To be, so unlike another

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To be, so unlike another

Discomfited in a room where I
have never been nor will ever be.
No lace. No flowers. Unrecognizable
to myself. Yet bending

to sit in your imagined chair
by your particular window.
Mountain witness, sea air. A series
of paintings in red and blue by Hokusai.

How much useless effort I have spent
climbing into that chair.
Or marching against the wind
of your breath, not floating in it.

I accept at last my discomfiture
with myself, with you; never mind,
and run alone through slats of sun
with cavorting birds who are anything

but silent. Free to say that I want to love
myself the way I want you to love me:
Under song. In and out of tree-stripe
shadows, one limb after another.

As far as the sun’s eye sees along
a flat land where orange hawkweeds
swell in the random mist of spider laces.
In the morning. In the morning.

May 2012

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Poem: The Soul's Correspondence

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The Soul’s Correspondence

Freely, the black locusts bend and wave
from limbs and fingers, waterfall
spray across their stone slab of sky.
The older the tree, and taller,
the greater the grace. The young
birch and plum imitate with curtsies
in their small way, new to the wind.
The spruce’s scraggles heave and flutter.
Bamboo hisses; leafless poplar echoes.
They write poems with ease,
roots deepening below them in the earth.
Not buried exactly. But weighted,
spindling toward magnetic center.
Listen birds, stop squawking at me.
I want to hear the Soul’s correspondence
through the spirits of trees, while I rest
hands in my lap. No writing. No work.
Up from the essence of survival. No,
listen. It is far more than that.


March 2012

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Poem: Out or In

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Out or In

Here is a young tree
stretching its bark
in a new spring. Its
ghostly blossoms erupt
like longing, so small in the air
that you must hover close
to ascertain fragrance.

I have broken beyond
fences, with spirits
benevolent and not. Who can say
for certain which breed
kicks down the gate, and whether
I am going out, or in?


March 2012

the wedding plum

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Sap at night

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Sap at night

Before budding begins,
the last pure stream of the maple

drops into the bucket-moon

sweet and uncluttered

Postscript note: Because of early warm temperatures, Don has been harvesting sap from eight buckets on four six maple trees since early February. Normally he would not begin tapping until late February. Sap is sweet until buds begin to form, then it becomes bitter and can't be used. We have noticed buds starting to sprout on all the trees and shrubs, and with the expectation of very warm weather this week (70°F, 20°C), he only has a few days of sap left to carry in. It takes 40 gallons of sap to boil into one gallon of sweet, buttery maple syrup. So far, he has boiled about that much, with another fourth of that to go. Depending on conditions, some days a five-gallon bucket is full in just one day's sap run.

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Poem: The housefly and me

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The housefly and me

We bask together in the sun. Against this southeast window
  he is finding spring strength in tireless morning exercise.
    Starting from the lower frame he walks up the pane

a few inches. Reaching an invisible barrier, he flutters
  and slides back down to the casing, and immediately
    starts again, straight up the window escarpment.

His zenith rises higher each trip. It has been some
  five minutes, and he can now get to six inches
    before falling back to the maple ledge. I sit and wait

for water to boil in the kitchen behind me.
  Whisker-legs rappel back down the glass. The glass-top
     burner sputters with moisture on the bottom of the pot.

In the time it takes to whistle, he has reached nine inches.
  The smell of spiced chai steeps in creamy sweetness.
    Sunday morning warms in a March sun.

Alongside a red pen, bright spines of books face me
  with titles of the inner journey—what is real, mystery, being.
    My fly climbs and falls, climbs and falls, climbs and falls,

separated from the sun by glass. When the window opens
  in another month, he’ll fly. I will have studied another few
    chapters, including this one about the author’s trek to a far-off

Indian temple with a Maharajji, the author's sudden tears
  fluttering down his cheeks, and down the cliffs of the mountain
    he'd conquered, when he realizes his home was right here inside all along.


March 2012

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Comparison

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Comparison is a rational exercise of analysts and politicians.
It is necessary for science, important for business,

and desirable for historians. However, comparison

is not necessary or desirable in matters

of soul and spirit, art and music, nature and beauty.

Does this feel true to you?

Art notes
Top: "Sharecropper" by Elizabeth Catlett, 1952
Bottom: Crop of "Birth of Venus" by Sandro Boticelli, 1486

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