A BEGINNING
On the beach near dusk our bodies cast long shadows.
A troupe of sandpipers faced down the wind
and small, fearless, its ease like faith,
a white bird bobbed far out on the water.
We had no need for games or speech.
You’d shown such grandeur even then
I made blind Milton’s line refer
to “she for God and he for God in her.”
Next morning came a dragon sun,
the eyes within its fury yours,
blue peace within that burning’s rage,
and I gave myself there, like a white bird riding.
SLOWNESS AND APRICOTS
One body, one current, one deepening river,
in languid postures gently together
as sugar works in banana skin,
dark, unspeakably we ripen,
by mute intelligence of flesh
fierce and delicate at once.
If nowhere else but in our thoughts
we live on slowness and apricots,
the lovefruits of the Garden: wings
flared and woolly, primal things,
the small earth blinking blue below.
FAVORED GUEST
You who once lived between pen and brazier,
angry that one must kill to eat,
you‘ve come with me, allowed me to lift you
drowsing in my arms, to bear you
here where you share a room with light.
Leaning in doorways on longhandled hammers
the butchers assumed you would learn their trade,
not knowing that you are a favored guest
in the slow house of my words.
MADE OUT OF WORDS
Your Valentine Poem, made out of words,
entered my study and saw by my smile
that it had no need to recite itself,
already quite perfectly understood.
Instead, gracious! it slipped with a sigh
directly into my arms where I swear
it gave off the scent and feel of you,
was perfectly you, as if holding a rose.
Forgive me, but how can a man resist?
I slowly removed all punctuation,
threw off the metaphors, modifiers,
articles, pronouns, prepositions
(these laid aside for whenever the poem
might think to read itself in public)
and reached for its meaning
past thought and laughter,
past strive and love, give and create,
in a silence so deep we fell away,
your poem and I, through oceans of clouds
singing: you…you.
LOVERS ON AN ELEPHANT
after a Jaina miniature
As earth absorbs warmth from the sun
they ride into day out of night,
the last knot of difference undone,
soothed by a wind made of light.
These lovers who never need part,
their weather unendingly fair,
they glow at the pit of the heart,
their curtains like fragrance of pear.
Never to wake from their trance,
their elephant pacing unled,
they rove through the forest by chance,
joined on an animal bed.
They yield up the one pulsing note,
at one in their frail silken room:
ease of the opening fruit;
flowering breath of the womb.
NO LACK
This that happens between us,
this mutual transfusion,
makes yearnings ludicrous.
Why wish for what one already has,
as if water might seek a watering
or flame give prayer for heat?
Comic, yes, but deadly, wanting.
Teach us, O Kama, God of Desire,
“no lack”…we who have one another.
MY CAT WAGAMAMA
What most excites her is crawling into a cardboard box.
No way to stop her cruelty to lizards.
For sleep she curves in my out-basket, sprawls on her back in hot weather.
*
Her name, Wagamama, Englished-Japanese, means “thinks of self, not group.”
Could call it “centeredness” I guess; better: “generic cat.”
*
Across the chasm of our difference, her grace and my slow eyes,
like any pair of lovers we gaze.
She’ll knead me with her claws. I’ll croon to her in cat.
She’ll sit unmewing beside her dish and I will feed her.
POEM
Will it come again like this?
Will we ever get it right?
It is always as it is,
And it passes.
Never as it was,
Yet always somehow bright,
Always somehow sweet
In its changes.
We will never get it right.
It will come, but not like this.
It is always as it is,
And it changes.
HEART-MIND
When the warmth-bloom widens out from the chakra-wheel at the heart you’re a lute that plays without strings, a breath undistinguished from air.
Soon the brain clicks its lights back on and the mouth sales-talks itself, but here’s what the teachers claim: happiness could be easy,
all you’d need is to fall in love with everything, everyone, gnats and the boss and weeds shameless, and what prevents?
Where is it written to warn us “only treasure your few”?
What harm if billions, billions bathed in the warm springs of your heart?
WITHIN ANOTHER LIFE
Those whose days were grudging or confused
may end up trapped within another life
as a boulder or a pane of glass
or a door that suffers every time it’s slammed.
If I return a boulder, love, some summer day
come sit by me and contemplate
these horses and these hills.
And if a windowpane, gaze through to see
the meadow on our walks
where brown geese strut.
And if I am a door, come home through me,
be sure I’ll keep you safe.
And if a knotted, twisted rope
from long self-clenching and complexity,
oh love, unbind, unbraid me then
until I flow again like windswept hair.
