Milky Way Cove

If all light is born out of darkness

and the land returns to the sea

carving new dimensions

restructuring the boundaries

and the demarcations of time

that starve dreams of their totality.

To search for significance

in emptiness,

embracing the sun,

the unseen fires beneath

salty layers where creativity is born,

where the ancestors and their manifestations

are afloat over a sense of purpose.

Pulling islands out of nothingness,

these dark shapes

dimly aware of climbing

from the shade to another plane,

no longer steering

but yielding to the way the material mingles

with the concealed.

May the wind be guide

daybreak the first breath

to begin again,

transitioning with the tides.

Another wave of the hands and the lowering of oars.

A bend at the waist was the horizon,

the edge of the desk

permeable and stretched

over this limbo, waiting for signs,

for the stars to allign.

Drifting towards the

milky way cove in

an explosion of foam,

immutable forms

scattered in ink

disintegrating into

the awareness

of the furthest reaches of

a palpable silence.

Beneath everything

in a vast stream of consciousness,

you seek direction through undulation,

solitary passages from

a recurring dream.

Upon this craft of words

built for navigation,

you make circles in coastal fog,

piercing like beacons

these poems of the disappearing dark to light.

Each year feeling further from land,

from all the goals and plans.

The emotional resonance from

the past reveals

love and pain as two sides of the same

cloud shadow and raised coral,

seen from above

perceived through that mirror,

where is the boundary

between the light and the sea?

The immovable star?

The guide pulling me further from sleep?

Emptied of what is and isn’t necessary,

a blank sheet daily

for words and becoming complete

before night sweeps in

to begin it all again.

The Sea Receives

1.

The sea receives

the masquerade of the leaves

the changing glow

of poems in embryo

born on the wind

at season’s end,

the trees are in flames.

Memories remain

the fallen effigies,

reflected on surfaces

Illumination

writes the verses downstream,

where veins and waterways

relieve their light,

filling cracks in the horizon,

like dreams guiding creativity.

2.

At a break in the coral reef

the sea of sound is a symphony,

a chorus of tiny pebbles

being ground into sand.

Calligraphy to the deepest sensitivity

of knowing nothing can withstand

Change.

The passing of time follows the sun.

Various grades of light and expanse,

you cast a line and offer no resistance

to the wind breathing life into the waves

breaking chandeliers,

those crystalized fears

amplified in the solitude

of the beach and the shoreline.

3.

Where the sea meets the sky

there is light and shadow.

A fixed gaze

mixed with sun and spray

plays tricks with the mind,

while the tide calls Aphrodite inside.

Out beyond the break,

my love is buoyant in her own stride,

those moments I agonized

over dreams lost at sea,

of last words and no goodbye.

What has yet to return,

eventually drips back to me.

Weeping behind shades,

tongue tied to eternity,

the waves will answer

in essence what the mind creates

out of turbulence,

how all that has been given

in a moment

can be taken away.

Such is life, love, loss,

scattered between the darkness of thoughts

and the light of letting them go.

The sea receives us

like leaves and tiny pebbles,

the secret source of infinite peaks

as it courses through valleys

in a suspension of belief

that becomes a point of departure.

From the cliff soars an Iwa,

that thief of time,

spreading black wings

it’s shadow and the sea in rhyme

opens a portal.

More spirit than mortal,

we journey to the western shore to find

a leaping stone

where hand in hand over the dark water,

we’ll guide each other into the unknown.

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.

 

The Visitation

The chimes of the balcony

trickle into the memory

that I was not alone earlier on the cobbles.

Followed by your echoes,

weightless and elegant,

like a flowing fabric

or the shadow of a delicate fan,

you came like a welcome reprieve

from the humidity that knew no wind coming off of the sea.

All of the valleys were choked and stagnant

until your scented form brushed by

like the visitation of pikake

or a rain that knew forests better than concrete.

You are the balm by which old selves begin to retreat,

the relief of twilight after the heat,

all the small glittering fragments,

fleeting as loose fitting rings

as day slips into night.

These moments can accumulate in trees,

with angelic voices and the flight of eucalyptus leaves

from your silver sleeves

it breathes freely by land’s end

and on the terrace with paper and reverence

I’d make amends,

with fingers and pens

longing for useful lines to describe

the legend of your disappearance,

like a sun behind the sea,

I’ll follow in your wake

with letters sealed in ink endlessly.

 

Cover Image “The Kiss of the Muse” by Paul Cezanne

These Wayward Notes Roamed

Peering over the edge of the half opened drawer,

you’re afforded a glimpse

through the void

of a former life

whose mind structures and stacked spines

were wayward notes roaming

undefined decades ago

through the oldest quarters of Paris.

What was left unfinished, the letters like lamplight

on the avenues and the pinched parallels of Marais.

What do they say of mystery?

Of being buried alive?

One fist seizes the light

seeking breath to break free of binds,

experience in hindsight

relegated to a page in time,

to squeezing sentences of quintessences,

dissolving these contour lines.

Mystery,  in the wake of transport

what can it take of the forgotten?

That which is no longer mentioned of moments

overwhelming the air of another postponement.

The bell’s chorus wakes the wasted ideal,

an incarnation through atonement

beneath the shell of inaction

reverberation towards something whole.

Mystery, that melancholy departure

pressed into the fibre of indecipherable spaces,

twilighted in notebooks

that grid and translate the travel,

blurring the towns in-between.

Still it remains pliant,

rounding out reason’s edges.

Along the border of the Seign river

it is under a saintly finger

as it dabs the transparent clouds

shot through with light

and by dusk spewing blood.

Mystery is the host

holy enough to reveal no wounds

from the dogmatic wars,

it makes it through without scars

without cracks in wonder

it is a stained window in a cathedral,

a marble current in the Parisien sky.

There’s a subtle door in the repetition of poems

unlocking the divine,

a cadence recognized in dreams and visions

sinking softly into a receptive mind.

Mystery, pulled from the void like a rebirth,

sets a glow over the changes,

encouraging new curves in the regiment

of the sensitive imbued with luminous purpose,

to illustrate and turn further pages.

 

 

All that is Concealed

The poem was like a silhouette

that waits for form,

a subtle weight in white sands,

it baits the creator

to express shape,

to conform to something

beyond the illusion of escape.

What is is what will change.

A beach, a set of words,

being released to the storm surge.

There was no scale to measure

the drawn drapes of a blue room receding

only to resume where there is no longer land,

just a moving wall and a disappearing man

dipped in ink

crossed out in dreams,

a rapid eye, a blinking screen

enclosing all thought

in static explosions of surf.

 

Into the drink, the before birth,

all liquid comprehension.

The gesturing wind

was an extension of limbs,

trees and inaccessible forests,

mangrove, black river cypress.

All that is concealed eventually sees light.

All that is consumed within a vast appetite,

the regurgitated words, the message often missed,

the pools beneath falls hold the tears of the mist,

like a lament for all the passing moments.

Clouds draped shadow over the valley walls,

slowly it crawls, this spirit revealed

in shifting hue,

in subtle song,

how it quickly withdrew

but remains long after the form is gone.

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

Nothing like being Suspended

Five hours in flight with nothing to unglue.
Five hours suspended in cloud chewed through
by a sky of insight
that would imbue with light
the teary beads of precipitation
hanging in the windows of anticipation.
The illuminated trails yet to arrive,
strapped in and forced to set distractions aside,
cultivating nothing of importance,
nothing blogworthy,
but this will go up anyway
and that is the irony.
As we rise in elevation,
resigned to rapid penetration,
a ragged correspondence
will compensate for being connected to nothing.
Red eyed relationships of leaving
equilibrium
losing nothing if not the illusion of balance,
the luster of newness,
the lust for her turbulence,
memories tripped up on the fading trust
spurring a glance that asks
“Where have you been?”
Exiled on an island,
writing to the infinite and the sensual
within the harsh borders of coral.
The weight of an ocean will hold up this craft
but lend nothing towards its escape.
Below us an endless graph of salt
clay stillness with the occasional squall
breaking the monotony,
a storm surge over the real possibility
of being caught in its momentum.
Rips of wind tilt the within,
pulling at these compartments of recollection,
an internal state like a projection on the horizon,
a spotlight glow
beyond the seascape of shadow
and definition, a prison we’d never find ourselves in.
Excitement and apprehension
towards an infinite well the dark was sucked into.
The ocean veiled in textured clouds
that were like razor reeds
to sharpen the sleep of the waiting deep.
The melancholy of what you leave
meets relief at being in motion again.
Reluctant acceptance courts disarray and distance,
rekindling old strands,
those gypsy strands
that caravan the sinking sands
of just reward
punctuated by renewal’s lonely chords
sliding into the nothing you were descending towards.

Dawn Deconstructs

The sun rises on All Souls Day.
All is quiet against the edges
of its roseate significance.
Eyes pilot dawn
to pull up the drawn shades
in celebration of all that has gone before.
The first light comes like a vagabond
from out of the dark,
like a poetry who’ll correspond
with every emerging rock and stranded moon sliver.
Seen from above, these forms are reflected,
while cloud cover shivers with the alchemy of expectation.
They’ll come like half-formed silhouettes
giving shape to the imagination,
an indentation, a footprint
on the lunar dreamscape of sand.
It is there, with the shoreline accentuated in foam,
growing out of the soft glow of the sea
receding to the strength of morning,
transforming the shadow of mourning
the passing of loved ones
like mist in the hills growing further away.
On this day they are near
to the hue as the sky breaks up the fear,
and the dark contours of thought
are merely detours to steer through,
like a road that hugs a cliff,
unforgiving if you’ll stray
too close to the edge of a petrified flame,
this old and weathered grey shaved
as dawn draws petroglyphs on the walls of the cave
to light the way.

I can hear the heart beating
the sweat beading
the rhythmic breathing
from the climbing
ultimately leading
to ridge stillness.
Beyond a wilderness of ferns
is a sea gaze and I am brought home again.
Plans do not always bring
high winds to stagnant bookends
when becalmed in the middle of the ocean,
what draws me on remains a mystery,
how every step deconstructs what’s within,
dawn is always starting over.

What is Completed?

The interpretation of art,

like a rebirth of thought.

Each new piece regenerates

all that came before it.

It venerates the ancestor

of no definitive answer,

instead coloring and giving birth

to an infinite texture.

Contours you’ll resume

by tracing this womb throughout.

It begins by lightly brushing the surface,

as graceful as a lizard’s limbs

over the coarse skin of tree bark.

The canvass stretched taut,

silent and thin as a moth’s wings

deafening when you’re listening

to a certain frequency of rain,

it resonates like a train of thought,

seismic as a teardrop in a pool,

radiating in myriad directions.

Each stroke is an impression,

passing over the surface like an apparition,

tuned into the unseen,

its lingering reception recalling

all those things that stay with you.

Each step is an embryo

for new material to come through

the subconscious,

no longer dormant

but with a slow flow

as if emerging from a volcano,

the vaporous past absorbed into the current,

transformed from within,

to be reborn as new land

calling into question

as you perceive from the edge

“What is ever fully completed?”