The ramshackled town falls quiet
to the artist’s eye in the retreating light.
The old houses will truce their aged lumber,
antiquity, for the invading dark beauty of his creation.

He lived here once as a boy, in the sadness of his angels,
held hostage (he thought), by the catechism of  church
and steeple, becoming  a refugee from sawdust and faith,
believing being an exile will open his eyes to the truth.

He had returned from his long sojourn in the East
after seeing and experiencing the freedom of the world,
determined to posses this tract, once green space,the mountain beyond— to surrender it all, to the truth he  knew.


The canvas submitted to his violence.  The brushes
knew again, the small wars between mind and nature.
The hunger, the hunger, the hunger of eternal creation  
that rises from the wanderlust in every artist and poet.    

He did not listen to their prayers for mercy.
He wailed in his starvation “Come! Come!”
The shades of town, mountain, flower, deer, came.
And, as he must, he destroyed and devoured it all.

Time’s diminishments adds its own beauty
in gratitude for moments that are not ours:

the child tiptoes into the mother’s bedroom
and silently witnesses her comb her hair,

later listens to her snore, transferring to
them the transient lyrics of the song of life-

the lines that survive  the well of nights,
the rose thorns to bloom in their mouths

until it’s stamped in their bodies—
this trapped time to live all over again.

My mother’s name is lost
to everyone beyond her children.

“She was beautiful.
What was her name?”,
others would say to me  
when shown her image
hanging silently on the wall.

In the chanting of it—their wind
echoes my death back in a cloud
of disinterested kindness
and muttered miseries.
  
They know only their faces,  
the renamed mountains and rivers,
the new language of their exile.

Not that—
she was wind born—
knew her better name.

In that living moment
the bullet goes right by me—
and in between all my prayers
and my eternal gratitude —
the child behind me dies.  
“Why did it  spare
me and not him?”,
I think over and over again—
counting the lifetime of wishes
that now will never
come true for him.—

It goes right by me—
penetrating present and future—
—dreams and nightmares—
I will sleep an hour more tonight—
—tomorrow, an hour less—
less—less until the end of my lifeline.
Out of all the others who’ve died
I will remember this child— little boy
in the depth of my veins and
the light rain that continuously falls—
even as the bullet goes by and bye.—
pass the fence to his grave.—

The bullet goes by me—
cutting through my words—
my sad attempt of an elegy for him—
all the grief that my soul strives to forget—
It goes right by me—
chance— unsmiling me for a lifetime.—

When the fence was finished
and properly white washed
he wrote TRUTH
all in large block white.
on his side
that faced the street.

The next day, his neighbor
of many years,
of which he knew
only through casual hellos,
painted (in bleeding red)
TREASON on his.  

“God Save America,” the first thought ,
“from this POS” as he drove  his  EV to work,
content knowing he had his neighbor all figured out.
The neighbor thought the same as he passed him
in his POS  Ford— the one he inherited from his father-
the one with the  fender cracks held  together
with $ store American. flag  bumper stickers.

Under the bardo of the sheltering sky
mist and fog cleave earth from heaven.
The green  liminal land  abscission’s itself-
shivering swallows from boughs,
causing the wiltering river reed
to bend away from the first frazil ice—
and the grazing horse to return to hay by
following the frosting road back to the barn.

The fifth season has arrived,
sneaking in between summer and fall,
changing everything green to yellow,
then to fire and ash—
suspending earth and air until
nature decides the next breath.


bardo:  (in Tibetan Buddhism) a state of existence between death and rebirth, varying in length according to a person's conduct in life and manner of, or age at, death.

Liminal:  Liminal space is the uncertain transition between where you've been and where you're going physically, emotionally, or metaphorically.

abscission:   the natural detachment of parts of a plant, typically dead leaves and ripe fruit.

Frazil:  soft or amorphous ice formed by the accumulation of ice crystals in water that is too turbulent to freeze solid.

I wander through this secret city
mapped in the words we only know,
and we can only define.
I am the citizen of you
and you of me.

Everyone we know drives bye,
their cars filled
with everything we own
flying out the window.

The next vanishes
into the mist
beyond  the curb
of what we once were.
Or, is it, will be?

Where they went,
we know.
Where they’re going,
we know.

Our eyes and ears
want to follow,
it’s so bright and loud
and hard to hold inside,
even in all the shooting.