All At Once
The cat
licks her paw
to a Beethoven
piano sonata
then lowers her cheek
and goes to sleep
I sit and wrestle
with my strangeness
I am and am not
all at once
and the piano
keeps on playing
An Undeclared Mystic
Strange anything at all exists.
What is, is!
Profound tautology,
but I can’t find a curtain to pull
to let me see behind “is”
Wittgenstein snorts like an impatient horse,
“Haven’t you ever heard of getting snared in a language game?”
This is the form fashionable in the West
of what in Indo-Persian lore once was called a “tilism” *
a magical landscape that can pass for real and hold you
for a very long time, even your whole life.
A substantial part of the beam of my attention,
is always held in wonder that a pen can be, that I am,
that a green shirt can be, that light and robins can be…
I’m dazed by what other people take for granted.
I’m a child or a fool or both mixed up together.
The wonder of water and palm trees and the blue of sky
And dark and stars and the ever unrolling scroll of dreams.
I admit it: I’ve been lost all my life and this
is where I’ve lived and this is who I’ve been
An undeclared mystic
*See the “Adventures of Amir Hamza”
Bare Bones
too much to read,
much too much to read
I watch the leaves
falling from the trees
like words from the pages
of books the sun has written
I, too, am a book
that the sun has written
winter will be soon
and white and cold
I’ve lost track of what
I once may have known
I’m like that oak
becoming naked
I’ve lost track of most
of my questions
they’ve fallen from me
like leaves from a tree
I keep on reading
my way beyond me
I am the bare bones
of who I once was
Enantiomers
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza
enantiomers of a single compound
the right handed version
and the left handed version
the same in chemical composition
but breaking light differently
Myself, I’m a racemic mixture,
Don and Sancho, inseparable
Words For Waves
Words For Waves
If I were to compose words for waves,
I’d wander the shore, mile after mile, month after month
year after year as I changed ages, letting
the sun set on me and the moon rise on me
sometimes a scimitar, sometimes a golden eye,
and the stars stick their fierce pins into the sky,
letting the sun rise pink again on my pink flesh
I’d wander the shore and let my feet
be familiar of the wear of sand and of rock,
listening, listening, listening, for I’m certain
that the waves have a language all their own,
a way of speaking and making themselves understood
and I have always aspired to be their translator.
the importer of their ancient virgin truth
I’d leave the clouds to others, even though cloud
and waves are intimately connected as both are water
I’d leave the land, too, its vast barrens, and strange hewn
grotesque overweening ranges of mountains all to others
I’d keep my feet walking, listening, listening, listening
for the hint of a word in the thunder rumble
of huge breakers minted on the open ocean
Or perhaps it would be the fan of surf spray
that betrayed a clue in a random moment, a first word
confident of what came after though yet without form
the waves are connected to the deep, to the hidden skin
of the earth that was once surface, perhaps, then dove deep
into a soothing darkness, an immense quiet, a place to wait
and keep on waiting for whatever might come next
But suppose, after all my walking, all my wandering,
all my wondering, that the language of the waves
does not yield to me: what’s the harm in that, I love
to walk and to wander and to wonder and to take wind
on my cheek as I go and feel the flecks of salt it holds.
suppose the waves keep their secrets and exult in them,
then what a quest I’ve had when at last I crash and break