Dark Express

You remember me better
Than I do.
Who I was, under a hat:
Another magician arriving
In station echoes--
A late train, smells
Of cigarettes and steel.
An overcoat
On a cold night,
For an instant seemed solid,
Right and just, more
Than invention in
Shadows, dust, down years.
Here, you touch glass
That stops a place where
Steam is,
Clear a squeaking
Circle and
Remember me.

Quantum Gardening

All things are events
Bubbling up, losing balance,
Getting on top of themselves.
Storms sent by chance
Send us this way and that.
The world curves
Into everything
Large, small --time, mind,
Space and all events that
Serve life, make it
Full --the world
Is not flat.
Tree trimming or
Tending irrigation in
A boggy hole -- up, down,
The compass points are
Always with you.
You can't go in one
Direction without
The others too.

Antiparticle Of A Photon Is A Photon

First there is wilderness
With a voice in it
Sent all ways at once,
Echoing at random upon
A becoming collocation--
Arrives in minds surprised
As by a healing tune or
Curtain opened on an
Indoor moon.
This black flower sends
Its petals into night,
But silent?
I don't know, things said
Sometimes leave me
But silences, never.
After all, where
Would they go?

Perhaps Because I Have Done This Before

Each moment contains
Some quality of the next
In continuum, in text
An enjambment, as rain
Tonight stores starlight
For opalescent fog.
In the morning, birds
Mutter in hedges,
Silence is
Broken by a barking dog
And this garden loses edges
To rising mist.
New worlds are
Made of this: calm uncertainty
That will grow
Wings, feathers, fur;
From this weather
Occur, live, be,
And roam the future
Of memory.

Pool Between Paths

Among papyrus,
Bamboo, cosmos,
Stars on the surface
Of the water wriggle
Apart and the
Moon dances.
Reflection neither
Begins here nor ends.
It is how
Light subtends the
Mind and what
Unlit waters
Leave behind.

That Blue Thing

Darkness spills downhill,
Pools under trees and
Earth turns me to stars.
I locate Venus, Mars,
And that blue thing,
Then head home.
Doppler effect and
Some old ricochet you see,
Astonishingly old,
It or us rebounding,
Heading here, this garden--
A bridge of light sounding
Blue notes to this
Transpontine eye.
I don't know why, but
I think of love under
The blue thing,
Cross the shadows
And always head home.

Rahima

Unexpected always,
Like wild strawberries
Or lupine in dunes
Appear and hold earth together,
You walk with an open book
Beyond the brim of my hat.
I look.
"It's only a mystery," you say.
Yes, it is certainly that:
You on the path to
Rahima, bright day;
Me, trimming escallonia;
Detectives on separate ways
In an old universe
That still glistens.
You speak.
I listen.
"This, I am more.
Something else that is more."
Hair full of fairylamps,
Downward flutter of fingertips,
A gesture stirring stellar dust,
And I believe you,
I must.

Will

[photo by Norma of Willie and Geo. steering '71 VW in and out of future]

Take Antaeus and the
Eastbound bearing race:
Souls rolling beween poles
Slip magnetic journals,
Fly away, cling to magic
In nanotubes or catch
On some arrangement of
Rock.
Prehistory, future,
Names given infants by
Infants --fires deep in the
Jewel.
Silence? Sound?
Better an aeolian harp
Than fool who has
The king's ear.
There are no kings here,
Only torchlights seen
Across dark fields
By beings on business
Of their own.
All illusion is alone.
Could that include this question?
I must limit myself to
What is humanly possible,
But
Will could answer this.

Gooseboys In Mist

Predawn:
Necks
Black questionmarks
Over foot-high fog,
Alert for gulls, dogs,
Each other.
Hysteria
Contained, conjunctive
High notes in poor
Cupless ears.
Here the field fills
With light.
Interrogative over
An end of night.

Rock Point Three A.M.

An electric path--
To be what one was
At trailhead in
Night-sea crossing--
Under the moon
Between black crashes,
Incandescent corridor
Of not-to-be and west
Away from memory.
Something takes flight,
Swift, silver.
Rest of me turns east
And out of night.

The Night Shift

Unlit witches search
Latent paths ahead
Of plasma--
Dangerous work
Under the rod--
A kind of hysteria
In clouds of sheet lightning
And earthwide echo.
Rain falls
Around a plume of entropy.
A consternation of witches
Stirs the steaming sea.
By dawn only fog
Clings to the garden and
Work awaits me.

Travertine

Eyes of creatures long gone
And what they saw are
Caught under crystal
From solution--
Light of other days compressed
Into stone, deposited
Here and there--
Their tongues lapping
At the surface of waters
Long since turned
To desert.
Here, between red,
Green, yellow are
Black veins in
Travertine that tell
Of seas, rivers, lakes
Come and gone,
Prairies carbonized.
There is much to read
In a pebble.

Refraction In Garnet

This evening enters
The garden on rails
From an easement
Between the inquisitive
Scent of cut geraniums and
Autumn night.
It rolls under clouds
Of red light, on
Distant steel.
I hear wheels, a
Train far away
In a promise of rain.

Elements Of Grammar

When we look at stars
We look in silence--
Universe can't speak
Through vacuum.
Silent stars, but they
Can in combination
Make our oceans move,
Sing in barking breakers,
Susurrus from sand.
This is the language
We must learn
To understand.
By the same vocabulary
Wind drives dry
Rose petals into a
Garden corner.

Hinge View Of A Bivalve

Here inside,
In limits,
Focal umbo
Under ribs,
Is this
Convecting swarm
Of salt and stars,
Boiling --by which
Alembic I might
Scald an angel out
Or open my shell
To roaring sun
And let one in.

Keep This Coupon

At the window
Overlooking lawn
You have your
Mandarin collar on
And remark,
"It's a journey
You know."
We walk together
Through a house
Empty except
For a cold tea kettle
In the kitchen.
Whatever else
I seem to see
In this dream,
I shall always
Love the way
Dust looks
On copper.

Long Division

Divide infinity
By itself.
You get one.
You get its attention
With a little bell.
Even when there's no sound
Beyond a bell, attenuated,
Stretched across time,
One needs to hear.
Infinity grows an ear
That always was
Upside your head
And will always be.
Time does not dispose
Of a mystery, so
It is in our best interest
To remain one.

In--In

(punctuation note: multiple hyphens indicate
orchestral pause of 2000 years.)

Incipit --------------------Here it begins
In camera,----------------In private,
In limine.-----------------On the threshold.
In lumne------------------In light we shall
vidiebimus lumen,------see light,
In naturalibus,----------Stark naked,
In pectore,----------------Secret,
In pleno,------------------Fully,
In posse,------------------Perhaps
In praesenti.--------------The present.
In cauda venenum!------Watch out for the part you can't see!

At This Latitude

Earth and I turn
East 800 miles per hour.
The least wave breaks
In crests of
Wildflowers, mountains,
Years, now, yesterday.
Tomorrow we feel
Churning stars
Refill the furrow
Of our keel.

Sacramento Valley

Air, hot
From this basin--
Ages back, an ocean
Emptied its swirling ghost,
Steamed into
Summer, revisits
Over woods--
Sounds surf in trees,
And these mountains
At snowline
Still define an
Inland coast.