An ash tree stands
at the place of creation
it is called Yggdrasil

A high tree
well-proportioned
the source of the dew
mother of winds

Green it is
standing over
the well of fate

Its roots draw
from the waters
that freshen that well

In old English there is a word
Treowth
it means both
tree
and truth

This tree is truth
its latticework of leaves
and branches
more intricate
than the Milky Way

It is a lung inverted
inhaling heaven's mists
exhaling the wind

It is our guardian tree
planted by a mighty race
that came before

A sentinel of hope
a goad to good works
and the last remaining sign
of a dawning
when the human mind
was first formed.

Rest now in its shade.
The final journey will soon begin.

We descend gently
into the deep well
of the pianoforte

As the sun streams down
from above
the echoes of love and longing
arise from below

You and I
have not come this way before

So step gently
and have every care
A world where I lose you
cannot exist

In truth
it would be
an outrage against nature

And if
God forbid
such a thing were to happen
I would wrap the sky
in a blanket of grief
a blanket so dense
that the sun would fail
the stars flicker and dim

I would turn off every light
erase every word

There would be no peace
because I would make war
against every continent
my armies would occupy
every city

I would plant a black flag
on the moon
and place a grieving footprint
upon the Sea of Tranquility

And I would cry
that no tranquility
can henceforth exist
in any place

Finally
I would set out
with scant provision
on an odyssey
that would make Ulysses weep

Few would weigh my grief
yet the earth itself
would careen briefly
off the elliptic
as the weight of my heart
altered its comings and goings
causing every creature still breathing
to look up in fear

So stay, friend.
It must be that I go first.
And you remain behind.

She is the slyest creature
ever whelped by wolf
or woman

A barking beast
small in stature
huge in heart

Face framed by fire
done up in fur
the friendliest constellation
in the night sky
one known to all
Hilda

She is coyote
on a good day
a wolf cub at play
a lover in the morning
noon
and night

A slight and feral hound
with ideas of her own

We found her
in the company of
a wizard.
Oh yes!

And he wove for us
a sweet spell of harmony
well mingled
with domestic peace.

Hilda was the incantation.
And the spell was strong.

The streets
of Oporto
that ancient port city
were a riot of poets
it seemed

When the French fell
against all odds
a local bard intoned

"We were great
we were giants
we were many"

The people of that port shouted
they came together en masse
they danced in their waking dreams
waving their arms
and some probably wept with joy

They sang, by God,
and they partied like that
as only the people
of that port city can

And I'll tell you a secret:
those are the ones I want to know.

Portugal Campeão da Europa!

O sister
when did you become
the perfect treatise
on love and
the sacred painted face?

When did your words
divide the day
from my night?

It was ninety yesterdays ago
when first your verse
startled my eyes
speaking a language
native to this ground
speaking with grace
with love
and with a defined determination
sweetened by the red clays
of your home

The soul of the prairie
holds you in its embrace
the long vista
the tornado
the tempest
all compete for your attention

And here I stand
at the back of the line
humble
one hand in my pocket
one holding an urgent postcard

It simply says

Keep this in
your hand
it is for you.

If my poem is color
then I will wave
every freaking color
as a badge

If I declare
amnesty for every poem
and vow
that no harm will befall
any poem

then I swear
they will remain here
on my verdant fields unharmed

So Sisters
Brothers
bring your lost
your wounded poems
to me at last

They will be well tended
They will not be misplaced.

My avid gaze
spoke to the rosary
of your flesh

My heartsick tremors
marked me as a wanted man
and burned the villages
of my ancestors

I was a refugee
from time
a friend to no man

My tears washed the blood
from my hands
my eyes withered
the tender bud

So when did I read poetry
on your lips?

Did your mountains fracture
and disintegrate into
sparkling shards
as mine did?

Was the moon an egg
in your basket
as it was in mine?

Little do we know
of the other
when first we clasp hands
and agree

In time
and with luck
we learn.

There is peace at the end
but no joy
the abyss is only
silence

and a taut string
connecting us
to eternity.

Movement no.1
Andante con moto

Farewell.

I am leaving you
with the sweetness
and the sadness
of every creature on this earth
draped over my shoulders
as a shroud

We rest now
before the final struggle
looking down upon our lives
from a precipice

The wind calls up
a faint sound

a song
of healing
as resignation

So bring forth the dirge
let dogs and oboes
cue the horns
as we embark
upon a tender struggle

We are whipped back
and forth
between grief and glory
in this life

an indifferent life
lush with raw power

But thankfully
at the end of every day
there is sleep.

Movement no. 2
Im tempo eines gemächlichen Ländlers. Etwas täppisch und sehr derb.

Dance returns
and goes mad

Who could lift a leg
that high?  

Not I.

The music careens
off the walls
in a dissonant minuet
of the hours

The clenched teeth
of each and every minute
grind here
as if time itself
took heel
and made a sparkling trace
across the pines
of this exalted floor of dance.

Movement no. 3
Rondo Burleske: allegro assai. Sehr trotzig.

A music major's delight.
Fugues against fugues.
Dense contrapuntal figures
and sarcastic counterpoint
shouting out
from the back of the class.

And then

just love

confused perhaps
but real love indeed.

Movement no. 4
Sehr langsam und noch zurüclhaltend

The violin
noblest of instruments
takes its place

In bitter sorrow
life soon lost
the fruit of the tree
is extinguished
the promise of green days
burned by drought

All is withheld.

There is peace at the end
but no joy
the abyss is only silence

and a taut string
connecting us
to eternity.

When I first met her
God put a speaking trumpet
straight up against my ear
and stated
very slowly
in that Godly voice
that is a mix of
the ocean's roar
and the singing of
Barry White

"This is the one
you've been looking for."

The stars were in on it
bubbling like champagne
in the night sky
singing a sweet accompaniment
a singular poem
of one word:
Yes.

What would you do?

I took the only possible path:
Surrender.

Gave up my wandering ways
quit my womanizing
got hitched straight away
tied the knot
didn't know a thing
about knot tying
but the **** thing held.

And here we are.
Poet number one
that would be her.

Poet number two-and-a-half
me

Marriage solved nothing
brought more questions
than answers
more unfinished business
than completed tasks

Yet at this late stage
a sense that against all odds
against the evidence
of my hands
against every argument
presented by the priest
who reluctantly married us

Something has gone
wonderfully right.

The stars,
dear friends,
truly know their business.

Life is loss
nothing more
nothing less

It strips you of
that phantom
the well-tended self

sells your memories
on the street
for pennies

leaves your old worn shoes
in the entryway
as a warning

as if to say
those sad shoes will go no further
than the funerary urn

So I choose to mock loss
to dance in damaged shoes
and with each extravagant gesture
to shout out

Let there be wine
food and song

Let there be no grief
upon my demise
only mirth

Only dancing
music and mirth.

What is it like
to make music?
It is skipping
on sunlight
opening your heart
to something strange
unexpected
something sublimely beautiful
in those sublimely beautiful times.

Sometimes it's a bust.
Sometimes a thousand degrees
of sweetness.

But when the music
plays through you
when you are not much more
than a spectator
to sounds emanating
mysteriously
from your lips
your lungs
your fingers

It's crazy good then.

There truly are no words
to express the miracle
of music in the moment
the player
listening as raptly
as the audience

It all comes together
at the end
and that's the lesson jazz has taught me.

It will all come together
at the end
in glory
or in sorrow
or both.

Most likely both.

When the heart stirs
the feet soon follow
or so it is with me
born to be a dancer

Lithe and compact
fearless in motion
a Baryshnikov of the living room
a Nureyev in the night

When my daughter
was new born
seventeen sweet years ago
I would hold her close
dance her through the whole house
sing to her
tell her
I'll love you forever and ever
no matter what
promise her everything
it was in my power to give

Here
in my dotage
my dancing embarrasses her
my rude manners
outrage her at times
No matter

I thrill when
I hear her sing
weep
when I see her onstage
grin like God's fool
when I meet her at
the backstage door.

This tribute
and these poor lines
are humbly offered
by a man who is blessed
a man who wakes up every day
saying thanks
a father proud
a retired musician
(more or less)
whose child
without urging
took up the mantle
and carried it further
than dad ever could.

There's a reason
dear reader
that the Vikings
set out to sea.

Viking women.

Tall.
Beautiful and fierce.

They craved the treasures
of Ireland
and the fabrics of the
northern coast.

Sent their men out
in open boats to find it
and bring it surely home.

Gave them a sprig
of chamomile
a taste of watercress
and urged them to sharpen swords.

This was not the story of
Lysistrata.
Not at all.

Yet I know this story well
living with a Viking woman
as I do.

She hounds me
nips at my heels
keeps me on the straight
and narrow.
And at the dawn of the day
drives me out upon the
steel grey sea.

So bid me adieu,
you who listen
there is fury at my back
and the open ocean ahead.

Dropping it for the first time
lysergic acid diethylamide
there on
Pescadero's beach
with night hunkered down
in the dunes

We howled at the waves
of the wild Pacific
stamped our feet
on the dense moist sand
and miracles radiated outward
from each footfall

uncounted stars
galaxies somewhere deep
in that gritty sky
the sand alive
with phosphorescent life

Oh and we laughed
swore oaths to each other
spied the turbid moon
as if for
the first time
her hair in a mess
of wind-torn cloud

It was perfection by the sea
until
some wise old hippies
alerted us to our danger:
"The heat's in the parking lot, man."

Panic.
Crawling like drug-addled moon dogs
on our bellies
through the dunes
to find a near-empty
parking lot.
No heat.
No hippies.
Only the wan moonlight
vacant pavement.

And so in our glorious excess
to a sandstone cave
where a box of whispers
was found
and poetry invented.

They cling to the earth
like lichens
in deep meditation

Lophophora williamsii.
Fallen warriors sprinkled
throughout the blackbrush and mesquite
there in the valley of the Rio Grande.

They whisper to you
as you roam that arid slab of ground
and spin like Van Gogh
in the night sky
while you sleep.

They call you this way
and that
lead you in directions
you did not intend.

In the dry washes
beware
rattlesnakes wait in every thin patch
of shade

and at night
lightning switches the lights on
and off
and on again.

Once the spirit
of this unassuming succulent
enters into you
accepts you
uplifts you
the sky opens
and reveals the pulsing heart of
God's creation
speaking softly in tongues
heard only at the beginning.

It is glory then.

Dance is the devil's delight
as you well know.
Tis' often attended
by amorous smiles
unchaste kisses
wanton compliments
and lust-provoking attire.
This from the preacher William Prynne
a pure man and good.

Then comes one
Michael Praetorious
to celebrate this miasma
of corruption
this thing called dance
in the year of our Lord 1612

And to present a well-turned leg
as he lifts his partner's
slender hand
and gives us these joyous songs.

He brings us the recorder
Viola de gamba
tambourine and drum
to celebrate the pure
and frankly ******
pleasures of the dance.

As it happens
I am master of recorder
tambourine and drum.
Sadly born
in the wrong century
with my ears sewed on sideways.

It is strange to hear this world
through ears from the 17th century
to hold the thread of eternity
in one hand
while tapping four-four time
on a jangled skin drum
with the other.

Sometimes I wake in the night
and don't know where I am
in time.

Sometimes I put my lips
to a flute
and ancient airs whisper forth.

I dream of castellated cities
unknown to me
but eerily familiar.

Music is more ancient
than we are
it was here before us
and will be here
when humanity
has exhaled its last.
Of this much I'm certain.

So the music calls!
Dance to this joyous tune
heel and toe
heel and toe
step lightly on the boards!

My father died
from a gun shot wound
to the head

self-inflicted

Don't get all weird about it.

Fathers die
and their passing
though certain
is rarely easy.

So what can I say of this man
so many years
after his emphatic end?

I can say what Whitman said
of Lincoln:
"O Captain, my Captain.
Rise up and hear the bells."

But he will not.

He was ever-present
wise and alert
a boxer in life
a fighter in every way.

And I grew up with the gloves on
quick
elusive
and thanks to him
successful in every ring.  

He died
******* on a lit tobacco stick

Emphysema was gonna
take him down
so he pulled his own trigger
saved his family that way
though that's a longer tale

Therefore
and whereas
this is a belated requiem
for a man I loved.
My Captain.
Dear and departed
these many years
may he rest in peace
as he never rested
in life.

What does infinite longing
sound like?
Where is the vault that holds
the seed corn of sadness?
And how can we mute our fear
when the barred owls in these
dank woods sob in perfect
sympathy
with the night?

Here
the tense oboes find their range
silence pervades their thoughts
the drum marks a beat
while the string section weaves
a hieroglyph of grief
and resignation.

This symphony is called
the song of the night
and night proves to be
full of whispered life
rustling leaves
and the courage to face it.

But night is not synonymous
with darkness.
Its ways and means
harmonize with the light
render half the whole
parcel our sleeping hours
into dreams
and fitful moments
beneath the staring moon.

In the morning
a plaintive bird song
stirs thought
brings the sun into the east
and wraps night's dreams into
a silk handkerchief
where dreams are tightly bound
and forgotten.

The melodious thunk
of Thelonious Monk.
Nobody ever played
the piano that way
before or since
nobody ever imagined music
that way
before or since.

It took a while
for the audience to get it.
Longer for the critics.

And the Poor Man -
all he wanted was a
hit record.

His wayward mind
took him in difficult directions.
Left him with flint on his tongue
a fever on his brain.
No matter to the music, though.

So take it any way you like -
straight, no chaser.
Or after midnight.
Doesn't matter
the time and place
the drinks they're serving.

Not in this smoky little club  
practically sitting with the band.
Know what I mean?
Music like this
might once have been heard
on a planet
spinning in some wild ellipse around
Alpha Centauri.
But never here.
Never now.

So sit back and enjoy!
That's what I'm doing -
swinging slowly.
Join me, friends.

Book your flight to
my home town.
Bring your seven-cornered syncopation hat,
your saxophone or any other
musical instruments you possess.
You can sleep in a tent
beneath the fir trees
in my backyard
once the guest room is full.

And together
we can search for
the mystic connections
between interstellar music
poetry
truth
and love.

The bones of this earth
grind down our fates
our hopes
our dreams
our lives

And a feathered serpent rules
over these climes
this western hemisphere
these Americas
have you heard?

Something elemental shapes this
world
and tempers our lives.
Unknown to most.

The old ones
the people who lived here before
knew him

Quetzalcoatl
Kukulkan
God of learning
Wearer of the wind jewel
the one who whispers life
and death
through his lips.
And you must drink it.
Alive or dead.

The morning star is his sign.
The evening star
his farewell.

He carries the sun
as a shield
and your fate
your fortune
as a good luck charm.

Listen and look.
You will see
You will hear it.

Whispers like water
from the heart
the skin
the bones of this sweet earth.

Listen.
You will hear it.

My wife won't stop
writing poetry
it pours forth
rich in imagery
nuanced in tone
brilliant
inspired
every line loved into existence
tucked gently into bed each night
and called into service
the next morning.

Whereas
my words are meager
meek
brittle and contrived
words that push a barrel
of horseshit
toward the setting sun
No hope of ever getting there.

Why do I try?
It's really a bit sad
numero dos is my destiny
in this poetic liaison
I am forever the dunce
in poetry school.

But my teacher is a babe
a truly hot number
so I'll continue to sit at the back
of the class
try to follow the lessons
and hope against hope
she says a kind word.

You said that October
In the tall dry grass by the orchard
When you chose to be free,
"Again someday, maybe ten years."

After college I saw you
One time.
You were strange,
And I was obsessed with a plan.

Now ten years and more have
Gone by;  I've always known
where you were -
I might have gone back to you
Hoping to win your love back.

You still are single.

I didn't
I thought I must make it alone.
I
have done that.  

Only in dream, like this dawn,
Does the grave, awed intensity
Of our young love
Return to my mind, to my flesh.

We had what the others
All crave and seek for.
We left it at nineteen.

I feel ancient, as though I had
Lived many lives.

And may never now know
If am a fool
Or have done what my karma demands.

I came to you
like a blinded man
a supplicant on the road to ruin
Someone who had once owned hope
but sewed it up in a sack
and gave it
to a beggar on the street

I came to you
like a condemned man
inches from the noose
holding hands with a phantom
a shadow masquerading as
wisdom
or death

Finally
I came to you
in desperation
the desperation of those
whose parents have disowned them
of those with a terminal disease
called life
a street corner clown
miming his passions
one false tear
tattooed on his cheek

And you humored me
Held me at arm's length
while you wove
a spider's web shield
to wrap up your heart
defend it
never truly surrender it

Yet you
dear heart
are my one

I never thought it would be like this
never imagined
that a bloviated moon
would sleep between us.
That a crows' chorus
would be our wedding march.
Yet here we are.
Dare I say it?
At peace.

Seeing the volcano from below
just another mountain
but this mountain
speaks of the earth disgorging
its molten guts
of lightning arcing
in ten zillion volt flashes
of God's terrifying grace
of geologic upheaval
that happened before anyone knew
anything about God
that happened before anyone knew anything

We were kids on a
long weekend
decrepit jeep pickup
camper shell over the bed
we stopped for an old Indian woman
and her son
hitchhiking
I remember the strange musky smell
of her
sitting by me
on the truck's bench seat
like food I'd never eaten
or a hand-me-down blanket
from the last century

We camped at Green Lake
and green it was
set out the next day
fully unprepared for our climb

But our young limbs
carried us to a precarious summit
the South Sister
nothing but sky all around
and dreams
distant peaks
the sleeping volcanoes
of the Cascade Range
stretching into the vastness
of north and south
Such peace

And here
now
I drown in
a deep web of tangled memories

Vistas I once surveyed
live and breathe in my mind
people I once knew
still whisper in my ear
though they are long dead

How do they live on?
Who tends these grass-grown graves?
Who speaks for these dead?

And where do these memories go
when we die?

He's a small black man
from Baltimore County
brings the witching hour
always craves a meal
or two.
Thomas.
Treads like Neruda's doves
on slippered feet.
Flicks his tail
and tales are told
the galaxies turn
Baltimore disappears
in the rear view mirror.

My man
my dark sprite
of hunger and thirst
first and best
Cat.

In my home
there is a reading nook.
A small space
with windows facing
two sides -
to the south
and west.
South for the sun.
West for the setting of the sun.

That's where I live.
It's where I read.
It's where I write.

That's where I spend
my wasted days.

A blessed space
and a waste.

So here am I, O Lord!
Your imperfect servant
and you know me well!

I might live a good many years yet
with and (mostly) without your guidance.
So be it.

I'm kind of an old bird, I guess.
Might drop off at any moment.
So be it.

It's hard to wrap your mind
around eternity,
grasp the cold stone of death.
I guess things were designed
that way.

So best to
keep moving
and tell the tale
in beauty and bounty
while traveling this golden road.

SUMMER MARCHES IN
(Movement no. 1)

It comes crashing down
like doom.
A martial fanfare
begins a long conversation
questioning fate,
arguing for the human condition,
and for death's open invitation,
which we dare not deny.

WHAT THE MEADOW FLOWERS TELL ME
(Movement no. 2)

Their blooming voices
are oboes and lush violins.
The sun is surely brassy bright
in the sky above.
Radiant alpine flowers
and woodwinds
from deep within their burrows
make the case
for a music well tended
and serenely fed
by sweet springs emerging from the depths
here below.

WHAT THE CREATURES OF THE FOREST TELL ME
(Movement no. 3)

The life force
tends to run amok.
Yet things do not fall apart,
the center still holds.

And though it is mundane -
pedestrian, at times -
we cannot deny the joy in this life,
nor do we wish to.

But know, traveler,
that submerged in every caldron of joy
is a small *** of darkness.
And it will find you
or you will find it -
not only because it is fated,
but for the sake of your sanity.

WHAT MAN TELLS ME
(Movement no. 4)

Here darkness sings.
Again the plucked string.
O Mensch!
You tell the tale!
You take this story
back to the mountain.

A woeful tale you bring,
but it is gilded with joy.

A chorus exalts your condition.
Deep is its grief,
but joy is deeper still.

WHAT THE ANGELS TELL ME
(Movement no. 5)

Bimm Bamm
Bimm Bamm
the children's choir
sweetly intones.
And what, pray tell,
do Angels have to say to us?

I've heard about love
I've heard about emptiness
I've heard about absence
without presence,
about nothingness and the void.

But I have never heard such singing!

WHAT LOVE TELLS ME
(Movement no. 6)

Sweet the air we breathe.
Pleasant the sights before us.
Words are stilled,
anxious thoughts banished.

There is nothing on Earth
or in Heaven
that disputes this sweet resolution
all the parts made whole
Nothing that could possibly
speak against it
(though French Horns will have
their interests heard).

But here it is.
The end.

O Mensch
come to your last and best
resting place.

Also sprach Gustav Mahler.

In the beginning
crows were
as white as snow.
No.
Whiter than that.
Liquid silver.

But in these times
we see Crow as black,
though you will observe
Crow is silver in the sun
(which proves my point).

And there he is
at the very top of
that hemlock tree.

Surveys his rude world
and sees below
one whose ancestors
were here even before
tricks and tricksters.

Even before crows.

Coyote
Old Man
sly one
always ready with a joke
or a riddle

They say he spun the Milky Way
with his deceit
told the Earth's first lie

And as for riddles:
answer at your peril
or carry him
like a whispering sack
upon your back
until the end.

The cello
mother of music
sings peacefully
from the eye of the storm

A peace purchased
at the price of certitude

Piano provides counterpoint
restrained
elegant
its curtains of sound
dream their own dreams

and a longing violin
makes love to
the air itself

We march deliberately
to this tempo
stepping in time
to the sweet
and terrifying strains
of our own mortality

The composer
died
at thirty one years.
Why - how
have I lived so long?

Perhaps
to hear this music as if for
the first time
and so share it
with the sky.

Whispered theme
of my youth and middle age.
Now
pacing my reluctant
and uncertain steps
into old age.

But who needs old age?
I sure as hell
don't.

Always the golden child
the fearless one.
Destined to live forever.
That was me.

And music -
this concierto.
Music saved my life
every day.

There's nothing you can say
about music.
It eludes the weak grasp
of language.

But I lie.
Let me try.

It is
the language of emotion
the time keeper.

Bounded and constrained
by the beat
plodding, perhaps,
yet truly free of all that
and, at the end,
filled with the last breath
of eternity.

It was a yellow Corvair convertible
Ralph Nader's bogey
our ***-fueled chariot
our escape into the night sky.

We were strewn across a grassy ***** as if fallen from above
stars thick in the sky
still visible in those days
Page Mill Road
south of the City.

And all of the vanities
and honesties of brilliant youth
slouched about our shoulders
lit our speech
moved our *****
in the direction our fates intended.

It was freedom.  It was
escape. It was a foreshadowing
of much trouble
pre-dawn knocks on the door
handcuffs and the tearful call
home.

And a life leavened by sadness,
a constant sense of doom,

but a foreshadowing as well
of miracles dressed in second-hand
clothes,
but miracles just the same.

We live in a world
that is at least
half darkness.
So shouldn't half of our poems
be dark?
Or perhaps half of every poem?

Or half of that?

How do we parse the darkness
of this world -
of our lives -
and still live?

How do we tip-toe on the edge
of eternity
the grave
And smile?

You figure it out.
It's a mystery.

A square is the earth.
A circle,
the heavens above,
the spinning stars.

That which is wide
yet bounded on all sides
is home.
It is that which sustains us.

The earth.
The earth is beautiful oh!
Do come and see!

Tell me what's going on
in your life, my friend.
Did you tickle the belly of the moon
last night?
Lie down in the lair
of spiders?
Or did a sweet wind
take your mind,
transform it into ripples
across the pond
radiating outward?
Or perchance electricity and the sweet scent of ozone?
Or a tiny flower called
"Nevermore"?

Me
I chose to dig a cave
beneath my anxieties
taste something resembling Life,
in congested dreams,

All for a moment of quiet
and the hint of a new poem.

I saw you
I saw you through a fog

An unnatural light framed your face
your eyes in shadow
as always
the brilliant sun of June
cried in the heavens
the trees moving with the rumors
of what might be

Everything there was to say
about the rest of my life
was eloquently stated
laid down
exclamation pointed

But you, Cynthia.
Never further away
than today.

Dear Hello Poetry
You like my poems!
This is weird.
What do I have to show
for all those years
scribbling on a tiny notepad?
In my pocket:
$1.53,
an old shopping list featuring
cat food and half-and-half,
also the IPhone I'm using
to compose this missive,
some lint.

Dear Hello Poetry
you made me start writing
poetry again.

I thought I was done with all that.
It's too hard
takes up too much of my time.
Every second I spend
arm-wrestling a poem
is a second I could be using
to eat peanut butter on toast
or walk the dog.

Dear Hello Poetry -
because of you
somebody with an improbable hat
called me a poet.

Don't tell my mother.

And Hello Poetry -
because of you
I cannot buy a hat.

But I'll get over all of that.
I forgive you, Hello Poetry.

But please don't tell my mother.

There we were at the beginning of the world
A forest
redwood
bay laurel
A watercourse chiseled
into the limestone of that ridge
opening outward
to the west and setting sun

We were almost under water
through miles, through layers of green

We sat together
listening
as the alto recorder in my hand
played on its own!

A tune that called
a mahogany-voiced bird
to harmonize
A tune
that gentled the sun into the sea.
A tune
that wove together
every instant
of the days we had yet to live

People passing like smoke
their reflections in the glass
their ruddy faces locked away
in small
intricately carved wooden boxes
that make a sweet music
when opened.

Their bodies, which will decay
and become clean dust,
these also a sweet music make.

Watching
Listening
I breathe the bones,
lungs,
and thoughts of my ancestors
moving with this wind.

Whether carried and strewn like
October's leaves
or as if the wind itself
is the breath that these ghosts leave
in their passing.
The science texts do not say.
The stars,
hard and distant,
offer no help.

We failed the summit that year
Diamond Peak
summer of 1974

There on a razor's edge ridge
sheer drop to the east
thousands of feet
certain death on that side
no safe path forward

And the way we had come
an arduous boulder-strewn *****
Angle of Repose.

As we pondered our next move,
I told my friend a story
that had just come
into my thoughts.

A young man,
as we were,
promised his friends
he would fly.

To their horror
he stretched his arms
toward the sun
and leaped into the chasm.

Most saw a young man
in the long arc of his demise
falling to earth.

But one sharp-eyed friend
saw a fierce bird of prey
come rising
with the winds
and land
there
on that ridge
where we sat
and from which he fell.

The story was a presence
there between us.
We sat together
lost in its meaning.
And then it happened.

A bird of prey,
entirely white,
unknown to us,
perhaps unknown
to Science,
came rising with the winds
from below
from where that boy in the story
had fallen.
It landed on the outcrop
from which he
(in the story)
had jumped.
This magnificent creature
turned its impenetrable gaze
to us
and screamed.

The instant the bird alighted
and flew down the mountainside
we leapt to our feet
to follow.

What came next
took place in myth.

In that myth,
we were heroes
able to run at full speed -
some would call it a breakneck pace -
down that long mountain *****
Boulder-strewn.

Without fear
Without hesitation
in full stride
one boulder to the next.

Boulders the size of cottages
Some the size of a grey whale
mysteriously beached on a mountain.

Flying more than running.

With the falcon as a guide
we wandered the afternoon
through trackless
wilderness.

A timeless afternoon
in the Garden.
And then humbly
back to camp.

You might not believe this story.
But it is a story
as true as myth
and every bit as real.

Mother Ceres
hair trussed and
braided like an artichoke,
smiles down on this mad scene.

Bums asleep on every littered lawn,
cripples, drunks,
businessmen, young women
move by in the shattered light,
pacing to some cynical drum,
proceeding from
place to place.

Armageddon looms
with the stink of diesel
and a sudden roar.

Slow motion bodies
crawl, skip and hop.

The light grows white and
whiter yet. The ***** bus window
cracks
and outside
all is very still.

A head fashioned
from cold stone,
blank eyes seeing all.
A smile matching Death
to his lithe sister
Love.
A smile.

Demeter!
Ceres!
Mother of summer,
the dry wind.

Love the hollow stone,
the dust, the poisoned air.
Love this poor harvest.

A woman whose face was found
On a fresco in the tomb of King Philip
of Macedon, father to Alexander -
She passed me in the street today,
alive and breathing roses.

She is the living memory of someone
who lived and breathed, as the
night is long, in the mountains
of northern Greece
A Long Time Ago.

She dresses in clothes that don't fit.
She has cut her hair and crosses
the street with grace.
She can see the comings and goings of people
and also
the passing of clouds from her window.
Her face,
open and almost awkward,
was discovered on a large fresco
in the tomb of King Philip of Macedon.

Space is curved.
The straight line
a Euclidian fiction.
The very fabric of space,
the skin pulled in upon itself,
Light follows this curvature.
Nor is time the heartbeat of angels,
as we once thought,
but our own shaky construct.

The galaxies that we imagine
to be real prove to be
archaic images,
things that once were.
When we look into the heavens,
we look back in time.

When the light of our star
has traveled in one vast
cosmic arc
and returned to its source,
we shall know ourselves.

In that dawning
light will fail,
the stars dim and flicker.
Time itself will falter
and the voices of angels
will be heard.