage awaits,
Awash with white walls; moss-dappled sides
Of the roof. Inside, Lyrical Ballads proclaims
That the power of Art will outlast time:
The Romantics shall never be put to shame.

The collective unconscious sustains
our humanity, creates life-giving
archetypes and myths.
It floats free of the brain, eager
to be probed by the thirsting ego.

1.
Stags crest the hill
splotched with heather
and cairns. Their body-
builder-thick necks
carry a massive
headdress of outsize
antlers. Heavy is
the head that wears
the crown.

They snort with
disdain at dangers
from humans. The hunt
means nothing to
them but the thrill
of the chase. The
nearness of death
simply one of nature’s
teasing tricks.

A misty sun punches
through the yellow-
gray fog, a blurry
corona emerging as
a chick from its shell, no
match for the Red Deer's
majestic rack. Royalty
spawns violence to
protect the crown. No
challenger approaches.

Nobility, integrity, power.
Scotland finds these
virtues hidden in the
regal heart of the Red Hart.
And so killing turns
to regicide. The
bullet melts in its
casing from shame.
We yearn, yearn,
yearn for the
beauty of the stag,
only to "possess"
it by destroying it.

2.
To leave the hills
and dales, the
mist of the stag's
fierce breathing,
and to warily enter
the shadowed lair
of some hunting lodge --
all this vanquishes
our claim to
nature's bounty.

On every white wall, the
stag's crown hangs,
a dark skeleton
of taxidermy,
unsightly, lifeless,
mute witness to
our failed attempt
at unity, our empty
chase after beauty,
the lust to own it,
become it, caress
it, love it and so
woo immortality --
all this vanishes
like the moon on
a winter’s night,
as elusive
as the Red
Deer's ghost.

On the hill, cairns
point the way to
the grandest vistas
of the Highlands,
rolling in patchwork
colors toward the horizon
and sea. Our place
is left looking
and longing, the stags
prancing behind us,
elders chanting their
glory. The sun
glints off the waves,
lighting up a vast
kingdom of brilliance.
It swells and recedes,
forever lost to the
petty reach of our
lonely grasp.

We crawl on
our bellies
under the squat
sandstone bridge
to emerge into
the mouth of
the canyon that
boxes in
the light. Walls
slick with
darkened
rock plunge
to the sand-
soaked floor.
Iron-stained
boulders line
our way. Only
silence speaks.

Ahead, we climb
a makeshift ladder
of timber tied
with fraying rope.
Up, then down again,
crawling farther
atop the sand,
captive to
the dark until
we emerge again
into the day's
last light.

Behind us,
giant eyes
peer out
of gray-white
plumage. On
the rock shelf,
two infant
Great-Horned
Owls spy on
us with
curiosity,
wonder
and fear.
No adult
in sight,
trustingly
airborne at
twilight
to swoop
down on the
day's prey,
plenty
for all.

Uncanny,
the infants’ eyes
never blink,
absorbing
us in their
piercing
depth
of field:
strange
mammals,
too large
to slash
and carry.

In the distance,
heavy wings
cleave the
darkened air.
150 words

We came to the chalet in the lush valley
at the foot of the Eiger. The line of
mountains rose ragged against the sky.

North Face loomed, a fatal *****
begging to be climbed. Death beckons
on its icy rock face soaring into the foggy
clouds, only to vanish. No peaks, no crags, no crevasses.

The ogre offered no relief, no guidance,
no help to attain the top -- the prize of balance,
strength, courage, and willpower.

We came to the valley to absorb the glory
of the Swiss Alps. Wordsworth succumbed
to the sublime here. Now we all romanticize
nature. But the sublime overwhelms;
it is too grand, too large, too dark, too menacing.
Too much for the scrawny human spirit to take in.

Apple trees heavy with fruit line the patio of the chalet.
Receptive, fecund, the Earth brings forth
sustenance to the eye, to the taste buds.
We will not climb Eiger, only devour its power.

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.

A burning candle could light our way,
as we make a foray between a stream
to our left and black woods to our right.
The night is starless, nameless, harmless
to the nocturnal creatures who guard the way.

Our path lies indistinct, boulders rising up
like barriers: no room ahead, no place to bed.
We peer at the murmuring stream, searching
for a stripe of reflected light. None can be found.
In our pockets, we carry two candles, but we have

no matches, no way to ignite the light that we seek.
Only the Source will provide, not these flickering,
flimsy facsimiles. We seek the light everlasting,
overcoming the night, overcoming our fright.
We will find it only in our Buddha nature, which

radiates like a burning ember through our monkey minds,
which illumines without burning, which needs no fuel
or breath. We will sacrifice our candles to the eternal light.
It crawls out of the woods onto the back of the stream.
Water will carry it; we will follow and never look back.

To love you as myself
is the second highest command.
Yet if I do not know my own dark corners,
how can I take your hand?

You frown, you cringe, you grimace,
all reflected in my face.
You suffer in this bitter world.
How can I not take your place?

Rome conquered Gaul,
erected vestal statues
whose vestiges still stand today,
symbols of the lust for
power that turns all foreign
territories into home.

Romans enforced the
Pax at swordpoint,
built long, straight
roads throughout Provence.

Centuries later,
Vincent van Gogh
wandered among
the ruins at St. Remy
and sunflowers
began to bloom.

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.

The pallid, pure, lemon-colored sky
is no great loss.
You are suffering now,
floating like the dreaded archangel
through the fragrant floral wreaths.

The end of day,
this gentle light upon
the resin-colored hill,
filters through
all threat of sorrow.

You shall be known
tomorrow, it proclaims,
as they are known today --
en masse,
without pretense,
bearing new names.

1.
We all die daily,
our breath shuddering
from the body,
the body shriveling
into matter, which
languishes, empty
and inert,
envying the
labyrinth of the soul.

What bright spirit
lures us back
into the light, stirs
us to awaken out
of our dark night?
What burden can
we still bear as
ghosts of ourselves,
erstwhile egos
chanting nada,
nada, nada as we
furtively avoid
the mirror of
Narcissus?

2.
We all die open-
eyed, gaping
at the void,
or a vast
field of stars
swirling and
sparkling above
the blackened
upper
atmosphere,
illuminating
the full breadth
of Being:
The Great
I Am of
everything that is.

Beside us, the cosmic
jester and curator
of the world
adds another
plastic frame to
a crudely rendered
self-portrait. Which
self paints the self?
Which self becomes
object and subject
simultaneously,
having its cake
and eating it, too,
but failing to notice
the crumbs
on the floor
and the icing
on its lips?

3.
So many questions
that challenge
the mastery of our
language, that
stretch the boundaries
of our mind like
an inky rubber band
dangerously
near to breaking
from overuse.
No answers
can verify
themselves
to us.
They demand
judgment, an
accounting that
only the dead
can deliver from
the far side of
the grave, beyond
the end of history,
beyond the erasure
of time.

4.
Daily we all die
only to rise again,
our lumpish
flesh electroshocked
into animation,
our soul newly
dependent on poetry
to dial in its
upper frequencies
before they
fade away
into static.
The tuner picks up
an AM station
out of Juarez.
The Mariachi
music reminds
us that this
energy may sputter
and flag like
a somnambulist,
but it never dies.

From York, I booked a train seat, then arrived
At Leighton Buzzard, where my good friends came.
We had dinner with whisky; I survived.
Their tidy house, **** and span, looked the same.
In Stratford, we found Shakespeare still alive,
And Anne Hathaway’s Cottage earned its fame.
We reminisced: In the Lake District thrived.
At Wastwater, the wild we could not tame.
In Grasmere, bountiful meals were prescribed.
Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote poems to shame
Those who keep their meager talent alive.
Back to reality in Wing we came,
Renewed bonds from which our friendship derived.
That they ended, only death was to blame.

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.

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.

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