DEATH IS A MIRROR LEAKING LIGHTNING

Death is
a mirror
leaking lightning

Time alters
to fit
around the fact

the sunlight
empties itself
of warmth

merely picks out
the world
as if the effort hurt

Time unpicks
stitch by stitch
Life’s rich embroidery

a constellation
comes
to comfort m

it hovers
awkwardly
above my pain

unable
to comprehend
its tiny immensity

I have become
the rabbit
staring at me from a trap

watching the world
erase itself
second by second

two crows
perch upon
your tombstone

gossiping
about how
the world comes and goes

I throw angry words
at them and they caw
off intoan empty sky

a marble
angel & I
standing sentinel

the marble angel
trying not to
cry

*

That last long long telephone conversation...three hours then my phone ran out and he called me back for another three hours. One of the topics was...what lightning is, and what it can do and the superstitions that grow up about it.

People covered all the mirrors in their house when a person died or because they can “catch and reflect” lightning.  "Mirrors leak lightning." it was believed.  It was thought that lightning can behave like light and be reflected. Lightning of course is not light, but a raw, electrical charge.

The phrase "leak lightning" really struck me and I hadn't heard it before.

As a electrician he was able to tell me in detail what lightning was and does!  All the technical stuff I can no longer remember but everything said in that last telephone conversation has now taken on life of its own..

IN THE HERON'S EYE

you swim
into yourself
the lake doubles you

your swimming reflection
trying to claw its way
into you

from the lake emerges
a head like a bust then a bust then
the whole delicious nakedness of you

your reflection
hides inside you
when you leave the lake

naked
being chased
by your shadow

the heron's shadow
stares through the water's skin
at the fish within

in the heron's eye
the fish already
- caught

a leaf
floats on the tree's reflection
fish swims amongst its branches

we swim amongst clouds & trees
rain taps on the top of the lake
we laugh underwater

piercing the water's skin
thin blades of sunlight
we swim we swim

In a revered Tibetan tradition,
I read aloud to my father,
the dead are borne to mountains
and the bodies offered to vultures.

I show him the photographs
of a monk raising an ax,
a corpse chopped into pieces,
a skull crushed with a large rock.

As one we contemplate the birds,
the charnel ground, the bone dust
thick as smoke flying in the wind.
Our dark meditation comforts us.

I ask if he’d like me to carry him—
like a bundle of sticks on my back—
up a mountain road to a high meadow
and feed him to the tireless vultures.

"Yes," he says, raising a crooked finger,
"and remember to wield the ax with love."

The water hollowed the stone,
the wind dispersed the water,
the stone stopped the wind.
Water and wind and stone.

The wind sculpted the stone,
the stone is a cup of water,
The water runs off and is wind.
Stone and wind and water.

The wind sings in its turnings,
the water murmurs as it goes,
the motionless stone is quiet.
Wind and water and stone.

One is the other and is neither:
among their empty names
they pass and disappear,
water and stone and wind.

Mother dearest, please stop crying.
Your eyes are red and waterlogged
like a heart in a jar
of seawater.  Those clumsy eyes
dropped their intentions again,
dropped their bombs without thinking
about the impending nuclear winter.

The say grave flowers are watered
by tears, by grief and love (and good
fertilizer).  Considering your ****-filled
flash of teeth, you should know.
Your heart is a graveyard, flowering
with thorny roses and black
berries, locust trees and crab apples.

If you shook any harder, you
would jostle yourself apart.  Rusted
bolts twist free of their joints
rolled too tight.  When you collapse,
you'll say it's my fault again.  But,
how can I shatter your bones when
you never let me stand for myself?

You walk around
With these ghosts beside you
And the fire you touched with your bare hands
Burns up through your ribcage, your heart,
Until smoke drifts out into the open air
With the song that flutters out of your throat, your mouth,
To mingle with the smoke, the stars, the moon, the black night,
Fading into half-remembered forms,
The soft hint of a smile scattered in the nightingale breeze
When the birds start singing through the half-formed mists
Of soul, memory, smoke, song;
The gentle crackling of the world’s fire in your gut
And your hands: singed, blackened, burnt;
You walk around
Haunted.

Every time  a leaf falls
It’s a new day
Try and make a call
Every time a leaf changes
There are new answers
Falling leaves, falling leaves
I look out my window
               And see
Time for change
The world we live in
Not like years ago
Things have change
Falling leaves