Cinerum

“Now ravel up the roots of workman oak trees” Merton

Consider the root,
Instead of the branch:
Left to wither?

Each symbolic sacrifice
Traces a shadow circumference:
Ignoring the growth-ring?

If you were to see me,
Ash-carrier, brow-beat,
What story would construct itself?

As it is, there is only forgetfulness,
& a choice to struggle through:
a doubter hanging on to skeptical confidence.

All this while:
The root still clutches & the branch is yet to break,
Where come all these ashes?

Advent 1

Dumb as Oaks

It is wind that speaks,
not the branch, the leaves
now gone, silent unless
trampled. Cry out.

When the branch breaks
it is the ice that sounds
the crack. Its tiny fingers
cannot help but hold or fall.

Melt will be months coming,
a long hibernation, unslept,
beard grown to length,
urge quieted down to resolve.

What is it we wait for,
dumb as oaks, gone as the grass
beneath swayed hills of snowdrift?
Certainly, there is something in that light.

The slant the birds know means:
nearly there, just wait for the
winds to shift, the familiar call
of that place is home too:

That branch that won't break.

Empty Handed

The pleasure of
people standing
empty handed:

voices carrying
between bodies
or silence curling,

smoky breath, exhaling
into a thousand
possible utterances.

Exiting a building,
near sundown:
This world glows.

Fidelity

Secondly, I am not afraid because I love you,
But because I love you, I am afraid: what comes
Upon us all, sometime comes to one of us. It
Would not be fair to want it either way, the
Suffering internal, held up as sacrifice, or
External, to serve as best I could while you
Bear the burden for us both. An act of infidelity
Either way. Too much to ask for all to be well?
But when it strikes, it may not conquer, then:
Let it be me. Some part of me longs to suffer.
Only a fool admits this, in a poem or otherwise.
Worse still, with strength hardly tested beyond
Ache or strain. Then again, first things first,
How else can we know the limits of love than to
Make the promise that the body could never keep?

Letter 1, October 17th

Particularly when

turning the corner

around the pond,

dried by half—

even now—from

summer drought,

I am compelled

to expect to see

you :  magically

reflected in the

darkest shadow

of wing in water.

Sometimes a dream

sneaks through a

morning haze,

sun a quarter hour

high in the rounded

distance, like a

foggy road slow

to burn, your

face appears,

as saintly as

the tall blue bird

keeping warm

in the golden

slice of new light

in preparation

for a long flight.

Let me beg you:

don’t stay gone

too long this year.

Contemplation

Brother Leopold appeared to be stuck.

"Get the Prior."

"Get Fr. Thomas."

He just smiled. Looking at nothing. As if a set of scales covered his eyes. It was a strange look, but the smile was stranger.

When he came to, still smiling, he said: "We've been wrong all along."

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I'm practicing. Foundling Review is holding a 50 word story contest this summer. Details: http://www.foundlingreview.com/PachaasContest2.html

Proof

”[...] Everything in me
Wanted to bow down, to offer up,
To go barefoot, foetal and penitential,

And pray at the water's edge.”
[Seamus Heaney, ”Triptych” III: At the Water's Edge]


It wasn't the picture I was after,
the picture was proof.
The truth is: proximity was all
I desired.

That somehow closeness could prove
friendship, connection,community
led me to the side of the road,
against the barbed fence,
to the edge of the water.

Sometimes seeing is all prayer is.
Or is it: prayer is what seeing is?

Of the three prayers:
praise, forgive, & need,
I prefer the blue heron,
two legs in the water,
bill stabbing southward,
crown raised or fallen.

The moment wings stretch
into lazy flight is
prayer answered
& prayer denied.

There is no sense in waving
as you disappear.
But I have this picture,
& this poem as proof
against the slow current
of doubt.

The Heart Does Not Turn to a Stone

“I have always wondered about the leftover 

energy, water rushing down a hill

long after the rains have stopped”

[Adrienne Rich (1929-2012), “For the Dead” 1972]

what we love persists,
a body once known remains,

hangs about,

                      like a veil of prophecy:

an open window moves the spirit

& all the bodies dance, voices sing

the sounds accumulate,

how moss  gathers,  

memory assimilates into a life.

if energy is conserved,

what happens to our vital potential

when the kinetic slumps, slows, & stops?

who’s to say that to die is to conform to friction,

might momentum simply be transferred?

(let us remain silent about ghosts.)

let the rain roll & the dark be broken

by the flash that reminds us:

night is not the end of blue,

only a temporary failure of vision.

what we love remains,

though bodies are removed

(as the rain steals the soil)

love softens all hearts

& nothing is taken

that is etched into cortex,

that settles like moss

on  the northernmost face

of a life well shared.

Two Poems

Allusion, Illusion, Delusion

“The joke, which we seldom see, is on us;

For only true hearts know how little it matters

What the secret is they keep…”

   [ Auden, “Secrets”]

There sits, now, a thing on my heart,

a secret not so much protected as denied:

that there’s a loneliness I crave, I dread.

Not that I have wasted my life, the part

though never the whole, but pretended

too much to ever be happy in public, alone.

This trick never works:

where you’re convinced

that walls papered with

rejection do not repeat

the words: thankfailure

you failureopportunity

failurefailfailureagain.

It was always dying.

Not in the way we all are:

of the cancer silently growing or a heart that breaks

or an accident no prophet would have predicted,

but because it was built on (at best) wishful thinking

& for the worst on willful pretense.

    So it goes.

Three Lives

“A handsome child is a gift from God,

And a friend is a vein in the back of the hand,

And a wound is an inheritance from the wind.”

[Robert Bly, “Living at the End of Time”]

Two lives are livable,

the third destroys.

What home allows,

though crowded,

small, & full of ghosts,

is a degree of self

that cherishes

truthfulness.

The constant gift

of anticipation,

a child provides

a lesson in honesty:

constant

growth is not

sustainable

but its opposite

is anathema

to god & to man.

**

What a friend adds is beyond measurement,

but in absence, constricts, like hand to fist.

Not in anger clenching, but so much riding on

compliment, supplement, affirmation & faith

there’s bound to be a point a bubble bursts.

Pride, insecurity, delusion & doubt:

the sacred secrets shared in kind:

But illusion crumbles so sure as grandeur grows,

aloofness follows & then:   renewal, respite, & reprieve.

***

Standing alone in a loud corner,

the awkward happiness of others

smothers any hopefulness

of the possibilities of the third life.

Two lives are livable:

there’s here & there’s there.

The looming life,

lived somewhere between

slowly destroys itself,

its false promises of acceptance,

the suggestions of fame

disintegrate (without ghost).

Sometimes it’s clear:

it’s just time to go back home.

The first life thrives through the wound.

Fragment 22

Sappho, Fragment 22, from
If Not, Winter (Anne Carson)

“The spirit moves, but not always upward…”
[Theodore Roethke, “Meditations of an Old Woman”]

a.

waking this morning, an arm would not work

sleep & weight had robbed it of its force

it only took minutes to return at the elbow, then the wrist

a look in the mirror showed:

sleep left heavy lines across my face

if not today, what is winter?

temperature falling through the afternoon,

wind nearly silent through thick glass,

no pain afflicts the body

but much is seen, in its waves

because I prayed for clarity

this word: patience

I want to feel you near me

b.

there is only so much one can stand: work

satisfies until it doesn’t.

which face will show this morning:

the one that is impatient? enthusiastic?

exasperated? content? if not winter, when

will the prizes arrive? certainly not spring.

No pain without desire.

Is this because I prayed for accolades?

I should have never heard this word: ποιϝέω.

I want to be silent.

c.

being here with you is never work

(always home)

I never fail to see us both in each face

(the three boys who won’t stay still)

we will stay close, if not, winter,

no pain can preserve us from time

because I prayed that they would grow,

this word: patience &

I want, I want, I want

them to slow down

d.

work stacks & family holds

this face knows all four seasons

(if the spirit moves)

what is premature spring if not winter?

there is no pain if no loss,

all is temporary anyway:

(if the spirit moves)

because I prayed for happiness

this word: expectation

I want & must endure the spin

of gain & loss & loss & gain

(if the spirit moves)