There was a wholeness in my pocket. I felt it appear through the lines: A face long drawn by lengthy time. Was it my making to see this plight? But I saw, I felt the need. Am I whole like my pocket? Do I now gain the upper hand? Is the plight now different where he stands? It is the same this life; more or less by strife? October 14, 1991 Sometimes hallelujah is a lost yearning. Sometimes it holds fast and carries long. Seldom does it wail at rest’s deep quiet, where still and light are the echoes of those who reach toward passing motions of kind and childlike charm, long lost under blue places tipped by what is just: opened there to ground lying red and washed with love, so loud with thoughts of joy. And I am there, gone to youth and buried hard; the fallen ash and eastern wind kiss my song of life. Be my wind kissing rolling rivers and stones cast over grace, round with gleaming lust and limb: soft in the hands of love. October 22, 1991 It’s you, holding me gently, moving kind, round to the hinting of human sound. Joy and hate, swelling, are quiet for you with violet waves where furrows bound, red, on the backs of giant zealots hunting the wet rain. It’s you, blowing over the aspen in winter, under the bridge when leaves are my heroes, thinking the thoughts: clouds turn over and over; no longer cold from untilled dreams or grounded colors. It’s you, grasping warmed steel, and there I feel your presence as there one hundred times before, you touched, where familiar cold soon makes its lasting hold. March 25, 1992 Is it now with heavy heart I strain to see a life lived less in forethought, run through by the pale light of some imprudent past? The touch of life scarcely consoles my withered roots stretched so low in search of holds long cached. Yes, O learned WHY OF LIFE, was it there lies hid the tree turned old by round descended leaves? For how can it but be the most bitter of ironies that the seed once tossed has all in all been sound, complete? Whom now do I face once failed by you? Must I be my roots again and lie exposed to reach the ground and plant the seed? For by my trying I have failed and by my failure I succeed. August 20, 1992 What god therein resides beyond dirt skin and years of turn lost to human eyes? From birth to death our in-between still matters less than gain of thought; and yet awe lies still. The nymph of glen and glade runs lost in blinders bound by willing hands in search of self; and yet here I am. Let the happy muse sing again our hearts and rouse a god in each of us. August 30, 1992 My heart so often pains when in my face a longing reels to struggle and define the limits of our plausibility. What is it that confines the soul and locks our minds in endless maze? Why beats down the sun upon my hands when they lift not to want or need? Slipping garbs in excess lose the common touch of earth and sky. Upon what path do we now tread — as if its ground beneath does march on feet of chance to turn our will — and what familiar scenes do we along that way so rarely see? I throw my thoughts to wind and wave in hopes that steps upon some day will reach my ear and there in sight I find my shadows joined in light. They can be one and are; but in our busy flight those thoughts suppressed can scarcely lose the length of time wound round a world of wordy tongue, now lost to spell and sight. From briefest touch of life and pain we may at once share boundless gain and at sweet moments longing leave and feel the blue gulf’s depravity. August 21, 1993 I am quiet and sitting; the huge sounds of life in their hush push by, and I am quiet and sitting. February 14, 1995 When flowers reach their summer height and morning dew is burned from rays of light, so soft and searching corners deep; and quiet all around the trees stand to solid ground, while moving breezes touch the grass and ask those tender arms of carpet for a dance; and clouds build to triumphant sound, my spirit soars and in this perfect medley finds no other thought than you and our own union near sublime — and tomorrow to my warm surprise that day begins again. May 29, 1995 Matsuyama's Slopes. A Wedding Poem The winter months try best the soul's content, and yet surrounded by the white absorbing snow the pine tree grows on Matsuyama's slopes, and from within that same hard crusty glaze the plum's bright colors learn the smile of fortune, Jurojin's kind and laughing face; and cranes fly by in lasting bounded pairs. Is it prideful of them to flourish at this time? Don't they inspire dreams in wakeful minds! Let yours then rise and by example shine from this day on when both your lives combine to form the lasting nature of the pine, the deep rich hues of the plum in winter's hold, and the long flight of the white cranes in the sun's warm light. And may the amber glow of dusk's last touch find your eyes embraced and fixed on love's long night. June 16, 1995 For my father If eighteen buddha-heads roll nimbly in your hand and your thoughts conspire to happy ends, then dharma's weight no longer hides time in its basket. In between the cracks of sidewalk paths the breath of verdant shoots announce the rise of life; and in summer's heat beneath a tree's shade, a child lies in his mother's arms while all about a park's bright grounds her husband walks their dog. And I pass by, my hot feet suppress those verdant shoots, my glance consumes the rich sounds of happy stares, and time no longer stands to conceal me, lost in its long robes. So let your eighteen buddha-heads recall the first time you told your son you loved him on the telephone when he was far away and how those words burned his fragile ears with joy and your life in a single moment's sigh returned to boyish dreams and thoughts unwound. When eighteen buddha-heads roll nimbly in your hand, I am your first son. December 9, 1995 A Place There is a place I'd like to find, and I'm sure I knew where it was. You see it was lost some time ago when I confused sharing with submission. February 14, 1996 My father's birthday When leaves fall and dew soaks grass by the oak tree and the grip of the cold loosens in the warm air, seeds start to search for a way to descend between layers of worlds and gentle steps feel the earth and its moist touch as anxious eyes peer out of a wandering mind and into a world of happenings. So it is with spring; but by summer fruit grows tall on its tree and the ripest ones are left behind, high in the branches, unreachable. April 8, 1996 For John Chung In the swift circles of round mind soft hands and kind smiles embrace my wondering eyes and form in the graying background the whole world. April 16, 1996 Tamquam Lucretius With a congress of thought and the swift motion of eyes my mind changes and dreams swim Explanations of orbits and atoms no longer satisfy these prickly questions and ratio turns to species. May 4, 1996 For Yvonne and Marcel I really wasn't sure when I was young how old you were, that you were my mother's parents. I didn't understand why you loved me so much, inattentive, demanding, and loud as I was. And I couldn't see your gifts, your humor, your patience, your time; time spent giving to us all. But now I can see with your eyes, with your love and your understanding. And this world you've made together — that world I didn't comprehend — is forever all I want to know. September 24, 1996 A Picture As I look carelessly on at a photo by my desk I wonder what lives its inhabitants might lead; might lead, that is, if their lives were different beyond the frame. As my eyes draw closer, what would it mean that his knee gently touches hers? that her hair gently strokes his face in the wind? And what would they say to each other when they get home at night? what would they eat and who would cook, and who would do the dishes? Would it be difficult for their relationship to mend miles and families and friends? What havoc would it bring? But for that moment caught the pictures tells whatever story, whatever dream it will. April 29, 1997 Contradictions The proper study of mankind is man, and so I suppose it is; through history’s wake of the moment Odysseus I find biting his nails and holding his knees. Pechorin’s obsession is my own but this time it gropes for the unwanted knowable. Mother’s Day, 1997 Generous eyes of patient love and hands whose tender touch has cradled and soothed our wondering cries — these things tell of motherhood and the nurturing bind that makes me your child. August 16, 1997 Waltzing with Matilda Summer months unfold time in my mind with gentle hours and stretching moments of great unexpressed youth. We reach our shore of longing and feet bare and feet wet walk slowly through the waves as all once did, When newness smelled of life and loss was the great inventor; when mystery, time's ally, always hears innocent questions of truth and the long breeze in the hot sun opens around us. December 2, 1997 Masks for Innocence At Zabriske Point the contemplation began along the lines of ordinary thought but with some strange exceptions. The naked landscape was supposed to reveal a secret that lies hidden in the rolling mounds of dirt and the reason for the congregation of those who always come to find that same secret. After moments of sitting on and seeing through the contours of those bright protrusions, as if their bulk could engulf the whole lot of us there with our own secrets, two lovers descend on a path that itches through the sand. Their figures shrink but the clarity of their voices persists, and this makes their private jaunt less unreal. Their short pauses and kisses at first appeal to the primal gasps the wind makes through the rough cut of the evolution they’ve endured. But their over-concern for appearance, their purposefulness of fashion, grate against an otherwise perfect austerity of place. And so sitting reveals nothing that wasn’t already there. And whether we go forward with our pasts dangling around us, or simply move around in the present, there’s nothing there but the point at which we see all we’ve been and all we’ll ever be. January 1, 1998 Thick Beauty looks forward with eyes that tell me everything, With a natural feeling of love that comes from what I see as an ancient need to give and feel that giving received. And I smile as Thick Beauty moves in all directions around me So that my movement and my thoughts merge inevitably toward keeping a place that one day becomes a home for my comfort in Thick Beauty. January 19, 1998 Intransigence In sadness motion matters but sitting here in my distance from you all I can do is remember — and mostly the little things. The things that make and define our life. And that’s what makes me most sad; though sadness isn’t quite the word. It’s fear I think. That’s really what it is. For sadness is emotion that comes when something’s lost and gone forever and so for closure healing will inevitably occur. No, it is fear not sadness that I feel. Fear of losing what hasn’t happened but might with all my expectation. And this, I know, is worse than death. January 29, 1998 Coming back was hardly the nostos of Odysseus — no obvious inimici but an abundance of compromise for things past and things present. The recognition of childhood types and molds of various kinds entrusted themselves to indifferent concern. So quietude and space still linger saying nothing of a patria or urbs — and life is hence stuck between a genealogy of time and people. Movement backward and forward compels only the void in which my time past and time present find only the barbs and hooks of things uncut and uncuttable — while clinamen stares me in the face. If ananke’s yoke must fit my shoulders, this soil, this substance of my past must see the moenia mundi and decide. March 24, 1998 How can I listen to these words when the long marks and short sounds come everywhere inside the long stretch of an endless box of verbal inclinations? Yes, I’m sure you’re right that much can be accomplished by many long hours of thought and much practice from my pen. I want to breathe the sounds as much as I want to breathe this little life I live. April 19, 1998 A stupid man relies on other people’s dreams; he walks during the day with unabashed purpose but at night weeps for the tall grass and searching fields of sunshine that bring back youth and original longing. Looking for that soft moment of life that finally unfolds the pain, he is mistaken. What a fool to think that compromise creates. Yet, something is always learned. (It’s obvious now that a secondhand loneliness is lonelier than night and the thickness of life that comes from bad things happening to every person is life itself.) So anger boils and resentment grows, at last — when there can be no more decisions — to fashion a soul and form a hurt that belongs and remains where it should in finality, reason, and that long awaited light. April 30, 1998 There are certain anomalies in the landscape: things both static and moving, that call out. May 15, 1998 For this child who knew more for never knowing these words for this child we create a space from which we shall know you for this, our child, we look out from the earth to the sky and the clouds and flooded by your mingling light we are three moving inward together. ADDENDA Friday, June 14, 1996 Streams of memoryflood my veinsand bring sweet solace once again;time alone finally matches the mind's tangled web.