Songbird

What is the measure of mortality

dangling on the end of a string

that hangs in the wind

against the weight of the sky’s

great nothing?

Is it listening for the sound of a songbird

echoing

in the dark and ever so faint?

Like a streak of light,

elusive, stranded

a lock of hair

standing out to show its age

a white bird buoyant

against the expanse of mountains

no longer caged by time.

You can imagine

spirits assembled around

the sunset statues of capital,

wings illuminated,

the waning light

unfurled like a cloth

coiling through banyans,

canopied in song

rooted, acoustic

this world a vibration

descending below

the horizon

like the moon and its ritual glow

I mistook for windows

when obscured by buildings.

I went to open the curtains

of my eyes

to let the sky in

to let a songbird fly out

before vanishing into thin air.

Everything fades

like a dream into the consciously aware,

these luminaries that pass before us,

the moon, the waiting clouds

what can be measured

by the light that is left behind?

This Moon Was a Mirror

1.

I was seeing it through

an enlarged image of my eye.

Magnified

in an optometrist’s portal,

hanging

in the night sky

like a red lantern,

a flowering blood moon

beginning to eclipse.

This thread of lava

upon the edges of sleep,

reveals a mirror,

a thin measure of light

as from a dying star

would accentuate the spheres

on 3AM screens to be

drawn out of cloud cover,

culled from the crude understanding

of dreams, the coincidence

of two orbs,

differing only in scale,

delicately passing

in the dark that reveals

both to each other in time.

2.

Truth was a moon

that waxes and wanes,

receding like the light of certain

smoke obscured beacons,

incoherent

at times skewed like headlights

beaming into forests.

A blinding or illuminating

belief,

at times hardened, until rigid

as a charred landscape

where words offer no traction

in the forgotten fields of history.

Where bonfires

burn all evidence,

blackening the edges

of the past

and what is known.

Nothing is left visible,

no bridge over the swollen flow,

only rock fall and spinning narratives,

headline fear ad infinitum.

Everything appears in transition,

reason is the first to be cast

into volcanic shafts,

covered over by distress

beneath simmering pools

and with each layer

is pushed further under.

3.

Moons above

the dark inlets of sleep,

where beaks seize the dreams

beneath surfaces.

The sunken pebbles,

the unseen watercolors

of an embedded mystery.

Shades in the crane’s river,

given by the baby’s mother,

will float alone

in bathwater.

Serenely seeking the unknown

in a sea with no compass.

Buoyant, weightless,

void of machinery.

Words offer only gravity,

limbs, humanity

as poems branch out in the distance

like a rain tree of bird choruses.

The refrain was just another name for change,

sound passing invisible borders

like footprints on empty beaches.

Estranged swallows

will breach the deep

where the moon disappears

like a blinking eye

on the edge of the horizon

and the watchful sky.





One Word Left in the Fog

Standing by the window,

her face pressed into

the primitive shapes that

the night tattooed in frost.

Her breath against the glass obscures the field,

like the emptiness before the first thought revealed

with a finger, one solitary word left in the fog,

Alone.

It is a labor to remember

the last letter

left in an empty box.

The faceless stranger,

her only visitor,

adds to the stack of morning papers

strewn in the hallway, a kind of intermediary

to the threshold she would no longer go beyond.

With a sigh she picks one up.

“This world is no longer mine but I’ll go along.”

The illusion becomes entertainment.

The passage of time, amplified at the end of life.

Like the ancient tree that loosens its leaves,

shaking free of the debris that years have left behind.

Independent? For nothing grew in your shadow.

A defining tenet, now stretched with solitude

and the absence of birds who have yet to return.

There’s an eerie quiet to the canopy these days,

like the aftermath of a storm.

The port is empty, all the boats are pulled in.

There’s barely a soul to witness

the moon stranded in pools of rainwater,

filling empty flower pots.

She could almost smell the wet soil

beneath the disheveled rosebush.

There’s a pale fingernail of light

that clutches the edges of dark liquid.

Seeking a glimmer at the bottom of the glass,

she begins to lose her grip the deeper she goes in.

Dark thoughts swallow down,

dim light on lips,  dawn’s another sip.

The will, like a lifeline,

when you’re drowning one day at a time.

Another slip into the refuge of dreams,

classical music, stained windows and high ceilings.

The angels and their voices singing Ave Maria

by morning have become the chortle of crows,

their mocking accompanies

the graveyard fingers of dead trees

scraping at the screens in the wind.

 

When movement is like a broken machine,

thoughts become mechanical

in the pill swallowing routine bouts of hypochondria.

Looking in the mirror, has her hair grown whiter?

No longer

Appointments,

she cannot go anywhere.

Is Shangri La the solace of distraction?

The statuary silence of friends in picture albums?

The light of a visage upon opening each page

becomes a surrogate visit

within the yellowing of age.

Where mouths do not speak nor expressions change.

Without new memories,

these effigies will pass

one by one

into the darkest corners of the basement,

through a door seldom used and slightly ajar.

She will not go down there anymore

for fear of falling in the dark,

what does she have left to hold onto?

She remains rooted to the kitchen table,

nodding off again.

Her face pressed up close to the empty glass.

Upon waking, she’ll view the room through this prism.

Everything still spinning, the ceiling circular,

closing in to the claustrophobic sensation of being trapped.

She sees her reflection, light is refracted but nothing is raised.

She can only bury her face

and stare plainly at her own mortality.

Through this glass darkly,

full of spirit but no less lonely,

the days lose their bearings in the fog

the ticking wall clock,

the liquid corrosion of

a dripping faucet

amplify the sensation

of time slipping away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Motion Beneath Confinement

The Potential of Travel:

The potential of travel when confined to islands becomes mental.

The strength of creativity, equilateral

to the flight of frigate birds

and the horizon that completes the triangle.

The shadow casts a wide net knowing not where it will land,

somewhere equatorial,  over vast tracts of luminous sand.

Sometimes it’s necessary to scan an entire ocean

before we can temper the distortion.

Can the mind’s eye touch the spirit?

Will the interplay of a thousand images get near it?

There comes a surge of words but you barely hear it

in the motion of a distant storm

and the supple blackness that gives form to the correspondence.

 

The Drifting Leaves no Footprints:

Lodged like a shell in this primitive expanse

your dreams of drifting leave no footprints.

You await the tide,  the next great swell

to bring you back out again.

Through the hypnotic reverie of the surf

the sound of whitewash dissolves

into ancient squares.

Surreal and composed

it proceeds over stone

breathing its soundtrack into the motion

of when it comes and it goes.

It rises and recedes

beneath the toes of a statue,

this patron saint of lonely virtue,

companion to the emptiness that time would accrue

over centuries of our movements and the residual echoes

are the only things left that pass through.

 

Fragments of the Imagination:

Fragments of the imagination gathered like debris,

it’s a war for control within the limits of any city.

In the contents of journals

In the semblance of journeys,

fragments of experience are closely cropped,

before spilling to your feet like errant teardrops,

turning the well worn passages into cascading streams

and through these gleaming mirrors all will be revealed.

 

Outside of Awareness:

On the outskirts of the glass city,

far from the sheltered harbor,

near to the pathways outside of awareness

there is a mystical sequence of moments

at the crossroads of consequence,

a series of propositions to remind us

that we’re merely riders on the wind,

passengers on the bridge

spanning the moment

between the past and the future,

suspended, nebulous as a rumor

afloat in the ether,

the faintest of bells

ringing out from towers and hills

and the freedom that follows

the silhouette of sweeping swallows.

 

 

The Back Valley Exhales:

You’ll descend like a strand of rain

loosened from a cloud,

a radiant bird

the illuminated shroud

of a monk at work with the sacred word

describing the light before it’s dispersed.

The knoll is aglow in resplendent intervals of flame

from out of the shade of the back valley

it is framed by the ridges, to hold in the essential energy.

Until exhaling with the strongest of wind,

it is a phoenix conjured again.

There’s an attempt to harness it,

to give names to the shrill songs

but wayward is my own breath,

destined to unravel before long.

Looking back on your travel like a colorful thread

lifted like wildflowers from the riverbed

unencumbered from moors

the moments of ascent

reaching towards the unbroken sky

when there is no breath to give

the memories die.

 

The Motion Beneath Confinement:

There’s a highway that follows the coast

and around every bend

recollections call out like restless ghosts.

A temporary retreat from quarantine

the city is shuttered, encased in concrete.

Here you evaporate instantly

into mist and sea salt,

leaving stains we’re urgently altered

by the whims of the water.

Waves breaking against the foundations,

no windows remain.

All the best laid plans,

wind blown and sacrificed to the rain,

to all the old gods in nature.

We’ll advance, hand in hand with the unknown.

All structure going up like matchsticks,

like retirement homes in the lava zone.

Against the hardened darkness

there are streaks of light,

in contrast we find the alignment.

So we lose ourselves for a time

peeling back layers of confinement,

seeking motion for guidance

to see through the blindness

and the sickness that knows no limits.

 

 

Where Innocence Intersects

Memory,

the planted seeds of future work.

Those moments of mystery and violence

seared into childhood innocence.

In the rows of cross country cornfields

intersecting on the empty plains of thought.

You’re the point of entry

for these stalks on all sides,

until growing overhead,

you were not able to process it yet.

When what housed creativity

was merely a foundation,

fear is the forgotten masonry

that builds fascination.

Mystery,

those luminous garments

you’ll salvage from dark closets

to give form to again.

At Dungeon rock you keep digging,

finding only madness and subterranean water,

not realizing where the gold resides,

on the tips of the trees that line Cornel path.

 

Violence always had it’s place on the knife’s edge of time.

In old Kung Fu films and in the technicolored gaze

of Medusa’s severed head,

you were transfixed to the red

that emblazoned the cars of elevated trains.

From the Bronx to Coney Island

your imagination placed supreme significance

in the division of neighborhoods into gang turf,

written dimensions on a prized and ripped map.

By middle school a fear and fascination with death

found you staring out the windows

at long black hearses

ushering in St. Pius funerals.

There was no longer the safety of naivete,

friends lost parents, people got cancer,

a heart attack took Nonna

and the small panic you’ll always remember,

phone calls that announce a stranger

penetrating that tiny world.

All these recollections

sticking like mud at low tide.

Osgood eyes wet, keen on distant birds,

deciphered as spirit in the wavering trees

and in the dreamscape of the sky.

The ocean always returns to childhood

in the scent of salt marsh,

it marches back in time

to the music tangled in the cellar wires,

memories in the decay of seaweed at Derby Wharf

where all the layers overlap and you can read

the barnacled marks when it recedes.

Out from under the shadow’s thumbprint,

you’re the exposed rock of Chocorua awaiting a storm,

you’re Waterman seeking a nook on Lafayette Ridge,

Brailsford on a weighted line in Cormorant shade,

Cochran still unsolved in the fog of Swampscott.

What breaks the silence?

What moves the instrument and goes beyond science ?

Was it violence creeping in the telepathic underground?

Tripping the wires to access

the haunted tape loop of the mind?

The sudden screetch of trolley cars

collides with Garbarek’s sublime choir,

as if the bloodied petals off of Pulcherrima’s rose

were left scattered on the tracks.

You were there at the intersection

watching the passing of the rails,

standing over these remains

to note the juxtaposition

that holds unspoken significance

to what you have yet to transform into words.

 

 

 

 

Aloof Muse

They’ll fall on her tracks
with a trailing motion,
a multitude of mice
with a towering devotion
following her invitation
a text, the perfect prescription
to bandage the need for attention.
What did you expect from addiction?
What did you reflect in this room full of mirrors?
Fractured clones
lost in the fog of her gaze,
that vacuous place
of depthless perception.
The game she plays is staged
her costumes change
and yet there is this appeal
to empty form and pretense
which reveal her brilliance
to be the absence of light.
Your endless spins
on this black circle
has yielded to a willingness
to be another needy lapdog
anxious for her entrance
gazing into that darkness
with subway expectancy
waiting underground
for this aloof and impersonal vessel
to enter your unsteady station
and lead you away from yourself.

Female Figure by Cathy Connor

The Tree at Muckross Abbey

It is true that those who find it

become a part of it forever.

From the very first,

its legacy,

Daniel McCarthy Mor

sets out east from Derrynane,

inspired by a dream,

wandering through the wild,

followed by ravens

and his own thoughts

crawling like cloud shadow

over purple reeks,

lost in the emerald briar

and sacred silver wood,

see his lonely fire reflected in rock

and under a druid’s hood of oak.

Gazing out from the canopy

he sees another sun recede

at the end of his tether

and whether faith wavers for the deprived,

he would receive a guide,

ethereal voices along the lakeside

impart their twilight song,

with exquisite resonance

that belong only to this grove,

he sought residence

around the base of an ancient Yew tree,

building stone by gleaming limestone,

where all else radiates,

and is enchanted

an abbey shown by the light of the moon.

 

Centuries later Muckross Abbey

sits solemn at sunset.

Half in ruin,

haunted by the graves of Gaelic poets,

it draws you into their verse,

a darkened course through passages

incorporating your visit,

it is full of spirit,

each step layers another echo

through the corridors

and over the shadowy floors

that vault the tombs,

the imagination curling like ivy

through the empty rooms,

curling around the realization

that the dead are all around you

but through the Yew tree

that now shades the central cloister,

know that something still lives within.

A seed perpetuated

in the hollowest of places,

<p flourishes like a towering remnant

to the ancient world.

It has endured the human history,

the tragedy, the chain of ancestry

that has passed through these portals.

Its watchful presence

outlasts the absence,

dwarfing every cross and crest,

bridging the years,

coiled in its gnarled breast,

it has always been here, withstanding the test of time.

From the first friar

to Cromwell’s fire,

it is eternal.

It has witnessed the sacking,

the fallen ceiling,

the violence of war,

the trauma of flight,

the cries of the slain

stealing into the night.

The requiem of the missing bell

that left the tower but a mere shell

as it sinks into the deep well

that is Lough Leane.

The tree at Muckross Abbey

contains all these things, trapped,

bleeding red sap

for those who would violate,

hung up in its curse,

better to venerate

this relic of the ancient forest,

this vestige of all we have lost,

patience, perseverance

a quiet simplicity

a reverence for nature

amongst the dissolution.

Amid the symphony of its birds

that branch the words

like voices from long ago,

know that here in the shade

of magnificent song

this tree will endure

long after we’ve gone.

Night, A Creative Entity

Curious to witness

the night,

a creative entity,

molding the light

delicate and withdrawn

into an embrace

the varying shades of saffron

over the entrance to the underground

ushered in by neon

through the moving canvass

it is projected on

shoulders and exposed skin

tattooed to a blinding whim

so long pent up within

the visual identity

now fracturing

the individual

on the cusp of discovery

a kind of ritual

sold for the price of an entrance fee.

The beat throbs

proceeds to rob all of inhibition

as they brush lightly

in this wilderness of exhibition.

With soft masses of applause,

all are warming to the Dj’s dream

to playlists that stamp energy between

white walls and velvet halls

leading to further alcoves of intoxication.

Surreptitious claws reach out for connection

for attention, there’s an apprehension,

featureless

yet with an intuitive fashion

famed for its derangement of the senses.

You dance willingly in this suspension

until the red light framed in doorways

draws your attention

and suddenly it is closing time

and all are expelled

like shadows to evaporate

through the steaming plates of chinatown

to disintegrate and drown

in the space between strangers

who’ll communicate with an empty eighth

to the first rays of light

breaking through the shade

and the window pane

breathing between thin sheets of white

on which the versatile night

will leave its mark once again.

The Unseen Author

Along the knife’s edge of a volcanic ridge

upon a poised moment in which

despite the peril

Daniel inched forward to meet

the motion of clouds under his feet.

The trajectory of one life,

one flightless bird,

one tiny pebble falling from the peaks

to join the clouds.

Barely a word was uttered,

yet voices still fill the valley

with this story of caution,

forever suspended in mystery.

The sudden ending

passes between the lips of this author

into the impact of silence, pinned forever

with the bones of the old

left in unmarked graves,

unseen purveyor of secrets

sealing the entrances to caves.

Where time doesn’t lapse,

the mana is trapped

in earthen vaults where nothing is pillaged

between the city and the village

rainwater coursing through rock

that eternal slip

akin to an ocean’s walk

on a beach it has yet to create,

work we will not live long enough to appreciate

sunlight mingling with the waterfall

we can recall but not recreate

when smuggled into notebooks.

Here it plummets from cool heights.

Nuuanu,

the unseen author

of rockfall and quiet beauty.

Seated beneath this depository,

this effortless plunge.

What more can be said or done?

What is necessary to be at one with that which emerges slowly?

The light shifting amphitheater,

vocals from an interlude of drums,

how music informs the wild spaces

and clouds break the distortion

in billowing flowers blooming

from these heights

through the textured canopy

hiding in this jaguar’s belly,

distended in fur

shamanic chants in the blur of dark shapes

juxtaposed on the lightening sky

like paw prints haunting the riverbed

raindrops rippling phantom leads

following each,

like a glittering piece of some puzzle

that is tomorrow’s sky

streaming through the cathedral cracks

as if through stained glass

illuminating the path

that will see you through the depths of its tract.

 

 

 

Red Rock

I can remember the scent of seaweed,

of sand and slick rock

walking the curve of the wall

as the ocean nears high tide

and lashes white foam at your feet.

Eyes are trained on every wet step

bearing witness to tide pools

that disappear into the oncoming waves

like adolescence into the outlying graves of time.

At this edge, this place covered over

by mollusc and graffiti,

the sea wall to Red Rock

holds one image that I have never forgotten.

It endures seasons,

beginnings and endings,

the birth of nephews and nieces,

to bookend multiple weddings

and the death of a friend.

There were four of us that night,

singing and banging on a makeshift drum.

It always claimed a tiny corner in the long ago

but not so any longer as I round the corner

ever so cautiously…

stepping onto Red Rock;

silent, meditative,

with only a solitary gull

perched on the salt stained hull of frozen waves.

I think of Matt Robinson and try to write something

but it is too cold to grip a pen for long.

So, I just think of him here,

when he was alive,

where he once sat and sang “Whiskey Bar”

into the night and to the far off beacon light

beyond the Point,  where all souls go.

As the waves came in surging

we answered with our own voices emerging

from out of the din of useless instruction.

We were still in high school,

the four of us;

myself, Jeff, DiLiberti and Matt.

Myriad lives and paths ahead,

maybe surreptitiously sipping the red

smuggled wine that helped fill our lungs,

warm us against the cold
and help us forget time

as we sang over the waves

at the curve of our world.

It never warned us of the future,

that perhaps we’d never again have this moment together.

It wasn’t Lynn, Swampscott nor Boston

but somewhere in between

the doors of white coastline mansions

and derelict shacks by the tracks,

the edges of twilight

and distant skyscrapers all stacked

in watchful waiting,

baiting each of us to scatter from our roots

out west in the coming years of pursuit

of dreams and something beyond these well worn walls.

I think of Matt Robinson now,

like I was not able to out there.

His passing, once an idea,

now becomes tangible in this physical space.

He was a kid from the neighborhood,

St. Pius, Lynn English,the same age,

his life once parallel now deceased.

I try not to think of him riddled with the disease

that has already claimed too many

but rather think of him singing that night with me

as Red Rock levitated into memory and lore.

Matt, I remember walking with you once before

on those back roads behind Essex Farms,

near my house and yours.

You mentioned you wanted to travel

and that the next time I go to keep you in mind.

We both did some traveling

but never got to take that trip together.

I forgot about that talk

and we ended up an ocean apart.

San Diego, Honolulu,

where now do you journey to?

I look for you here at Red Rock,

hear your voice in the wind singing

“Show me the way to the next whiskey bar”

and though there were those who were a lot closer

and probably kept in touch,

“I tell you we must die”

I’d like to leave an offering for you here at Red Rock

but all I can conjure up is a snowball in a gloved fist.

To shout out your name and hurl it as far as I can

into the sea and mist.

Out where you’ll melt back into the greater whole

and from the abyss

become a wave

to roll back over Red Rock for all eternity,

over me, Jeff and DiLiberti,

until we each in our own way

join you out there in the waves.