Temporal Covenant

All experience
Bound to one
Instant, an
Enchanted flash
Of fire and shape.
Is it motion or
Expanding stillness? 

Love grows.
What time
Is a rose?

Geranium

In flower language
Geranium means folly.
Probably some outrage in 
Restoration drama, a fluke,
Cad, a missing comma
In a perfumed letter --
A rebuke then, better left
To the past than any future
Time might emit and call
Us here, where it seems so clear.
Geranium means sprouts
Where other cuttings wither,
Stems jammed back in earth
Issue threads, thrive, neither
Conquered nor dead but
Quite the reverse --if this is
Folly, we could do worse. 
 

Explaining Myself To A Purple Pansy

Born deep in another
Century --what did 
I feel and do?
I'd wake and sleep
In sun and night --in
Light of other days, 
Like you, in what is real.
I felt time take me
Here, where we are
In hope and dream.
It does not seem so far.

Halloween Poem Inserted Into Hamlet Act 5, Scene 1

(I found this Calderon scene slightly more fun than Hamlet and Horatio unearthing Yorick's skull in the graveyard. Have always wished the old jester had a line in Shakespeare's play, but ventriloquism with a skull would be a bit morbid) 

This shell of holes and hinges
Doth in disinterment turn
Bold and impart timeless
Secrets to thee --lives in discussion,
Not aristocracy, want thought
And not decree-- in guilds and
Trades, list, oh list: the human
Mind seeks rationality, the sublime,
To combine and and set it free.

What Doves Do

["Mother and two baby birds, if you can find them in the darkness"--Norma]

We wait on trellis arches
For faces in ivy leaves--
Whether eye-patched pirate or
Jesus-- what we see and sees us--
What one believes depends
On angle, light, on sundown
Shadow --impressions one
Receives change in setting sun.
In all, whatever runs this
Process, we are doves, and
Even nightfall brings us love.

 
 

Old Poem, New World

I have climbed the stairs,
An astonished child.
I have left the lull of illusion.
You and I and a tremor of time
Climb brimming bright along the shore.
I am not only myself anymore.
We are a wave 
Holding sunlight and life,
A rolling glow, music and more--
More than the sum of ourselves before
We gave our gift to time.
We stepped our separate stairs
To a door upon the earth.
It is open.
We have a simple hold,
A touch, a wash of fanning sea
Over a swath of sand, a boulder,
A lace of foam, a stairway of waves--
A lyric on  land.
When songs mingle, they sing
Among themselves, winding gift
With gift where new-winged dreams
Drift, melodies touch.
We touched,
We joined ways, and to
That touch entrusted all our days.

Western Fence Lizard

I watch a lizard scale a
Sunbleached rail and learn.
"Are you leaving our
Garden?" I ask --he turns
From his task and answers.
"Where I go, the garden is.
So no, I cannot leave, nor
Can you; you are part
Of the garden too." 

[I'd like to thank William at Looking For Jack, for identifying my little garden friend as a Western Fence Lizard. Go see his blog. It rewards attention!]

On A bridge

For Poetry Monday, I decided to add a picture and large print to a poem posted 12/13/09, stemming from one of many myths about King Midas. The myth, in brief: Apollo had a dispute with Midas and punished him with donkey ears. Midas was understandably embarrassed and hid them under a turban.  His barber knew the secret but it burdened him, so he went to a meadow, dug a hole, whispered the story into it, then back-filled --hoping to be rid of it.  Reeds grew in the meadow, and began whispering "King Midas has ass-ears."  Wind carried the news everywhere.

 On A bridge

(Sunday, December 13, 2009)

I am amazed at 
What things mean.
Devices, by which
The impossible is 
Seen, surround the soul.
What is secret when
Wind and rattling reeds
Repeat what is
Whispered in a hole?

Fenceline Grapes in Water

We have love and
Minds to be out of.
We are not alone
At the brink
Of reason, kindness.
Anything less,
Sanity revokes
Into cosmic jokes -- 
We miss what we had.
No defense except
I haven't intelligence
To go mad--neither
Do you-- I suggest 
We start anew.

Spider Poem

Spider encounters
Sunflower from its web in the
Void --time employed
Unfolding futures.
Past unravels illusion--
No older, no younger.
Spider roams its design,
Legs spread like petals
Around a hunger, defines
What is in curious travels
To settle what was.
It always does.

 

Timewaves

How long?
Moondrawn tides
Sculpt arches,
Headlands, bay,
Tombolo, lagoon,
Dune --where
Oceans slip away--
Or inland saline
Lake -- eons?
A galactic day?
How long?
How long
Would you say?

Infant Towhee

Infant towhee, like
Crystal, rebroadcasts
Light from our star--
Is no less alive
Than we are-- has
A story to tell, as do
We,  and it sounds
Like a little bell.

 

Temporal Geometry

Small, large,
A moment is
At last the
Charge it is
Holding --
No given point
In the past ever
Stops unfolding.  

Flying Flower

Far-ranging pollinators,
Butterflies return what
They ate as caterpillars.
Pupae attached to  tree,
Rose , wait secure;from
Chrysalis eclose, unfurl.
Finally wings  sail  air. 
I  remember clothesline
Bed sheets whipping on
Windy days when I was
A  child  --same  sound,
Done in little in the wild.

2/28/1995

The outside
Of any circle
Describes an
Infinitely 
Greater one.

Not Even Nothing

Not even nothing can
Exist in a vacuum where,
In quantum concert, waves
Of possibility, virtual, in
Space and time --irreducible--
Result in you and me.
Nothing unreal lasts
For very long in forces
Around weak or strong
Charges in disturbance--
Light orphaned in dance
Springs from timeless nowhere.
I do not know if it
Can wholly return there.

Rose

Mind, time, distillate
Turned upon itself:
Futures seek pasts,
Petals, constellated
Light, galactic dawn
And earth to raise
A flower on.

Unceasing Surprise

I have felt rain
Resume, light
On plume and
Bearded fall.
Iris calls sunshine
And shower 
Alike in cosmic 
Whispers I scarcely
Hear at all.

Astrological Certainty

We measure a
Universe by
What survives
Here below and
Above by what 
We know and love--
By lives-- and 
It is ours, as we
Set our courses
By its stars.

Wheeeeee!

What honeysuckle
Leaves upon a
Paling row grows
Slowly on us
From fence into
Memory, retrieves
Something inside--
A county fair,
A carnival ride.

Conglobation

Sow bugs found
In fallen wood,
Touched in curiosity,
Curl around into pills --a
Skill in sow bugs everywhere
That humans sadly lack.
We can't get under
Our own backs and hide there,
Or disappear inside
An armored sphere.
We watch them from above,
Do nothing, which is
Awfully close to love.
.

Face Of The Waters

Surface:
Cross-section of
All space; each event
Transmits its sphere
And, where patterns  
Interfere,  a new
Event emerges.
Each puddle 
Verges upon an
Infinite geometry 
Of raindrops in
Random endeavor 
And it doesn't
End, not ever.