Momentum in the Surrendering

If the essence of travel

is like a bottle

on the floor of a moving bus,

it can encapsulate

a momentum in the surrendering,

how every curve in the road

repositions its

temporary home.

With the imagination as a source

and destinations unknown,

there’s a pause over a glassy surface

like the reflection of pines

from a chair on an empty pier.

See them penitent in this light,

pressed against the sky

and in crystalized moments

the breaks in the clouds

 fall back into place

on glacial lakes.

There are simple rituals of control

in a fractured life,

the boiling kettle

that begets tea

in a green leafed kitchen,

Tai Chi that steeps the internal

in a laundry beneath

the backdrop of mountains.

There is something sublime in

running of hands

over ridgelines and the curves

that follow the currents

of continuous movement.

Like the trains

who by track and tunnel

deconstruct images

that huddle beneath passion, variety.

Through these windows

the inevitable takes shape

and life gives it strength

by the knowledge of the end of the line.

A momentum in the surrendering,

the landscape’s haphazard design.

From a veil of dark,

from whatever meaning

can be divined

from memory’s spark

in a field of fog,

the commingling of shades,

journals and coffee stains,

the night blending into day.

Along these borders,

dreams and swollen rivers

a life blood is

sourced from a common ancestor,

the past is only passing through.

Adapting but never arriving,

embracing but never evading

the ever-present chaos

sewn into the stitches

of a fabric unraveling.

This rite of passage,

the unfinished fragments

of letters and old poems

from a life mostly forgotten,

is shown to have its own momentum

not in the surrendering

but in seizing the moment.

As the Masters Move

There is a subtle stirring

in the joints and the bones.

Synchronized to the movements

and the simplicity of forms,

we’re a facsimile to the master’s

gently penetrating power,

their moonlight to the matter

witnessed on the surface of the sea.

In the waves, endless and consistent,

sculpting and breaking down

the hardest resistance in nature,

we’re eased into accepting what is transient.

Like cloud shadow to the grounded,

shaping and conforming to this energy,

which then dissipates.

With a trace of the hands the motions endure.

Anticipating change, the body and mind

becomes supple in time,

wound in many lessons, a serpent’s coiling,

a white crane’s patient stride

as it catches a glimmer from the river,

pulled by the ocean’s tide.

On the end of a bow everything is connected.

So in letting go, without aim,

it still finds the center

the dantian

the space without beginning

without end

where all is initiated.

Through the past and present,

in the vestiges of memory,

the wind moves among the lau hala

like a master weaver.

Shaping and speaking

through plaited leaves

of the humbling way it lays the braids,

completing the edges

only to begin again.

The moon, now a silver sliver,

seen through the trees

of shenandoah.

We’re similarly a tiny glimmer in eternity,

seeking peaks, some sense of purity.

There is always another mountain,

each appearing higher in the distance.

Our lives, shaped by the fires of curiosity,

going forward courageously.

Knowing something of kinetic energy,

the mysterious rhyme and binding entity

that pulls all this together.

There is a vague understanding through intuition

that in pursuing something just out of reach,

in descending to the deserted beach,

one journey succumbs to another’s beginning.

There, in the punctuation of snare drums,

investing in sweat, no longer beneath ceilings,

leaving all regrets before what is unlimited,

you’ll meet yourself in the shadow

of those who came before,

cloud figures on the horizon

coming into form

in which we can follow

through this permeable wrinkle in time.

Lodge Fires and Painted Asphalt

Duality.

Is it necessary

for struggle and ease

to mirror each other

to understand

that the boulevard and the river

are the same silence

broken by the next transition?

The presence of a hawk

registers on another frequency,

in the bowers of an old oak

in clock towers juxtaposed

to the winding hours

standing silent witness

to our movements below.

Through the hanging clouds that cloak this parallel,

the passing rain massaged a message

into painted asphalt.

It means nothing beyond

the soft sounds it creates

in neon fallout.

There were intervals of stoplight reds

along the blinding yellow’s edge,

verdant greens awash in

jungle scenes

where the city ends

a forest begins

to breathe again,

its lush mist

lifts curtains of

what remains uncertain.

Streaks and silhouettes

in the shades back lit

and on the larger canvass

the stars were puncture points,

sparkling eyes in the blackest

disguise over an abyss

that like an oil slick

caused them to slip from their space,

freeing a moment’s spark,

skiing the slopes of dark

with a sway and subtle shift in the flow,

it is the same momentum

beneath heaving banks and drunken boats.

There are moments of clarity

inherent in memory,

the glimmer of pebbles

beneath the spontaneity.

There is a unison to the lights

in apartments at night,

as they flicker on

one by one,

modern lodge fires

for the compartmentalized.

In vertical cities where

the glass divides the wild,

creating a void,

there is no matter only vanity,

each side spying the other.

Down below in the fallout and the forgotten,

tents spring to summer squalor,

flushed downstream, the ruin careens

with wretched pursuit and muddy water.

In the calm’s a parallel stream

to navigate the obstacles

to assist in the unknowing,

to accept what we resist in the aging.

It is the smooth

in well worn shoes of leather,

a whitened driftwood

tossed astray by storms,

in all its variation

there’s grace in surrender.

This rumination,

this duality in nature,

of what comes apart and what is binding,

the subtle gestures of the river.

Beyond the sky and the illusion of time

is an infinite ocean receiving

a mere fraction of illumination,

in its mirror our own motion

that goes on and honors the moment,

as insignificant as it may seem.

Crystal Parallel

The shift was palpable.

From the road

through the first layer of trees,

the mind quietly surfaces

somewhere parallel.

Between the notes of a Shama

leading deeper

by beak and by feather,

the lyrical river

initiates the medicine

in the essence of nature

with canopied light

to transcribe the

enigma of moss

on illuminated stone

faces from the past

when you’re no longer alone

in reflection

in pictures and portals

through dark pools

for the outstretched wings

emerging.

With stealth you’ll go

tree to tree

through the valley,

emissary to the summer breeze

that breathes

in one animated pull of the string,

everything is tied together.

Your white feather

was the first light

in the night sky,

woven in the outlines

of mountains,

a temporal indention

in all the transitioning.

The serenity of streams,

the crystal renewal

of movement

that doesn’t cling to branches

or any one position.

Like a worm in the beak

of indecipherable information,

I’ll go with you down valley.

In Wailupe

rock root meandering.

In Moanalua

by the ruin of a grand staircase,

this parallel place

hidden from view,

caressed and cool

ribbon of silence

only broken by song,

caught in the jungle’s mesh

lush beneath palms.

A thrush and the passing rain

will nourish the parched,

far from the city squalor

and those who’ll twist nature

into backdrops,

into what can be quantified,

voices disrupting the silence.

In the nexus of choices,

there are those that lead you back.

Time, with crystalline continuity

becomes a thought,

firm, re-assuring

that I would rather be here than there,

coming to meet

that which is obscure

but never leaves.

In the Metaphor of Rivers

Nothing remains stuck.

On the breath that expresses more than thoughts

to flow down valley

like a wind in Wailupe

that tickles the chimes in the Norfolk pines

rooted to a moment, despite movement.

There is a clearing

where solitude is revealing instruction

to a tangle of brush strokes

imparting light to the surface renewal.

In the metaphor of rivers there is no arrival,

only its illusion.

There’s a gentle loosening of leaves

expressing the value of paperweight

that does not incorporate words

but notes something of gravity to the motionless,

to those mired to the banks.

Though in their lines lies a vagrancy,

the realization that all are carried away eventually

by the wind and by the rain.

The river journey comes to its insatiable mouth,

infinitely consuming itself.

Can movement be a mirror on these surfaces?

To seize a half-formed image of oneself,

sped up, transparent,

as if on a current,

lifting the anchor you go with it.

Moving downstream to draw from the periphery

some sense of apprehension.

With a craft that compulsively fills the contours

with some semblance of direction,

overshadowed by the next bend

by further distance ill defined

in waterways that resemble the last.

Released from the grid,

the river was aided by floods,

while the sky slid by

on an infinite sheet of glass.

Poetry was like the passing clouds

that gather fragments of its brilliance,

before inspiration dissipates

before the rain precipitates

what needs to change and what can be saved,

what remains of glass shattered

into thousands of mutually arising patterns

interwoven in the aftermath

of another passage to sea.

 

Travel, Like a Stream that Runs Parallel

The days linger on,

like a rain that hangs

over the island’s

timeless embrace.

Streams trace the streets,

chase debris out to sea.

Perceive the occasional

floating flower petal,

fleeing like an insignificant detail,

a star amongst the gnarled traffic

of tree limbs and vine,

it becomes more profound in its travel.

Lapsing into symbolism

that will unravel

the mystery of unconscious scenes

just below the surface,

subterranean streams running parallel

to the lingering routines.

Suddenly the universe

and its lightning-infused

electricity of happenstance

conjures a crystallized moment,

a recognition of perfection,

 an art without the need of further correction,

a stage we can gracefully leave

what we preconceive

behind the mask of striving.

Reviving the beat, we dance in unison.

Poised for the next change in rhythm,

content to let the world of thought

fall away into its own revision.

Above the abyss of the audience,

we’re positioned on the cusp of decision.

Do we walk the fine line

or give in to expectation?

 

Asking not for support but momentum,

I come to this crossroads limping.

Trusting I’ll find my feet again,

a retreat into dreams again,

 a long and winding highway

that untangles the reeds

of someone’s needs,

enclosed in glittering ports,

those soft resorts

that line the shore

of your creative wasteland.

Now that it is light it is time to leave.

The colored roofs, the twisted routes.

There’s another bus to catch,

another town

of multi-colored pastels to undress.

On some ancient Calle

framed by cacti,

a whole stretch of valley lays before me.

You can hear the distant horns

in courtyards, mariachi.

Do not disturb the stray

asleep in the doorway.

Leaning against a wall,

I pull a brim hat over my eyes.

No need to disguise

how good it feels to be alive

under foreign skies again.

To reach for the sun

that blazed through what was barren.

To feel the rain

 that glazed a green hue to the hilltops

that fill you with the desire

to play chase with the clouds

above the chapels,

stepping from one to the next,

until finally you become a tiny speck

on the horizon.

 

 

Harvest an Escape

Monte San Savino

entombed and silent,

preserved in smoke,

birthed into the next ancestor

that broke the mold,

like light through endless alleys

searching for a new home.

Blurring into another,

surrounded by remnants,

soon to uncover a passage in time.

Just before Spring

when winter is entwined in a last frost,

you lost your bearings to wandering.

Goals were offered up to a symbolic death.

Mist hanging like a pall on the rooftops,

moving across the stone with a silvery breath,

read in the meandering path like an epitaph to familiarity.

Seized with the reverie

of being lost in a foreign place.

Dragging a tired frame along the ground,

listening for the sound of echoes,

you’ve been here before.

Tracks rebound back to bells,

weaving a litany of spells,

one of which is the wish to remain,

to build a niche to destroy one day.

 

On burning bridges

you’re caught between places.

All that you built, all the pursuit,

leads to crossroads of dust

and the withering of fruit.

Still, it was nourishment for time,

to fuel the movement.

La Strada is like saying

another knot is coming loose.

New directions bent like stalks of vine

on the road to Gargonza.

Far gone and towards?

Which way is forward?

Deciphering all the cryptic signs

on horizon lines

that conspire in journals

to dissolve barriers

and toss you outside the walls.

You sleep in a contorted position.

The deep dark held you down to dream

of a familiarity skewed

as the motion picture spewed

images across the screen.

Indecipherable

until you rifle through

the drawers of your collected meaning.

This drama you may yet comprehend.

This gift to get lost in

your own countryside,

verdant and vast,

vacant for the imagination to cast in clay,

contours to assume

until it comes to decay.

The sun sweetens the grape,

harvests an escape,

while the wind plucks them away.

Another vagrant sure to stray

into different shades,

harmonized with the landscape

of tattered clothes,

of stone stairs and sleeping alone.

Without a home and in limbo,

its the oldest place one can go.

 

 

 

Like an Unwanted Skin

In transit again.

The wind picks me up

when no one else would.

No longer entrenched,

it has me intrigued

as it rolls through the trees

innocent and irresistible

like the sudden scent of intimacy

in the passing rain

rustling the curtains on the windowpane.

Everywhere there is movement

moments mesh with memory

exposes the flesh left hidden away.

In waysides of this attraction,

lodged in liminality

exiled from the distraction

the non stop neon notions of progress.

This line of thinking

invades the frame of your perfect sketch

grasped with a stretch

soon to be replaced

as it is pulled away

like an unwanted skin

I can no longer take comfort in

this exhibition

its layers transparent and thin

swept away for a clearer vision.

See the tip of the insence stick

amongst the smoke,

slow lava flowing pictures

forming until the clouds broke.

Fallen suns illuminate leaf walls

shot through with veins

like highways in the wilting light.

When highways appear neverending,

I’ll meditate on the next bending

the blurred and broken lines suspending

like a flickering wick lit in the void.

Suddenly, a smoky cloud covers the full moon

inviting everything to pass through

on the raft of its luminous hue,

on that map you read of immortality,

an interlacing of all the destinations

the imagination could accrue.

From a Train Window

Thoughts on departures and emerging trains,

the depot excitement of a bustling platform,

everyone clutching belongings

but nothing uniform

in this mad dash for the silver lining

Sunset Limited at last opening

under an art deco clock,

to carve and unlock

a new town out of morning tracks.

The lightness of leaving,

perhaps for good,

new memories to incubate

in the womb of this current

that whisks you away

through mountains that only rise

to separate you from that former self,

know there will be another platform

on which to take a stand.

 

From a train window

no victory or end is sustained for long.

It begins again within myriad turns,

inherently vulnerable, the sheer humanity

crammed into all that machinery.

Mere specks in time,

vagrant in the slow crawl

movement by design.

Pathologically it accelerates

from depots of glass

through canyons of concrete

to open spaces at last,

a distortion of distance.

Panoramic horizon lines

too gargantuan to define

the steam from your recess

reflecting the nature of impermenance.

Train windows

transient channels

the flashing panels

of faces and landscapes,

who shares your compartment

on the ride that never ends?

If ever our tracks cross,

I may never see you again.

A feeling of melancholy ties the loose ends,

lost in blurry reflections.

Shrill yells punctuate the in-between,

you’re either coming home

or being pulled away from its seams.

Trains consuming tracks

as the journey comes back around,

the distance dances,

improvising on transient canvasses,

once uniformly blank

now painted marsh grown purple heather,

better to forget what you left behind.

Wisps of black smoke uncoil

to leave no trace on this twisted line.

 

Another train brings me closer

to another thought I should let go of.

Heavy luggage in familiar compartments

burden to reveal that I have gone nowhere

but back around to the same question.

A direction without landmarks

disguised under the skies,

the fogged up vacant eyes

seeking to find a center

to a journey always within.

 

The train holds up a mirror

to confront you with choices,

how to perceive the reflection

upon the glass of these shifting questions?

Passing the unfamiliar landscape

smeared across windows of dying dreams.

Derailed in forests far from the roads,

they tread in a blur of unseen shapes

surrendering to the speed of light

over corrugated iron.

There’s no dark like the dark from a train,

as it combs the countryside

as cold as cold can go.

There’s no map for your eyes from a train window,

as the sun sets over towns like Wyanet.

Stalks go red and rusted pickups go nowhere,

in forgotten yards where their tires are swings.

Better to forget the rubber and gypsy by rail,

that way sleepy towns get momentarily injected

with locomotive speed and power directed westward.

It sets fire to their hair,

puts joy into the voices I won’t hear

over the rumble of the train.

Fields position against the horizon,

scarecrows crucified in the lava lamp sky

soon darkening in contorted sleep.

Dismayed to awake,

twisted into a pretzel shape

to realize I still have two more days.

Blink and they’re gone the way of debris,

the way strange towns recede,

the way of trackside whistles whining,

“Time is winning.”

When will it be morning over sunflowered fields?

So real, the moving landscape.

Surreil, that darkened place up ahead

that the distance is fed into.

The unknown that pushes against the side of the tracks

that break but do not diminish

the continuity of its impact.

When you think these tracks can go no further,

they usually do,

carrying you through tunnels,

through the continental divide,

until ultimately terminating

in the Antioch yards,

the place where cars go to die.

 

 

 

I

Passages

The sun and sea comingling

with sand and thoughts

that sweat into words

running off of the skin

like beads that begin

to evaporate in the heat.

Words repeat

clinging to the mind

like a tangle of vines

on the decrepit walls of a decaying palazzo.

The ocean fills the spaces between passages

and you go down,

not quite damaged but exposed

in that precarious spot

between restless pursuit and painful waiting.

Pens heavying for a vital point,

compulsively clouded in inky residue,

it is dipped again to anoint the end,

recording a passage in time.

Talk gets swallowed by the quiet forms,

now dry and windswept words

parched in the longing for rain.

Questions arise to be kept in the silence of wards,

starched white inhabitants, restless and insane,

have you moving this instrument again and again.

Like the snail’s trail that glistens over the fragile leaf,

the pen moves like a thief over delicate pages.

This subtle movement, persistant,

takes hold of eternity.

Carrying it for awhile,

it goes unbroken,

if only by thought and daylight,

words fill the empty spaces

once occupied by love.

It forms devotion,

holding up this crumbling land

once was an ocean.

It’s flow had no obstruction,

against it rock merely rested,

there was nowhere it was not,

all was invested.

Down by its edges,

passive, pensive,

up above the wellspring of words.

That through the ages

have become sunken,

calling out for inspiration,

while you rendezvous with vacancy.

Secrets may be revealed,

one passage at a time.

Over rock walls

down stairways,

one salty luminous rhyme.

The hidden coves of coral inlets

hide myriad beaches

to leave temporary footprints.

The cool dive in the morning mist

pulls out a beating heart

dripping from your fist

and though waves constantly besiege,

Shangri-La won’t resist.

The sea revealing its mystery,

on the underbelly

the scars of its history

that will continue to endure.