In the Intervals

Between childhood and aging,

travelling and settling,

I know our time here is temporary.

Though the tides

tied everything together eternally,

moments rolling in the soft distortion

of ever shifting clouds.

Wanderers, caught by candlelight

become silhouettes

in the snow mansions

of a dissolving union.

All that is transitory

the sky would express lyrically

through the windows of

these communal rooms.

The sturdy peaks pierced through

the ephemeral,

leaving stars and mana

a milky residue

that through the passing

of glittering stones

carried

hundreds of miles

would construct walls

and floating cities.

From the dark of speculation

we’re guided by coral,

shaped by the invisible.

Behind a veil of questions

we’ll ponder reflections

and the abandon staring back

offers no explanation.

Nanmadol.

What remains of the past

an effigy,

an extension of ancestors and

the energy of creation.

We’ll meet in the intervals

of bones and breaking waves,

as true nature stays

parallel

sourced from the ocean,

the largest of liminal space.

Thirsty, the sedentary receives

swells from seasonal rains.

Unstuck from routine,

boats are cast adrift

towards Argos, Phoenicia and Pohnpei,

the disappearing remnants

of another yesterday.

Gliding past the monolithic canvas

walls that do not obstruct the silence

but give rise

to the vines that

obscured entranceways

and distorted time.

The surface

of canals give passage

to the strange light of torches

toying with the senses.

Moments adrift

and winds becalmed

in a labyrinth of choices

pressing forward

through the blanks,

the sunlight through the palms

looking for openings.

As the wind picks up again,

you’ll consider the will and the breadth

to what has been left

upon this petri dish

of life and death.

It tells a story often repeated,

of benevolence and dissolution

crossing over into myth,

that realm of the unseen

and the power

to move everything,

while waiting in the intervals

as always

for it to pass somewhere

between vibration and illumination,

it will be built again.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

If Only I Could Recall

I wanted to believe

I could capture some of its essence.

A tourist with a pen

instead of a lens

to hem in all the experience

that unfolded before me

the green fields of her myth.

A modern moment presents fragments,

and they fell together, seamless

while fingers moving screen less

will attempt to speak of her width,

all that emerald pastureland

that follows ancient walls

until it falls over cliffs and into the sea.

If only I could recall the trajectory of travel,

from the peopled east, to the rugged west,

where sheep seem to outnumber

all else, perched there impossibly

on some promontory,

dotted in my memory

of hills we walked together.

The tranquility of a moment’s

sunset I could only begin

to capture in words, the color

as it merged with the North Atlantic

and towards bewitching us fully.

 

Slow down says the river

with its eternal murmur

under quiet bridges

that have channeled her

and held the weight of our ancestors.

If only I could recall each remnant from their past,

set in ivy and half collapsed in stone

where bats and crows

now circle forgotten towers

like smoke from the chimneys

of obscured homes

left to the wild and alone,

reclaimed inch by inch, year by year

in a seamless embrace.

In passing you catch the trace

of an old peat fire

and imagine the warmth of the hearth

that once held together

the pain and the laughter,

all the sorrowful banter

that time abandons

to the cold shadows of famine

slanting like a cross

on an earth-filled floor.

 

As you walk from a venerable pub

into the country dark,

you’ll listen for the subtle chime

of the grandfather clock at Foxmount

to guide past spirits that do not sleep,

past walls that will not keep

out of our imagination

that which lies on the other side of the veil.

Blurred in a half moon’s glare through trees,

the land steeped in legend,

in banshees baring teeth

what screams during the time we do not speak

but only seek to feel our way through the palpable dark

pressing in on the edges of thought,

if only one could capture what we sought of its essence

with a hurried pen,

only then we’d begin to reveal

some of the magic of a subtle presence

holding it all together.

Each experience, perhaps better to be left

burnt and entrenched

in their own immutable imprints,

conscious or unconscious,

dim or brilliant,

they’ll proceed to play a part

like voices in the art

like choices that will start

to branch out from these sturdy roots

and reveal a truth so long hidden.

Collective Memory Cryptic Topography

Allowing light to penetrate this cryptic topography.

The sun accentuates its elliptic identity

from above, a translucent jade

ensconced the loss and uncompromising decay

like the texture of a masquerade

cloaked in symbols to unnerve

the jungle’s passion play.

All the secrets were concealed

footprints and past evidence sealed

behind a cordoned clearing

irreparable sin

all manner of excess and fascination

expresses itself in backwater reflections.

Dark waters seized in the stream bed

where weeks of rain and flood merge

limb and blood

vine wound bone rock

hair strewn skin

all coarsing within the accepting earth.

The canopy takes another breath

initiating a rebirth

from what rooted us to death,

a banyon tightened noose

and sometimes they are never cut loose

but you imagine it and are held in thrall,

left to heed compulsion’s call,

to fill a page torn from the mystery

like leaves from a tree in pendulous pause

without a soul to witness

the collaborating forest

while tongues of mist

whisper of its myths

on distant peaks.

When silence speaks,

it’s through the wind

an invocation,

buoyant and blanketing

the sharpest contours

softening in the rain and cloud shadow

able to penetrate passages narrow,

cautious by approach,

a barely audible voice

from the minaret of choice

lost in circles under a darkened dome

you come to the remains of a forgotten home

just beyond the crossroads,

 a ruin from antiquity

to leave offerings of wisdom

on the altars of the collective memory.

 

Foundations Uncovered

Roots pushing upwards

over the landscape with abandon

through the windows of this edifice

seemingly at random.

A palace for the discarded

in a sea of bamboo

its passages unguarded

foundations uncovered

where once royal origins started

to decay.

In the emptiness

where once you would roam

protected from the common by kapu

now ficus limbs and wisteria call home

until in time it forms an invasive canopy

that obscures all ancestry.

Ceilingless, still you could be a refuge

a stone anchor for this journey

that has moved and shifted its locale endlessly,

alternating between light and darkness

in valleys veiled in mist

dipped in umbrage

downstream it falls

along a disappearing path it calls

silently

illuminated momentarily

by a cascade of light

restless, displaced

into shadow passes

far from the world of the masses

the phones, the screens, the ego schemes

disconnected from social classes,

the mindless chatter

in spurious cities of false dreams

planting seeds of deceit

that all can achieve the elite.

Oh to retire beneath the leaves

to become small again

through the doormouth it recedes

like time, drifting away on cloud rafts

above a dense canopy.

The imagination,

from a tenuous position

is sealed underneath the great trees.

Sustenance for the poet

nourishment for the melancholy,

its time has passed

for some it lays there still

blending in to lava rock and crown land

but like a shadow on the mountain

it has disappeared again.