The Last Line

Traveling

 

The chrome has started to dull, edges to fray—

I need to hear the song of strange birds;

I need to see the stars of a different sky.

The Body is the first to learn these things:

Sleepless, it fidgets. It eats without tasting.

A moment comes when you know you must

Change what you receive, where you stand;

And you move, or become a pool of stagnant

Water, gathering only the slime of experience,

Casting no reflection. . .I am what I don’t want.

If I close my eyes. And then open them.

The world I see will never be the same.

 

 

Grey / Gold

 

Morning mist on the Laguna. The Sun

Clears the hills, and its grey weight

On the reed begins to dissipate---

Even as the Sun becomes too intense

To gaze upon, too gold. . .It draws

Me to it, with/without my will.

There’s something about presence

To understand here, age and youth

At once, the memory of the mist

As it was, and watching it rise

To disappear without seeing

The exact moment when “here”

Becomes inexorably “gone.”

 

 

 

The Fruit, Artfully Arranged

 

I am remarkably unattached to the mangos.

They may sit for week, sunset colors swelling

On green skins, before I’ll even touch them.

In the meantime, lemons and tomatoes accent

The bowl, all Flemish, but without the blue-and-

White china. There’s a bounty for you: to see

The brushstrokes in the Real, each imperfection

An example of the Artist’s discerning eye.

 

 

The Purpose of the Rain

 

Westward, it looks like mountains are on the Sea—

The Sky goes white, the storm heads towards us,

The waiting, over. I look at my watch as if to mark

The moment it arrived, concrete spotted, then dark.

It’s the changing rhythms on the skylight

I love the most, a modern oculus, staccato on the plastic

Telling me how soft or hard the fall—

But I am not yet home, and the Sky drops

As the horizon disappears. Even the spaces

Defined by the branches fade out, all borders gone grey.

Instead of running, I tilt back my head, open my eyes:

The rain falls general all over Los Angeles, but that drop—

So high—falls so fast, arrives on me. I am here to receive

 

It.

 

 

 

Spring, in the Vernacular

 

The garden was suddenly filled with jonquils;

It was time to think about jonquils—such things

Come without intention, and are forgotten much

The same way. Pluck the word, and it will sound,

Sing, whether or not you hear. Spring comes.

Did you see the elm, the one by the park, all

Reaching, and taller than last year? And the moon

Was there, so pale without stars, quickening.

I am—I feel it—it is a gladness—sourceless—

Useless—as if I am a conduit for some desire

Only the jonquils understand, unfurling.

 

 

All Proximity

 

The hop of the sparrow in the sweet alyssum

Means there will always be pursuit—I seek,

Always, dissolution; always, caesuras.

All the same, the hopping absents me

From myself for the smallest of moments,

Which is not something to be questioned

Or considered, which I’ll do, all the same.

 

There are no mockingbirds by the airport,

And no airports in the mockingbird’s song.

 

 

Moonset

 

It takes all the dim shadows of the lupines—

And the shadow of the Sun—with it.

Sliding behind the dunes of LAX

(“el-ay-ex”), it’s a city moon, so no

Real light is lost, replaced by bulbs:

Headlights and lamps and such, the curtains closed

And the world not listening. When John Keats

Heard his Nightingale, there was no light (“Here,”

He said); this loss should mean nothing to me.

But I’m watching the Moon set, and wonder.

The very shoes on my feet will outlast me.

This is not what I mean. It’s not­­­ ______ but ______,

A Love that’s beyond what tongue can tell—--

As the latent Stars appear, this isn’t what

I want to say, words that sound as if my heart

Broke when the Moon went down. But it broke open.

 

 

 

Equals Sign

 

I set the mirror down in the grass and the ground

Became the sky, the place where I once was. Westward,

The ever-line where the sky feeds the sea. I’m languishing

In a kind of exile—exile, an ancient word—from myself.

The mind is a metaphor; the metaphor, a form of mind.

 

The mirror (is) on the ground and the ground is endless,

And changed into a point. The lasting things we love

The most—the cello’s long-held minor note, longer

Held belief, fast-fleeing laughter—are music from

Another room, distant from us, with no demanding.

 

 

Dusk on the River

 

We left the Angel on the bench, pondering

Unholy Pigeons, when we heard the bells.

I shook my head to clear it—I could not believe

The Evening was coming. I asked my companion

If she knew what was on the other side of the Garden

Wall, and she pointed at the first stars, the new Moon.

It was as if reflection and regret were the same

In her eyes, so I headed for the River, a way out,

Seduced by constant movement, constant talking.

In the River I found something I could serve.

I stood in the midst of the swerving swifts

In their last passes over the passing water,

And gave up my only understanding—my meaning:

That, This, will never be more than the sound

Of the evening bells—not a warning, but a wakening. 

 

 

Not Even Past

 

A gathering of losses, you could say: Years,

The way we used to be, people. What am I

Now, but a cabinet of Dreams, a collection

Of What’s No Longer Here? What you are,

Particles of me. I stand before you, a mirror

To your mirror in endless reflection

Until the Darkness falls—

                          Solace,

Though, is so easy: Remembrance

A kind of forgetting—Nepenthe I hold

For your suffering, so much do I

Love, so much do I desire the Fruit

Of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,

Understanding unchecked by Vanity.