Saturday, August 11, 2018

watch over us as we sleep

on wharf float

woman in chair reads

man in red life jacket fishes

further down around bend we chant

nunc dimittis looking out at ghost ships

claire of assisi

what is it attracts

woman to poor man

intent/contént on every brother/sister

Friday, August 10, 2018

man in desert steps on mine

blues guitarist plays into high tide

hulls sway

night nearly gone mid and then

Thursday, August 09, 2018

no towel, no excuse

morning rain

seventy three years falling

nagasaki sopping

Wednesday, August 08, 2018

singing with benjamin britten

no birth, no death,

birthday deathday

thanks mom, thanks dad —

37 out of maine

37 inside

cedar chips underfoot

laughing with will rogers

Tuesday, August 07, 2018

let it go

this midnight

nothing comes to be

only midnight itself

god is no fate

give me time

oh, no

damn the luck

squeaky chair

chlorophyll before eight

rising sun flexing muscle

while on porch, 

contemplating coffee, 

watch ascending trees

and mountain 

doesn’t move as

nothing moves

Monday, August 06, 2018

transfiguration

see me

see through me

see what is to be

unaccountably erased

I will not love you

not now that you do not love me

now that love belongs only to itself;

instead, i will watch sunlight

on pine floor

chair shadow inching to slide

with hanging rope by porch door

near road where silver car stops

voice saying “well, i don’t have

a lot of money but i have a lot

of love,” then drives up hill.

I am given this fragment sounding

monday morning as nuclear bomb

explodes over hiroshima — as if

history has no time any longer, just

fact, the fact of it remaining constant

occurring over and over, the horror

sitting in empty rocking chairs

cricket pitch, bird voice, fly buzz

engines and tires between silences.

I cannot tell where anything begins

or ends anymore, the erroneous

certainties of younger thoughts

unaccountably erased by summer

green and flower fragrance, mountain

moisture, unfluttering branches leaning

with zendo stillness in observance of

invisible sangha, cousin to Grover’s

Corner, patiently observing, gently

inquiring who is it comes up hill?

Those who sit in silent stillness

have no time. It is merely place

that surrounds each quiet breath,

where others pray as we enter

and, when we remember, we pray

as eyes no longer need to see outside

outside outside faded and abandoned

going within, going within, gone

beyond what any body knows,

alone and one, that, that, I am

as God is alone, as God is one

and so it is I am, we are, dangling

rope in summer ante meridiem,

carvings of Francis and Siddhartha

prayer flags and leaning flowers

it is begun, it is finished, it is begun

Hiroshima, mon dieu

Soon the bomb will fall.

We have arrived here to stand under radioactive fallout.

We are wonderful ash.

The Madwoman of Chaillot will now perform.

Come, the show begins.

Sunday, August 05, 2018

instantia

The 96 year old man in wheel chair said he was a little pessimistic. 

I remembered Sir Kenneth Clark’s words at end of Civilization, “One may be optimistic, but one can’t exactly be joyful at the prospect before us.” 

Later, looking out at rain and courtyard garden, he said, “How beautiful!”