The Last Line

Time Is the Ground

 

What, then, you wonder, is hidden from you

Deep in the spark, past the light it sends or

The shadows it casts. Reaching, reaching in

For time, you move closer to the mirror,

Look yourself in the eye and feel the slip

Of the self, out of who you are, to beyond it ,

To an image of a field of purple martins flinging

Themselves at their sightless prey so lightly

The ground seems unnecessary—-

The ground is unnecessary.

Silence Itself

 

A sound like stars, slow and many-pointed,

Illusive, low—-it aligns itself with other sounds,

Just beneath perception, music of spheres,

The music of functioning worlds: It’s the means

Of observing that misses its existence.

I’ll ask What don’t I hear and it there it is,

Emerging from me, rising to my request,

Cognizant of my self and open to it—-

What, then, you wonder, is hidden from you?

 

Summer Come Now

Is the double meaning the intention to be

Elusive or more precise? I watch as winter

Slips silently off the maple buds, and all the gray

Areas between seasons manifest in shades

Of sky. It will change, and you can’t make it stay.

So myself. At least I’m moving, too. At least

I’m never still. But I can make the change be,

Can’t I? Make the deeper blue summer air

Come faster in every breath, the need to make

A sound like the easy leafing maples,

A sound like stars, slow and many-pointed.

Double Entendre

As if it were a skill and not my nature

I steal the cold from the morning air,

Inhaling, exhaling heat in the form

Of sound, visibly gray, the stronger

Sense of the word. The garden snake

Is the double meaning—the intention.

White Noise

The white gull’s wing on white sky—

The wing beats not like the heart,

A slanting tip, a suggestion of air.

This silent air filled with wave noise,

The noisy waves filled with air—as here.

Look: this is the sound of transgression.

I mark the gull, the gull marks me.

Each distinction in succession

Disappears, and the I inhale the waves,

The sky, the intimate space of the horizon

As if it were a skill and not my nature.

 

 

The Desire for Meaning

All of us a word in this sentence,

Stating the ambiguity of space,

And you can change it but you can’t

Make it change, conjoining

Until you feel the forward moving

Of the sound, see the space

Between the shapes of letters,

White with heavy winter meaning;

Maybe there is clarity there,

Marking the ground of the conceit,

But certainly there is no distinction:

The story of my soul is here—--

The white gull’s wing on white sky.

 

The Maker and the Made

 

The shining Sun that knows no night

Makes it all the same—that’s its grace.

The beautiful collective is pattern, is

Rendered like song and certain clouds

Seen askance, barely more than seen,

Like dreams the next morning: Part

Of a larger whole we can’t know,

Context composed of composite us;

All of us a word in this sentence.

The Poet Imagines (She Is) the Sun

 

This is the day and I am its creator, 

Says Sun s she seems to arch—without movement,

The day faces her always--clouds cast

No shadows on her face: she sees no shadow,

But below the still water is a mirror where

Her face is reflected back to her in her

Self Illumination; it reflects her back

Again in a loop of perfect contemplation

Where she knows she is the only Sun:

Sudden joy, and she flares and again sees

Her joy, what joy looks like—like herself,

Sun in the mirror, the colors of light:

Here there are images immersed in white,

The shining Sun that knows no night.

 

The Solstice Approaches

 

Me all contrast and shaping the line:

The contrast changes; so can I,

Moving the dream around, foam

Upon the surface of the sea

Of my perceptions. Am I mystical?

So says my muse. She lies

On my skin and waits to be called.

 

There may be mud on my boots,

But I can shake it off.

There may be snakes in the garden,

But they kill the rats.

There may be repetition—-

That’s a the refrain.

 

When there is beauty in the movement

From idea to idea, ad infinitum,

That’s where the love is, lucky

As you are in the finish

Of the surface. Does it shine?

Like burnished bronze. It calls:

This is the day and I am its creator.

 

Strophe and Antistrophe

 

Until you give the thing a name, nothing’s there—

You’ll make it as you shape the word, as I do here,

Aware. I’m not telling you how to think or see

The crown of thorns formed by the tongue’s decree,

So full of pattern the pattern’s lost—

 A mark of martyrdom, a song of praise:

A paean or irregular cry—yet it can be a cloak

Or a cover, a blinding with the banal familiar. Savor

The beat of the line, stroke of the pen or key: Say,

“Crow,” and a it’s a miracle or mystery—a

Crow appears, a gift in a word from me to you.

 

The crow appeared, dipped a shoulder,

Fanned his tail, and lighted lightly on the rail.

He cocked his head at the rustle in the grass,

Hopped to the ground, a picture of green

Under black. The sun was lost in the gloss

Of his back as he nudged aside the blades

With his beak, precise and neat, then he

Turned to me his lidded eye and leapt

Away, aware that my seeing him was a dangerous

Making, he all hunger and seeking,

Me all contrast and shaping.