so here I am in lifeliving
while on around me the world spins
no one wins
no one can
even poetry is full of blankness-answers
do not come
would money make it all okay
perhaps
i’d have things
wouldn’t have to think about ten dollars as food
maybe buy a book
but then
who would my friends be
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eagerly it grasps at houses
and makes the trees speak in longing whispers
catlike it stalks the night
relentlessly
it is there I meet you in
this field of dreams. Breezes blow
gently rustling trees surrounding the
grassy expanse between our lives.
there is a beach across heaven where once we met and
it was there I bridged this great divide
crossing the meadow between lives
reaching across life to life
hand to hand
fingers briefly brushing
for a moment
slouching towards eternity
silence a voice singing
life is a waiting room the dock before
embarking time
i lie in my truck bed
watching the stars in the endless expanse of the night sky
hearing songs and snippets of memory
forever whispering dearheart
while satellite stars track tiny across the black bright sky
there are only spaces northern lights dance across
we live
then traverse
forever is simply dancing the meadow
between lives
you never get over it—
they don’t tell you that.
Time heals all wounds. No.
It’s always there, the hole left inside the sense
of unfairness
the invisible bridge that separates the living
from the dead.
you are everywhere
everywhere i see you and hear you
and i should not feel sad because
you are there
rain falls often despite this
truth
i collect them,like hummel figures:
temptation calls subtly like shadows
she moves wraithlike through the fair
like foxes in the snow
rain pattered like fingers drumming roofs
they flit across my brain at odd moments when i am meant to be focused on other things, so i will trap them here
and now, she resolved to be like other people working when it was time to work, being counted as a pleasant person, never complaining, not allowing others to irritate her rubbing catlike the wrong way
but of course, there is always time at night to think entirely too much.
Forever is defined by endless blue water
rendered brown by the spring rains.
her voice, low, harmonious
calls to me
and I have heard her in the night’s shapeless dreams she
has cut me in two
my soul wanders aimlessly in her icewater mansions
my body wandering over grassy prairie seas
I hesitate–
seeking wholeness
Drawn to her I go.
in the midst of life’s spiraling change only
this, this endless expanse has remained changeless
as far as the eye can see water joins seamlessly with
blue sky a marriage of opposites, their child the rain
this is not a lake, no
it is the ocean, glacial ocean shimmering in sunlight it has moods
of peace and of war
first a mirror then lightning
strikes
she roils and boils in anger, November winds waves lashing
catching ore boats unawares
reaching to claim what
is not of her
she screams she is not to be tamed
she is a spirit that haunts
and is haunted for she has had countless millenia to contemplate
the edges of eternity
humanity comes and goes in evanescent silence
only she remains
two cities rise along the shore
she is captivating
allowing us near
reflecting the glow of
the aurora borealis dancing across the sky
we sail on shimmering lights and dance across the universe
she is Superior, Gitchee Gumee, shining big sea water
unclaiming
unclaimed
They were all white, passing through their stages
In sheets and ladders, rivulets and falls,
White—a dream of color or an aftermath
Of color stripped to gauze and gossamer,
A white electric squall in half the sky,
Epiphany for the blind, and veils of tears.
Magdalene’s tears. The tears that Jesus wept.
What draws them forth? Mortality and laughter,
The sad and funny fact that you will die
And that you’ve made your children, they will die.
Do they hold that against you? My parents made me.
They went ahead and made me, child of love,
Child of a loving union, which would end,
But which I grew up thinking would not end.
The northern lights remind me of their love,
The drama of my growing up was love
As they performed it, everyone noticing,
The scintillating cosmic imagery
Of two who seemed to be made for each other,
As light is made for sheets of summer darkness,
As darkness in high summer accepts light.
Why did I ever think that they were gods?
But I didn’t. I thought that they were people,
And people love each other for a lifetime—
Gods are as fickle as the northern lights.
Don’t ever think of human beings you love
And need as like those shifting shimmerings,
No matter how liquescent memorable enduring
Against the immortal darkness of the sky.
The northern lights will break a heart and heal it
In the same motion, raveling and unraveling.
They are the background music of creation,
The song God sang while sinking into rest,
The song descended into, words and music,
Oblivious and yet ready to break hearts,
Heartbreaking and yet in the end oblivious.
So I have thought about a years-ago night,
The northern lights above a northern mountain,
And how the tears came down and why, forgetting
That there is nothing oblivion won’t forgive.
–from Rattle #25, Summer 2005
magic reigns, in sunset
strange now, i see myself in a dark mirror
age prevailing and stillness
an opaque pond.
Home is to the east
on shining big sea water
and those I love live in memory
this life, this life foreign,
as if my going on is somehow in error,
as if I should be with those left behind.
great dark sadness lies behind and ahead
above and beneath
love no more a mystery, only there, among other things
myself outside it all.
I see myself always beside the water
running headlong into the waves
shining, sparkling water blue blue
as the sky above,
sheer joy dancing in the waves
my self is there
not here, or here
my heart gone long ago
only waiting to be reclaimed
