This Night

Ten

I

Traveler, take this obscure, flightless bird

And call it silence.

II

In our days there is something wild,

Unchronicled, pathless as the wind.

Plant it in yourself— it is the spirit seed.

III

Every moment redeems the world

As it perishes.

IV

Stare at the sea as long as you like,

You will not see the salt, nor the

Pull of the Moon.

Yet both fill the smallest wave.

So life’s mysteries lie hidden in plain sight.

V

The universe stretches out its open hand

And in return we….

VI

Now joyful, now bereft,

Seeker, you will bend like grass in a storm,

Love-longing burning a hole in the

Place your heart used to dwell.

VII

Raise high the white banner of hope,

Traveler, raise it high.

VIII

Frightened by our own measureless freedom

We feverishly build dungeons for ourselves.

IX

Here and now:

The light of a thousand suns

All rivers flowing into one

The soul, a century flower,

Unfurling at long last.

X

Life, a riderless steed,

Gallops on under untrammeled skies.

Six

Love huddles in a corner,

gritting its teeth.

Hate merrily whistles a tune,

waiting for its chance.

Honesty sighs and

slowly stirs its coffee.

Deceit grins as it

counts its money.

Joy keeps quiet,

not believing its luck.

Sorrow holds its hands

up to the light, musing.

I Asked

I asked a mountain for wisdom.

There was silence, then a ravine

mockingly gave me back my own words.

 

I asked a meadow what knowledge is,

but the lilies only bowed their heads

in courtly greeting to the bees.

 

I sat at the foot of a tree

and inquired, “What is truth?”

The leaves just shook in silent mirth.

 

I went to a river and cried,

“How should I live?”

The waters murmured quietly,

“As you wish, as you wish….”

 

Then I raised my head and

gazed in wonder at a single drifting cloud.

My questions slowly melted away into

the swooning evening sky.

For Karl Plank

Poised like a cliff diver far above a shimmering sea,

you wait breathlessly for Godsign.

It comes slowly, with the trickling patience of

a stone-vaulted spring,

or obscurely, in the stagger step of a drunk on Saturday night.

Here at the fulcrum of the universe meaning could come

in the insouciant flick of a garter snake’s tail,

the thousand-voice of a rushing stream,

in the querulous tones of an elderly neighbor.

 

It is the signal and the noise,

and whether natural or divine,

child of Maker or randomly made,

you have sought it all your life,

tracking as a bloodhound does

your time-haunted, elusive prey.

 

So you will watch the waves march in green unison

obeying some hidden, high command;

listen to branches rasp and click their urgent missives;

sense the empty eyes of windows flickering darkly

in your musing, sentinel wake.

 

All the world whispers tales

of some quotidian immensity whose tragicomic

lineaments shall be traced by you

and you alone

when your dive’s arc, the light, and sea are one.

 

 

 

Haiku 8/2

Japanese summer

a boy hunting bugs at dusk

his net the world

Aleph

Redemption peers at you wistfully

knowing full well that it can only be

sensed through the frame of your frail human body

as a broken symmetry

a miraculous aleph steeped in grace

soundless as a slumbering child

or a hunter in deep snow.

One cannot hope to evade such pristine absence

or escape the lure of a continent empty of all

save mute memories of water and stone.

This delicate torrent

this momentary millenium

crashes like the surf on

your dumbstruck, undeserving brow.

A caravel on her maiden voyage

a cracked Russian church bell

that still rings true—

how could you not be the lens

this universe is refracted through?

 

Haiku7/9

Rainy season folds

the sky into neat grey squares

I dream of summer

Once

The fiery musings of the prophets

tinkle cracked and cool as ice

in a bottle of bubbly soda.

No longer the dark mistress of a green

and growing world, the one tree

quivers wanly by the road like a

small-time crook in a police line-up.

Festival dancers, whose nimble flashing steps

once mirrored the light and warmth of

their ancestral village, trudge listlessly

across empty parking lots, through

endless anodyne cubicles.

What was that twilight-lullaby that sweet-voiced

Nature used to serenade you with;

what orisons did the Sun cheerfully grant

on summer days when the sky drifted

down with blue imperial ease just to

greet you as a friend?

You stand now on the dusty threshold of

a whole world’s death, idly fingering

the loose change in your pocket.

Haiku, 6/27