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.

The sea is resting now
after a long day
gnawing at the edge
churning in deep hollows
ever so slowly eroding
this peaceful coast

Sand is the issue
of this marriage
sea and sky
combining to
make the land large
in its retreat

A handful of sand
to the winds
my life
to these tides

A flight of three crows
added to
a dense grey day

Next add four
iconic conifers
as high as the sky
eternally ******* down

These things are
always in my sight
through my window
on this wet world

Multiply all of this
by a sweet daughter
who makes me proud
and raise the whole
to the power of a strong woman
who carries us all
on her back

The equation produces
a result that I am 95 percent certain
equals happiness
though the confidence interval
is wide

And this result
sweet as it is
and as uncertain as it is
will outlive me
leave a faint echo in time
an echo that will bounce off a star
and finally be found
gripped in my shriveled paw
long after the epiphany
nowhere near paradise
somewhere short of
the end of the line

This is a moment of happiness
stolen from time
hijacked by a fugitive
from civil society

I'll hold it close
until death pries it
without mercy
from my hand

Leaves it as a blessing
and a curse
for all who come after

Take the blessing.
Leave the curse.
That's the advice I give
with my dying breath.
And I leave this to you
from the generosity
of my heart.
With a nod to
the scant traces
of God's grace
that I find on these pathways
of travail.

Never lost.
Never found.
Always present
and generous
to all.

Be that.

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.

A most pious man
whose well-tempered music
brushed the cobwebs
from the throne of God

Evolution was made manifest
across deep time
these lyrical figures
achieve the same purpose
in the space between the morning star
and the dawn

A fallow field
is sewn with pearls
a moonlit beach
illuminated by shadow
every scrape of the fiddler's bow
merges mind with the present
harvests the meaning
in the moment

The composer
that good man
was
for a time
church organist at St. John's
its notable steeple leaning
all askew
as a rebuke against God
or perhaps the drunken architect

A finger of candlelight
plays across the manuscript
a fugue echoes
through the still church

And though no living person
on that still winter's night
shares the organist's solemn delight
the stirring mass of possibility
that is posterity
awaits

In this life
we are sculpted down
to bone
burned to cinders
and our ash
tossed without regret
into the four winds

I wish I could live.
Be a man.
Find comfort in the sun.

But every cell in my body
revolts against time
cries out against the sun
speaks in tongues
for the sole purpose
of creating an outrage
against God.

Oh Lord!
How did you make us thus?
And why?
Above all
why?

We are made metal
and in the end
alloy with the sun.

Our breath is drawn
to fuel that fire
bring life to a boil
and
if luck prevails
to wake each morning
in comfort
and with a smile.

Perhaps the last sweet smile.

She captures autumn
in a jar
reads the moon's straying
through leaf and branch

Always in love
with love
and always reeling
from the loss

What wave tossed this refugee
ashore?
What alignment
of stars and planets
of uncountable galaxies
brought this woman
to this world and not another?

A simple truth will tell.
The moon at high tide
hides beneath her skirts.
A slight disturbance
in the silken fabric
of space and time
and all is lost
all is born.

I hold my hands out
palms up
in prayer and thanks
every day
to mark the blessing
to place a peg
in the whole.

Given to all
denied to none
and mysterious to most

Life pours out of
a hole in the sea
leaves nothing
and everything
to chance.

This blessed world.

Who were you?
A foreigner
a mere woman?

Perhaps I valued you
beyond the common measure

I think of the possibility
of lives we have lived
in some past time
some other world

I guess I am a Buddhist
after all.

Because
this fascination
this love
goes beyond my experience

What can I compare it to?

I believe in the potency of desire
that it can manifest itself
across a span of years

a span of lifetimes

I can imagine
that we were
then as now
different in appearance
from cultures widely separated

Let's say that I wanted you
that you wanted me
for so it is today

Let's say that circumstances
kept us apart
or prevented us from meeting
as equals

Let us say, finally,
that this world
in which anything seems to be permitted
was created for us
that we might meet again.

What an absurd
romantic notion!

Tonight the lights are all on.
Other beings surround me.
This world is a different world
for each one of them,
though strangely the same.

Surely this world is ours.
The lights
are brightly lit.

Thousands of insects
cover the glass
dazzled by this light.

We must be dazzled, as well.
For none of us can see.

Not a one of us
can touch the heart
of another.

So since all is permitted
let us permit ourselves this

that we can touch one another
each into each.

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.

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.

When Coyote witnessed
the Creator making this world
he thought
I will make a world like that
for myself

And so he formed a copy
of every living thing
from the mud
from the branches
and detritus that he gathered
there on the banks
of the Columbia River

But all of his
carefully wrought figures
elk and deer
fish that sparkle in the shallows
black bear
who hides from two-leggeds
the wings of the air
who mingle with the leaves and branches of the forest
all melted back into the mud
of the riverbank
at the next rain

Undeterred
Coyote set out
on a quest

He found a new country
a pleasant land of vast expanse
with every manner of good things

When Coyote came into this country
his hunger
was greater than myth
sharp as the edge of a knife

And there he spied Crow
on a high cliff
with a mouth full
of deer fat

A plan quickly formed
in the caverns of his cunning

Coyote called out
Chief Crow
I am told that your voice
is as sweet as spring water
as pleasing as a woman
in the night

Sing for me
Great Chief
and I will reward you richly

Crow is a vain creature
and being called Chief
gave him great pleasure

He preened
opened his silver wings to the sun
and sang his rough song
but in a muted tone
in order to save
his delicious morsel

Coyote called out again
Oh Chief!
That wasn't much.
not like the stories
I have been told.
Please sing your song again
with feeling!

Crow rose to his full height
****** his sharp beak
into the air
and gave full voice
to his raucous song
for the sake of every crow
on earth

We know the end of this tale
because Coyote taught it
to our ancestors

The deer fat fell to the ground
and Coyote
trickster
scarfed it in an instant

Hunger dampened
he ambled along the well-beaten path
to find the next fool

And that is the story
of Coyote and Crow.
Keep your pride in check
or be the next one laid low.

Eternity's cogs
geared and ratcheted
to the chain of time

We settle for the simple
ignore and refuse to witness
the obvious glory
of this world

insist on a miserly view
a pinched token

Then the night
closes in
an embolism erupts
into silence

I take a different view
hold out hope
for far horizons
settle for nothing
and struggle to drive
a hard bargain
with one who holds
all the cards

In the end
I expect beauty
a bright light
and a chilling plunge
into the grey Pacific

I hope for more
of course
a taste of watercress
a glass of wine
and an epiphany

All paid for by grace.

I’m up early
as always
swimming in the currents of
a sweet morning
in summer
in Oregon
as if for the first time

Much like the morning
years past
when I woke
with a new girl
in a cemetery in Eugene

We went there to escape the heat
slept on a blanket
naked in the night

So alive were we
and in love

Practicing, perhaps,
for the day when sleep
and death
converge.

Every moment in time
is delicate
ready to shatter

Every moment in time
is soon lost
and seldom found

I live in a moth-built cocoon
moss in my ears
deluded into thinking
I will soon be the butterfly
I once was

But in this life
it will never be
unless the ocean
loses its argument
against the land

Unless the moon
says no more
to the sun

So in that spirit I hold out my hands
for the next blessing
receive it dutifully
and with a gratitude deeper than music

Here to chime
until my time
like bells in the wind.

She comes forth
like waves slipping over
the sand
again and again
delivered from darkness
coveting the light

And light is her signature.
A conundrum.
Light erasing light.
How can this be?

I will tell you.

Light is the companion
of the dark
trips joyfully in its shadows

And this dance
weaves a potent tale
of a two-faced goddess
one face peering intently into the dark
one lit by the morning sun

Yet darkness rules the day
hastens the twilight
gives measure to the
dimming
and finally
captures the last of the light
in a sea green bottle

We are drawn into that night
valiantly
or not
weeping for lost opportunities
or not
but at the end
waltzing into the unknown

Yet I do not suppose
darkness without light
according to my theology
a life that ends in simple extinction
cannot be
it is a null set

The fundamental equations
do not permit it
nor can my simple mind
fathom such depths

So in my dotage
I repair to wine and song
to ease the pain
of these uncertainties
and then to poetry
to catalog the human condition
and leave a trace
that yet might sparkle
in the instant of my demise

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.

Bring me your
orphan memories
and I will stitch them
into a chapter of time

Stepping fearlessly into
empty air
walking the tightrope
of certain death

Drawing memory
into the web of this moment
Bleeding it out into meaning

While sleeping
While dreaming

These poor words
strain to tell a tale
a shout out to eternity
and it is a clarion call
from the dawning
to the setting of the sun
announcing a state of grace
that surely will ripple
through time.

The night calls sweetly to us
Bids us sleep well
and find courage in the day.

Fortunately
you are not my muse

I've worn out muses
by the dozens
cast them aside
like chaff
and cherished the sorrow
that ensued

Sadness was my calling card
my tragic handshake
a testament to a life
gone wrong

Age improved me
I survived the madness
came back to life
gasping for air

And so to your door
to spin the wheel
of language
to glory in its intricacy

Two poets alive
in the same century
two restless souls
under one uneasy roof

We will survive our families yet
raise a toast
when the day comes
to the dear
and thankfully departed

We'll leave poetry
like confetti in our wake
and touch the holy stone
once or twice yet
in our lives

I pray it will be so.

Slender green shoots
press through the
still cold ground
hands of the earth
lifted in prayer

Their strength is manifest
their exertions
carpet the land in green
their tender prayers
press forcibly against the sky
and keep it
at the distance
God intended

In the fall
invisible seeds will carpet the land
buried they will be
but in spring
they begin to speak

These buried corpses
will not only murmur
they will sing
in lush green voices.

I pray I will be there
yet once more
to join in the song.

Druid is Derwydd
in our tongue
the Welsh of my fathers

Our land is called Cymru
and we have thrived here
since ancient times

We live by our cattle
first
our hearts and families
second
and our crops a poor third

We are taught that
a mist descended on our land
in the before times
and cleansed the earth of life

And that a new people came
our people
and brought with them
cattle
all of the trades
and a gift for song

We were called Celts
but now we are proudly
Welsh
the dragon is our badge
and red war our way of life

The Derwydd
are our guides
they follow the stars
know the mystic tides
teach our young
and ease our old
into the afterworld

Never cross a Druid
they say
or feel your tongue
curl into burnt leather
in your mouth

Please a Druid
and luck will
lay by your side

I am called Caedmon
wise warrior
son of Lhur
born in the shade
of a great oak

I was taught all of the high arts
poetry
music
and war

If ever you travel
through our fortress-locked land
you will be welcome
at my hearth

Come
bring your sweet pipes
and play
bare your sword arm
and raid with us

When we return
cattle rich
then the feast will begin
then the bards will sing
and poetry will open your mind
to the harmonies of heaven.

I am a collective
an ongoing collaboration
a group enterprise

I revel in my diversity
sit in its lap
while being carefully groomed

Nothing becomes me
like agreement among friends
Nothing fills my sails
like the wind of good company

When all my words
are stilled
when every breath is drawn
then you might come near

When every tale is told
and when myth
becomes gossip among friends
then
and only then
will I willingly depart.

That's the day,
friends,
when we all meet
on that distant shore,
when sweetness dissolves
into the dark.

I have one foot
in the beyond already.
My ticket is punched
my resolve unmatched.

Give me your hand, my friend,
in good cheer
for nothing now will leave us bereft.

Never yet alone
never yet divorced from grace.

Amen.

I’m a friend of darkness
lock lips with it
in a lover’s embrace

I mourn the dawn
beg favors from the twilight
hold every hope
in my uncertain hand
for a day when the sun won’t shine

And I know
by my wayward feet
by the tremors in my hand
that darkness creeps silently
up to my borders
crosses every line
and will someday defeat
my meager defenses

I have prepared my retreat
a forced march
to the grey Pacific
where everything in my life
ends
and begins

The solemn swell of the waves
a fitting harmony
to that last sweet song.

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.

The universe closes in on me
galaxies align
in matrices of light

This moment was never
meant to be

I'm a cloud
telling tales to the sky
a bit of wind
and I'll be gone

The moment slips through
my fingers
water into the well
while time
that mortal dragon
is readily slain
for there are no dragons
time is a myth
and this universe
bends backwards upon itself
eating its remains
and issuing forth
new life
in a fugue of renewal

again
and again.

Sour smell of wood smoke
seaweed flayed and dried
upon the rocks
those huddled stones
prone and obeisant to the grey sea

And there
a star that is settling
into the indifferent waves
leaving us cold and bereft
soon to be entwined
with the night

But do not despair
We will wake with the dawn
bring the candle of hope
in our hands
and much peace

A solemn and ocean-deep peace
shared
with every sentient being
in time
and every being departed
from time

The moon has its quarters
the sun its seasons
I have only this tenuous grasp
on life
a primal sense of loss and love
and the dull roar of the Pacific
in my ear

The candles of the dead
will not be extinguished
floating like blossoms in the deep
cradled by spectral hands
never seen by the living
except in dreams
or art

Did you come this far
for the view?
Or was it a curious urge
to find forgiveness
in a time of grief?

I can grant you forgiveness.
I have the power
through time and the tides
my calloused hands
have held the sun like an egg
my feet have climbed
Mt. Olympus
and none the wiser

So come gently with me
leave your battered dreams
on the bedside table
drink a draught of this noble wine
stand upon this precipice
of uncertainty
and contemplate something
near to eternity.

The candles will light your way.

First,
I strive for beauty
I wait for the bell to chime
the lightning to strike

Today, it seems,
the skies are clear
those chimes of midnight
are silenced
they boycott my breath
heap ash on the urgency of ringing
and leave me dizzy
in my decline.

But if the past
truly is prologue
it will all come round again.

Language will make its magic.
Sweetness will ooze from
the open wound
of my heart.

There will be words
in the order and rhythm
in which they were intended.

And poetry will breathe yet again.

Like Breugel's Icarus
my brother Michael
dropped into the depths of the sea
unnoticed

Born at the bottom
of a crater of the moon
the sweetest foundling
since creation

His swaddling clothes
were denim and the blues
his pillow
a bottle of rye

This sweet soul
lived half a life
in halfway houses
and cheap motels
reeking of cigarettes
reeling from the *****

When he punched his ticket
on the midnight train to eternity
no one was surprised

I arranged the cremation
a fire that burned
more than one life

I gathered his ashes
and set out
for the crest of the Sierra Nevada

Alone
with my memories,
his ashes
and the cold stone
of those adamant heights

and then east
through the wastes of Nevada
the endless expanse
of the basin and range

A pilgrimage, of sorts
dedicated to nothing
and no one

Just the upthrust range
the solemn and self-absorbed peaks
the dessicated pine
and a wind
that scoured the soul.

The dead are all around us
they are as alive
in their way
as we are
in ours

We share a world of shadows
with these manes
and step awkwardly
into the light

Every breath of the wind
is a dead soul passing
every autumn leaf that falls
a secret hieroglyph
from the beyond

Beasts in the wild
know this
thus the coyote
sings his mad lament
the raven turns his dull eye
toward the east
expecting not light
but a flight of dark wings

And dark wings
command my attention these days
my eye
turned inexorably toward
the night

Where every word
is farewell
where all commerce ends
and I rejoin the stream of stars

Done with all of this.
And surely
it will be bliss.

This elegant bloom
forgot the season
came stocked for summer idylls
picnics by the water's edge
scent of mowed fields
scent of love's flowering.

Pitiful rose
how did you become
so lost in time?
Nothing now becomes you.

So I carefully cut
the stem
placed your ******* vein
in a slender jar
filled with
the last spring's freshet.

You came to life
for us
at Christmas time.
A meager blessing
in a time of pain.
A frail totem
in a time of dread.

I wake each day
with despair eating at
my good spirits
the specter of
a new political order
crouching in the darkest corners
of my place of rest.

******* it!
Send that orange horror
into oblivion.
******* monster
robbing my nights of peace.

There is no sense to this life.
There is rhyme without reason,
pain without relief.

Just the same
I will slog on.
One foot in front of
the other.
Repeating as necessary.
And then letting it go
through the latched gate of time.

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.

Gunpowder blue sky
yet no blue, really
except for the blue
wrapped into the spectrum
of black to grey to white

A storm blows in
the sea in an uproar
no holds barred
no remorse for the cormorant
or the gull
in these fierce swells

We know nothing of power
until we know the sea.
We know nothing of journeys
until we journey upon waters
as wild as these.

Odysseus would have shied
from this salt caldron
from these wind-tossed waves
stayed on some pleasant rock
imbibing the lotus.

And who would blame him?
Only a fool
or a sailor without hope
would venture into the teeth
of this tempest.

And that sailor would have cause
to regret his choice
would understand the depths
of his folly
as he slipped into darkness
and clasped hands
with the legions of the drowned
asleep in the swirl of the sea.

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?

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!

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.

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.

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.

This simple dance
revolves around itself
repeating intricate figures
until its inevitable end.

And then?
A riddle wrapped
in the loose skin of the night
beckons to us all
the certainty of death
leaves us wondering
while stumbling along this frosted
winter shore.

A thousand times
a thousand ships
have sailed daily
and sent nary a missive home.

The signal fires are burning
on forested headlands
here along this rugged coast.
Dark and solemn capes
gather the pelting rain
into their skirts.

The signaling smoke
from fir-fed fires
wraps itself in salt spray
serves as a beacon for the lost
a message to the departed.

Yet not a word
not a message in a bottle
from those who have set forth.
180 degrees of the compass
and not a sail.
The sea splendid and empty.

If no news is good news,
then bliss is our birthright.
If no news is something else
again,
then simple silence
will be our wage.

I am officially too old
left it all at the station
lost my ticket
and finally
busted by the conductor
for being a poet and a ***
the holy two-fer

Never thought the joke
would go on this long
never imagined
I'd be ******* oxygen
in a posh bar
with Helen of Troy
and me in my cups

Yet here we are
the ships have sailed
the vagabonds have stumbled
home
every swan has flown

And between you and me
Jack
(and while she's in the lady's room)
I am told I was born of a woman
on this day
sixty four years ago

I don't believe it

Birthdays are make-believe
every crease and wrinkle
in the fabric of time
every line in my face
is a testament
to an intricate conspiracy
the stars aligned against me
and on my birthday, no less

They say this ride has a conclusion
people pass on
I have seen fields of grim stones
that attest to this fact

But I'm not so sure.
At this late date
I'm still thinking
I might beat this rap.

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.

The right eye
is the window of hope
the left eye
the window of despair

And this proposition
is proven in my photograph
a portrait of a grizzled guy
taken just before
he stepped in front of a speeding car
while gesticulating wildly

Who knows what happened there?

Yet I will live!
gather fallen timbers
to form a stockade
against time

Because finally
I have discovered
that time is not my friend

It's a simple game she plays
time girl
trickster girl
but my ancient beams
will prevail

I swear it
by a handful of ash
and mark the moment
with a rune that exists
outside of time
and says simply

Be this.
You were forever thus.

It's a difficult rune to read
and a harder path
to follow.

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.

One day bleeds
into the next

Leaves wounds
that won’t heal
measures our moments
into finite statements
that knit the hours
into a tapestry of tedium

Where is the joy
I was promised?
Where
the lively waltz?

I grieve before every hour
and bend before fate’s great weight
tremble incessantly
and starve in the midst of plenty

Yet I hold my head up
march on
determined to reach that far shore
where fate will take us
and luck will leave us.

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.

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.

I am Coyote
in human form
one who drools poetry
sly as a bag of bones
alert to every hazard

Long odds  
are nothing to me
I'll beat every beast
with courage and finesse

And to get to the next realm
where I become myself
I must leave scant traces
survey the world
through scent and sound

And find the bridge
that builds itself
as I walk
across a terrifying chasm
of evolution and magic
to human form

Here to ponder your fate
Here to look to your good nature
Here to endure your pogroms

And survey your world
notwithstanding your traps and tricks
with a modicum of good cheer.

Ever wary.
Ever well.

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.

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.

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.

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.