The Last Line

What There Is

Rending the thing in my energy,

I sit in judgment: Useful or not?

The time or no? I’ll shed no tears

For what’s not. But I will for what

Is, and I’ll seize that joy now, use

Its benediction, its true existence---

I’m shocked by the hungry ghosts

Of the past and tired of explaining.

Come to me now, sweet soaring

Vocals of the sorrowful song, sun

On my open palm, smell of gardenias,

I embrace the godless air hovering

Above the restless sea, the mist

Of the conflict between warmth,

Coldness, and my own perceptions.

The Lion, Lightening and the Monarch

 

 

I will ask no more—-there is no reason.

In the upper reaches of the eucalyptus,

In October, a monarch weakly wanders

Where coin-shaped verdigris leaves mimic

Its movements. Off to the west, mysterious

Flashes of light and a heavy storm front:

The sun goes down early today, before

Its time, and the rain will kill the butterfly:

Still, I am the lion of the moment, of the wings

And the leaves and the light—-

Rending the thing in my energy.

 

Concession to the Common Thing

Now focus—What question do you ask?—on

What is surely more than a moment of wonder,

Perhaps a soul-saving grace given in all its lovely

Ambiguity: There are petals in the deep center

Of the petals of the Gerbera (with a hard “g”)—-

Deeper within, hundreds more, viewless

And beyond me or anything I might make.

This common thing. This miraculous yellow.

When it’s night, and there’s silence in the room,

I will ask no more—-there is no reason.

The Poet Mocks the Muse

I’ll set my sights on the moonrise by day,

The cup of coffee on the dining table by night:

The romance of the dusk and dawn. Say,

Muse, how great Ulysses got lost—What

 

A drag. Here we go, every time, same old

Thump thump of the heart, wandering eyes,

Excellent stars. Imagine time squared, sped

To the beat of a dragonfly’s wing, the real

 

Time speed of the sun’s imagined path:

Now focus—What question do you ask?

The Leaf Falls and It

Means.  The deepest part of the season is here,

Only for now, and then it’s gone—each transition

Shading into the next, demarked by such events,

By the moaning wind weaving in the eucalyptus

Or the coastal clouds that mock the inland heat,

Or the translucent moon that’s out by day.

I’m still in love, in such a long and constant

Way it seems to suspend time—and in spite

Of what I am, what change comes, what lines

On my face or on the page. The leaf seems to hold

In the air, in the wind: The sun illumes the side

I can’t see, but makes a leaf pattern there,

A leaf-shaped shadow on the grass, one in blood

Red when I close my eyes. Yes, it means. “Yes.”

It may fall, but now it’s here, and like the raven

Pivoting in the updraft, playing in the change,

I’ll set my sights on the moonrise by day.

The Symmetry of Rain

The season, the leaf, the loss and the world

(even the world) don’t matter in the rain

That tapping lightly lightly dissolves the concrete

As the beating heart dissolves the body,

As the blinking eyes dissolve the vision;

And the insistent sound water running—

Sliding slowly off the world, the loss, the leaf—

Means the deepest part of the season is here.

The Last Sycamore Leaf on the Tree

Remains in the glory of grace as if it were

Possible to be sweeter if it were whole—

The fragment of song, the portion of stone,

The wild-eyed awareness that something’s

Going to give—knowing something’s going

And still you have to live. This is the day,

And you are here, and what there was is

Broken. Is this autumn, this October,

A metaphor for deliberate ripening?

Tell the world what you know; the world

Will know: The trope is magic; I am

The season, the leaf, the loss and the world.

The Triumphal Quadriga

Into me, into all of us: the sound of the word “real”

Is meaningless now—The four out on the terrace,

The four in the basilica: the image is the same,

The expression perfect. The copper hooves balance

The weight of muscle and sinew, paradox just so:

Movement and stillness, eternal life and the moment,

Poll to hock, an impossible thereness expressed

In lost wax, lost time, lost faiths and lost credulity.

Original and replica alike, each stares at nothing,

Neighs at nothing, prances forward into no space,

Remaining in the glory of grace as if it were possible.

 

Keats Appears in Saint Mark's Square

Leave me--Never let me understand,

O excellent reason, rational desire,

Why, those most intense of moments

(The word--like a bell--these bells--)

Can stay in the memory more clearly

Than the now itself. There's the sunset

On St. Mark's, Spanish gold, Indian lapis,

Venetian labor, and then--the bells in 

The campanile with a sound like a word--

Word like a bell--to bring the moment 

To me, again and again, the light and sound

Becoming memory, transfigured here,

Into me, into all of us: the sound of the word.

Wholeness

It’s enough to find my way to the end

Of each careless step—knowing as I do

That no one is watching me take it.

So I should spread my arms out to each

Lively moment, each syllable, and say

Yes. I’m watching a fat squirrel poke

Her nose around a bird feeder.

The sun shines on her supple back

As she moves little paws through blades

Of grass, munching sunflower seeds

Cast off by profligate jays. There.

It’s an intimate observation, the gleam

On her back, the small precise paws.

When I rise to go, to finish my day,

I’ll have one hand on this image, one hand

Working the world, to try and fool

The mind into sewing steps together.

Have I confused the process of metaphor?

Nearness to me now, Little Beast, never

Leave me, never let me understand.