The Last Line

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.

 

 

The Use of Waiting

 

It’s the season of wishes and I’m a dilettante,

Dreaming about lions. They paced about

My brain all night: A way out of time?

A forgotten injury I must remember?

When they awoke me, it was still dark,

But I sat with the lamp and watched its light

Faded into the Sun. . .Still, the lions walk

While I consider their meaning—waiting. . .

For an inconsistency, or a slip, when

They will gather, pounce, and grant wisdom.  

 

Centinela Creek at Daybreak

 

There is a harrier reflected on the surface of the creek—

I see him there in a kind of unfurling disbelief,

An odd angle on a thing already beyond me, still

Of eye and certain of purpose, shaping the sky

With white shoulders. . .Then, only the sky remains,

The constant sky I see in the-water-without-

The-hawk. The unlikely meeting of all these things

In my eye: the light, the water, the sky, the bird—-

All unlikely stillness (the creek), movement (the bird)

And physics (the eye); the importance of the invisible,

Too: The ten thousand things I have to dismiss to see

The harrier in the water, to see some blindnesses are a

blessing.

 

 

The Pink Raven

 

You are telling me the image isn’t possible—

I say I’ve made it so; this is a world the color of snow:

He fluffs and preens on a birch branch, bold

As his blue-black brothers. There was no blood

Orange before I held one in my hand, is no moon

Until it rises. A raven is black / A raven is pink. . .

 

A schism with my understanding of myself,

With the Raven I had, by sustaining, sustained.

 

 

Samskara

 

Tangled in the tumultless routine of today,

I’m like to forget where I came from, or you,

Or the moments when I see you and my heart

Soars like the flute’s notes, sent on the breath.

It’s December, but the yellow hibiscus is blooming

And will keep blooming—Seasonless, a mystery.

 

A model, perhaps: Why shouldn’t we be so?

The crenellated petals twirl to a crimson

Heart—It’s how it shows its love, of course:

Blind to its own beauty, my admiring, shining

In Winter without Awareness. The best that I

Can do is guess at you; but I can glimmer,

I can love, and you need not know.

 

 

The Crow King Grants a Boon

 

They crowned the Crow King with a circlet of silver

Forged with the captured light of the waxing stars.

On the morning after the night of the new moon,

We vowed to serve; but the river bending made

The river too wide to cross. Ready and watching

At the well, I shook the sleep from my eyes and shed

The cocoon from my soul at last. The Minstrel brought

Money, but it was his violin I wanted (in exchange

For some of my sadness—even trade). Love was

A fallen bird on the forest floor. It was the frozen

Smoke of words said in coldness. I asked the King

For laughter, the thing the Crow King best bestows,

But instead he gave me the gift of finite patience

And a circlet of silver made of the waxing stars.