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?

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.

 

 

The Courtyard Hibiscus

While under the effects of treatment,

it may have been a hallucination.

The sudden visitation of wind to the courtyard,

with just a hint of ocean breeze

can be a reprieve

from the prison of blinking machines.

A transfixed gaze now shifts

to the lone Hibiscus flower

that draws him in

while the others droop and nod for the hour.

From its corner it opened like a portal,

a chamber, delicate, tropical,

the possibility of return unfolding

from out of the drab rock walls

that in this heightened state seem to fall away.

Recalling the stark black and sharp edged

volcanic stacks of heiau on Oahu,

he suddenly smells the bouquet of fallen fruit,

or perhaps their decay,

overwhelming the noxious odor

of burnt cafeteria food.

The sweat on his brow is transformed

to the gentle touch of a passing rain.

The kaleidoscope in his brain

that distorts vision,

becomes a back valley rainbow’s incision

of color through the clouds.

Thoughts that hover in the depths,

now lift to the peaks

light as feathers

luminous as the wings of swallows

dancing like transparent slippers across the sky.

Thoughts that endure winter,

just hang in there, freedom’s  at the end of its thaw.

In the rumor of water and evening tide,

you’ll drift on a stranded moon

into the shadow of a dead volcano,

with the specter of diagnosis,

a reverberating echo.

All these arteries lead to the sea.

On the arc of a wave somewhere

an endless moment appeals for integration,

a loosened response more dreamlike

than narcotic rumination,

for death is not the end of illumination,

though I have watched light leaving the face

of a darkened sea,

slipping towards the threshold

of the horizon’s furthest journey.

Awash in the current and gone,

he is wheeled away into the new dawn

fading into the intercom.

A not so subtle intrusion of reality,

becomes a reminder of one’s mortality.

Yet a lasting image remains in full array

through the mental hallways,

this brilliant flower of transformation,

ushering in the recognition that all living things

must open, for it is but a brief window of time,

before it closes once again.

Making a Painting of Memory

To process the unavoidable

in the best spirit possible,

in light of all that cannot be

so easily let go.

Childhood landmarks

for so long enclosed and tended,

like a terraced garden

in the yard that grows smaller

as you grow older

and the outside world leans closer and closer.

The oak trees that stood watch and held hawks,

were helplessly felled by the years to come.

Will there be any left to land

when houses pass hands

and open space becomes a commodity?

Progress fails to mention the casualties

of feathers and roots beneath tire marks

when expansion becomes Walmarts

on the outskirts of bulldozer scars.

What will become of our own shangri-la?

In my mind undisturbed,

the backdrop of table and rock stack

forms the rough hewn first layer of the terrace,

preserved there in this parallel existence,

weighted against the swirling impermanence

that moves in like a storm.

In years to come who will sit on the porch

just to smell the rain,

relieved that the parched earth will drink again?

Will subsequent visits find the inevitable weeds and overgrown grass

where dahlias once passed summers between the fences?

Will they still enclose all of the references

when obscured by ivy and choked with vine?

All the memories like scattered leaves

that the wind interweaves with the present,

gather at the base of the hill in a sodden pile

with no one to reconcile.

There remains some vivid colors.

My grandfather in his red sweater

that matches his glass of wine,

sitting beneath caps,

with hands folded permanently at that table in time.

Where are the kids of the neighborhood,

who made strongholds of foundations

and built forts by the old pine?

Who climbed fences with ease,

knowing every inch of these quarters.

They probably have their own sons and daughters,

strung out on screens,

did they sacrifice their sense of adventure

to growing older in the American dream?

I listen for the voices of kids playing outside.

Will there be any left to call in by streetlight?

Any dog racing up the hill first freed from the leash?

Whatever light is left can only emphasize

the emptiness of dead end streets,

shadows filling in the contours of rooms

where once paintings lined walls

to distinguish the decades,

extinguished as darkness falls.

I can still hear the sound of our footsteps on the creaking stair,

the cacophony of our lives behind the walls of Evelyn,

where our voices and movements have settled in

like a barely audible whisper beneath the passage of time.

I can still make a painting of memory

to temper my mind

into distinguishing all these changes

from what will endure.

Thoughts that Wander Dark (shaking hands at the end)

I know these thoughts that wander dark .

While traveling we coalesced briefly,

as strangers when neither offered shelter,

out beyond the city lights,lying in forests

almost too quiet to be pacified.

Back East, where the Atlantic is brewing storms,

darkened they would form from the subconscious,

until  breaking over Montauk,

memory grows full of the sound

of wave grain scraping pebbles,

descending, with salty skin,

smooth as seal wash,

like shipwrecks to subterranean sand,

it is never solid ground on which we stand.

A weeping, for all of us sinking.

Thoughts going abruptly dark,  drowning

like sailors with no one’s mourning to lift them,

only loosened garments , black and torn,

strewn across the sky like an aborted skin.

It takes the form of storm clouds and bellowing wind

to shake widow’s peaks and usher in

a spray of gulls, deranged and white,

with cries like a piercing reprise.

In the dunes a string of flowers endures,

while burning forests of evergreen

cast down the safety screen,

thrusting us once more into tenuous positioning.

The horror inherent in a charred landscape,

the specter of cancer haunting our mutated shapes,

we’re absorbing the next tragedy through the TV,

breathing deeply the Autumn scent of gunpowder and spotfire.

Out beyond the reflection of light on the surface of the sea,

gasoline ignites  from underneath,

so you get to know the inverse as well,

for the source of words can transform wounds to beauty,

like streaks of light that adorn the sky,

a holiday to the eye though it temporarily blinds

into forgetting that we all must one day die.

The body cannot sustain this creativity.

At it’s peak, it used these techniques

to attempt immortality.

High upon the mountain, it gains traction on the stars.

Till far below it sings odes to the river that washes out to sea.

Down the road you migrate through the mirage in a distant bend,

calling to the future like an estranged friend,

shaking the hand of what comes to meet you,

once again putting aside the folly

of aimlessly grasping at the illusion of permanence

amidst the totality of an eventual end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dancing in the Aftermath

Darkness

Witnessed beneath the passing of storms

is an intermingling of forms

in a collective mourning.

It is like a mist that would slowly lift,

forming arms to embrace these transitory gifts.

Fear not for loss of visibility,

the mountain that is closed in by cloud

will be clear again before long.

As clear as the sound of the river,

as real as a chill’s shiver at higher elevation,

where the shrouded ridges of last light

backdrop the blank expectations

etched in the countryside.

In this expanse we trespass,

red eyed and sleepless.

Moonlight moves its restless

and illuminated stream

along the ground like silvery fingers,

gesticulating palm shadows

prowling like iguanas through the brush,

all is darkened and mysterious

when witnessed in the torch light upon leaves,

from our circles of heat,

dancing until morning to retreat

somewhere distant.

We keep the loss a continent away

and though never far from us,

some will stray,

while the hours drift

into thinking of them less,

drinking from pools that appear bottomless,

 the moon would still hover

to illuminate the cracks

of the future’s chewed through mask.

How it seeks to cover with forgetful revelry

all that distinguishes one night from another,

another night without a husband, a son or a brother.

 

From beyond the wind joins us

in dancing through the fallen leaves

and through trees made to bend over

lost loved ones as if to weep

and we leave our own notes

soaked with rain,

words of empathy,

for no mother

should feel the kind of pain

that comes from losing a son.

When he was gone,

the moon held everyone,

bound by the light

that sees the sea to its end,

to horizons perched

and appearing to teeter

over the horror

that we sometimes sail too close to

and this very wind that we hold fast to

pushes us through

a perilously slow process

of gathering our breath,

until strong enough to reverse the tide,

to release those who died,

blowing that cold wind

back into darkness again.