Category: Poetry

Part One

There is a rain
that falls through air
and lights it
with the glow of water.

It comes everywhere
at some time,
Even in the deserts
Where once
there were oceans
And in the oceans
where once
were green forests.

There is no time.
We know this now.
There is no separation of
molecules one
from another.
There is only some chance
that one of the smallest particles
is present now
In any given notch
in the myriad
of universes.

We know that when we look out
From a window
That it is not a window
outside us
Nor is the outside
not the inside.
We know this.

Feel it!
Practice the feel of it
With every breath you remember
Until the music of it
Vibrates everywhere
All at once.

Part Two

The eggman in the market
who observes his hens
Says they’re now running inside
And outside of their chicken house
With all the changing weather,

With the warm, then the cold
Then the wind, then the rain.

They do not like the rain
On their feathers.
The governments of the world,
he says, are changing
Like the chickens running
in and out
With all this variation
In the weather.

“Governments are driven by the weather
Like the hens”
he says,
In his accented French
of the Occitane.

1. Rain, I want to speak with you

as I watch you fall, 

now drops 

now clouds of  water 

streaming, teaming down.

 

I want to tell you what I know

And as all our cells 

can show.

Your liquid 

Is the essence 

of us all.

 

The sea is filled with you.

Each squall, each stormy night

Of silver falling, falling 

shards of light

Is there within each drop, each puddle

Each muddy hole 

on leafy forest floor

Each flooding river

Crushing all 

within its flowing flight.

 

I want to say to you 

that I have plunged

within your clearest depths

In seas that churn

And bays wherein

the deep of you 

Lies quiet and serene.

 

I have smelled your salt 

With strange desire

And sensed the bodies of your fish

As if my flesh were fins.

I watch you with contentment or

with that anxious anticipation 

of your accumulating threat

From inside rooms

Kept warm with some strange 

element of fire

 

I want to say to you

that your atoms 

know not good nor bad.

No thoughts of hatred nor of  joy

pass through any drop

Yet, your collective force  

Can purify or destroy

Engender peace or strife.

 

Each living cell

Contains the what of you

Not charged with any job

but to be the medium 

for the vibrancy of life.

 

Can you purify our lies?

Can you satisfy our cries 

of thirst for common decency

For knowledge of our ties?

 

I want to talk to you 

of this strange, stark 

state of  wonder 

that you are me 

and I am you

And somehow we are flowing 

Now down,  then under

Through all the streets 

and all the streams

And all your states of being

Back then  to the sea.

Suddenly, some balance somewhere
Shifted.
The stilling air of afternoon
has filled with swarms of gnats
And the swifts, gone for so long
Diving now and climbing
swooping in their zigzag flight
Appeared as from a secret niche
Hidden in some silent fold
In time and space
Called by a faint note, unheard
To eat their fill and then return


How quickly the balance scale can tip
And the unexpected be what is.
Soon neither swarming gnats nor swooping birds
Are seen
And the empty air of afternoon
Has changed its light
To suit the movement
Of the clouds
And the rhythm of the stream.

As I clean up from our dinner

here in a small village in France

Walter tells me

There are eight people 

watching North Cape, Norway’s webcam

at this moment.

And he is one. 

 

I go to see what it’s like 

In the northernmost fishing village in the world

Where the dark nights of September have come

and the streetlights on the edge of the harbor

Make undulating rivers of gold in the water.

 

I am captivated

And It is as quiet as an ancient fishing village would be

After the sun goes down.

There are no lights on in the houses

Everyone in them has gone to sleep.

 

But a big white van pulls out and drives down the road

out of the picture

Its lights for a moment

Reflected in a window.

And then again 

Quiet.

 

I want to see the faces of the

other people 

watching this peace with me.

First seven and

then four more who have joined us.

 

I want to see their eyes, watching calmly

while I feel our heartbeats slowing

and hear our breath going in and out

In bodies that all have lungs

And brains, and hearts to beat.

 

We would not talk,

Even if we could

We would just nod to each other

In kind recognition

Of what it is that drew us here 

And captured us.

 

The love that peace brings

would be carried by the waves of light

Weightless

Like the golden rivers on the water

of a dark harbor.

 

How is it we got to talking,
As we sat out the light
Of a summer evening,
About fireflies?
How they danced in the air
Of our childhood
Making little holes of light
All around in our soul
That now dance as we watch them
In the vast darkness of our minds
Together in the growing dusk
Of the garden?

And that they’re different from
The glowworms of France
Whose little fires sit in ditches
And, in such stillness, signal mates.
No children run
and scoop these into jars
to make those lanterns that will shine
and glitter in the darkness
Of the sleep-night by their beds

Or do they,
The children in France?

Blades of grass

bow under the weight

Of so many drops of rain.

The pores of all plants are open

Drinking those molecules made

In the dust of some long-gone stars 

billions of years ago. 

 

Those blades of grass do what they do

In the presence of sun and of wind

Anticipation of the moment to come

Is built in each vibrating cell

No choice to turn this way or that

No planning of any kind

Except that which was arranged by the atoms

Contained in the seed 

From which their whole being has sprung.

 

Rest now. Unfold all your senses

The sun, the wind and the rain

know no tenses

They listen to no weather report

Plants will live or they’ll die

At the moment the sky 

Gives them water or heat 

That’s just right 

or is suddenly 

 too much to bear.

 

Do not wait 

With each breath

To know what comes next

Breathe the air

Breathe the air

Breathe the air.

 

Long form lying

legs stretched

Waking from 

or waking into

Darkness from light 

Or into light from dark

Swinging up ( or is it down) gently

Swinging back.

 

Pulling threads of each place

Into one another

Weaving 

Thoughts and dreams

Catching hold of thread ends 

from where I’ve been 

Into what is seeming now

Until some last part 

of that long story

Becomes part of what 

I know 

And soon 

will carry onward

 

I see my son 

At seven, swimming 

Towards me

In a deep and winding  river 

With a dark-skinned friend.

Swimming well, returning 

from a first day 

At some new children’s camp 

To come back to our summer group

In a house on some small lake.

 

Standing on the forest floor,

Brown leaves beneath my feet

I see now he is trying

to be self-contained 

As he sees me on the shore.

He calls to me “The camp is fine!”

As he clambers up the bank;

While  I  bend

to wrap him in a towel 

brought to keep him warm

his friend climbs out with frowning face

to join us, blurting

“But they’re not nice at all!”

With those words, my son’s brown eyes

begin to shine

Unshed tears becoming

moons of light

As his heart swings wide 

And he tells me of the disappointments

and the wounds

they have suffered

All day long.

 

He shivers and I reach down 

In the gesture of a mother

Lifting up her son

And he puts his arms around my neck

As I pull him to my chest.

He wraps his  thin strong legs around my waist

And I walk with him in warm embrace

His head against my own 

His friend holding the fingers of my hand

As he walks close against my side

And my son gently cries and tries his best

Not to be too harsh

With what has caused such pain.

 

Filled  with love and sorrow 

I walk along 

Until we both dissolve 

In mid complaint

And I am left with

All this love and this regret 

To weave 

As gleaming threads 

Into what we call

The day.