Everything is ex There is no why We don’t have a clue We don’t have a rationale Beyond bad or good or great Fictions This is how we survive This is where it takes place My store of knowledge Is on East Main Street So the Thought Police usually Leave me alone There is strength in numbers Fewer than twenty More than that and we have Problems and they Investigate They always investigate Big numbers Big figures Big loops…
Arriving Home When I cross the harbor bridge, I’m home. In awe of intersecting sky, river, ocean, mountains sloping down to fields, wild roses, Queen Anne’s lace. I inhale them with all my senses. Arriving at the cabin, I catch my breath. We ran through these hay fields as children. Here my grandparents worked the land, sea and woodlands without rest. Now it is our summer haven. Afternoon sunlight streams into the kitchen. I look for the great bald eagle…
Inspiration from Cao Jun’s Hymns to Nature Exhibit Volcanoes are ancient teachers Rising up from the magma Core of planet earth The effluent bringing forth All the swirling elements of life Choking out gaseous Fiery energy and chaos Creating oceans and rivulets Mountains and savannas Landscapes for the tiger Spewing lava and ash For the delicate lotus To break through Reaching to heaven Painters and poets Are modern interpreters Of universal truths Written in calligraphy Hidden deep within the …
AT THE PRIMITIVE CAMPGROUND IN THE GORGE A ghost cannot gather itself inside a tree, or a peregrine, or a creek, or heaven. It cannot draw stars through the window of a building in Beijing, or on a cabin near Woolwine with spring peepers chorusing music to fit the sky. It cannot revive its mind in a trout lily, as much as I wish. I can’t tell it my name. I can’t share one flapjack, smoke, or a sip…
The Monkey Climbs a Tree I. With words come the square, the block Of sound, time and space With words, you fill the square And we bounce you hither and yon The block of time and space, ex nihilo Becomes something you see, touch, hear Smell if you’re advanced Taste if you leap beyond the possible II. An image does more, because it is The thing in a sense A copy of the thing at least But words can never…
Sundown That deluge of haze Just before sundown. Spring shakes Winter’s hand Goodbye. Now the day has truly gone. Street lamps glow A sodium pink When blue milk pacifies, The copper moon sliding up a sleeve of glass, Her luminous lake Drowning the city, A black felt hat against Heaven’s empty dome. An indigo deer slips back Through the shadow of night-green cedar, Loving, Teasing with promise. I could not look away. ___ At the End of Autumn…
THE DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE ORCHESTRA, PT. 1 The bassoon is almost as red as it is brown. It is a complicated color that was invented by the orchestra way back when. It lives life richly. It can be a dying bear when it sings, a smiling hippo when it is at rest. It is not the same. It is different. Anything that is different, is easy to make fun of. Go on, make fun of it. It’s…
And he thought about building Crafting Making things Merging the useful with the useless To some For there are beings in this world Who care nothing for beauty There are beings in this world Who care nothing for art So he would build the functional And make it sing for the tone deaf For the colorless he’d make Things bloom in usefulness But then he thought Why work so hard For them? For the beings who pass it all by…
