18 Rings

Walking today

Making my way

Newly over an old path

I saw another banal tragedy.

The tired earth

Our good

And patient soil

Torn and broken.

The unsteady equilibrium

Of an already disturbed place,

Nurturing things

In a quiet and

Unremarkable way.

A small parcel

Not forgotten,

Just temporarily ignored.

That lustful pause

Called investment.

Time mostly representing

Price change

And commodity fluctuation.

Not the endowing

Of unremarkable life

To unremarkable places.

I walked over the torn

And broken earth.

Small stones and gravel

Poured like vinegar

Into open wounds.

Tire tracks leading away

To faster and more complicated places

Bringing endless complication;

We know

Because we’ve seen

Where those tracks lead.

Passing by the pyre of sticks

I have come to apologize

In the self-conscious way of

Trying to be less self-conscious,

At the foot of the pile of sticks and branches

I notice stillborn spring buds

For trees always trust

The promises of spring.

The stump has 18 rings

Of varying width,

18 years of patient growth.

For this?

To extend a power line’s support.

To sink steel hooks into the earth.

But did I see the tree 

Before now?

Rockslide of Existence

Oh that I could roll away
In a rockslide of existence.
Like the lizards and the snakes;
Like the ground squirrels, or the rocks
I continually dislodge on this dusty trail.
To cascade into something greater,
Each individual plunge a mysterious
And a momentous occasion.
I see myself rolling now.
I’m smeared with brown
And green and dirt and things.
Tumbling down until my eyes only see
This lapis lazuli blue
Only smell this sagebrush
Only taste the dust between my teeth
Only see the fervid green of the oak leaves,
The mountain ash,
The brilliantly red penstemon:
All rolling together into one.
Blurring into a unity of existence.
Not a suicide,
Rather a resurrection
As my personhood is redeemed in the whole.
Not obliterated,
Not annihilated
Merely consummated.
In this ecstasy
This movement
This life
This wild breath.

Lifeless Visions

In the middle of the road

Where the asphalt runs thick

And spring heat liquefies the nearby air

Lies a bird.

It’s yellow and red

Now a lifeless vision.

—

There are many troubling questions.

How far did he fly?

Is this his native land?

Where do you bury a migratory bird?–

Should I fly down to Guatemala?

Or offer it, in some secluded spot,

To the vultures?

—

But I scrape it off the road,

Remove it from the sticky profanity

And rub away some dirt

From a secluded spot,

A place resonant with dignity–

Affirming our’s as well–

Cover it with twigs and mulch,

And whisper an apology.

—

How many bright visions

Lie lifeless on our roads?

Let us tend, then,

To our unburied dead.

Ethereal Things

Salvation is blinding white light

Soaking through my vision, 

Evoking a feeling beyond words.

—

Rapture is a glowing, faint orange rock outcropping

Jumping out of a deep blue sky,

An unmediated ecstasy

Freely offered to the soul.

—

Life everlasting was that time on the grassy fields

With white clouds above

And an entire summer ahead.

—

Though not the coldly precise definitions

We often converse in,

Perhaps–

Until we can speak like the sunset,

Talk of endings like the twilight,

And move minds like the morning sun–

Ethereal things are best

Left to earth’s explanation.

Sunset Salvation

The world is a soft and warm hue

And the mountain won’t let us look away

Its rock metamorphosing to a glowing state

Reminiscent of eons past,

And the azure sky urges our minds

Toward the infinite

As the evening light on the mountainside intensifies,

Somehow. The mountain is a lit flame,

Our innermost ecstasy

A feeling made of rock and dirt and trees

and things. In the soft shadows of the snowy incline

A faint blue vaguely imitates the sky.

This is a revelatory moment

As a beautiful order emerges.

In this way our silent mountain watches us

Watching it.

And rewards us each passing day.

Though snow and wind may batter,

It remains unchanged.

A promise? Some sort of sign

perhaps? For it guarantees the same new feelings

In meticulously infinite

repetition. Even if it only happened once,

It would be enough.

Yet here,

You can see salvation each evening.

Bernie

Laying peacefully on the bed

He relaxes and,

Like liquid,

Takes the shape of his surroundings

In temporary torpor,

As time cascades around him.

One year old now

Far younger than I

But aging faster.

Our life circuits are different

His accelerating

Then decelerating

Far quicker than mine.

The distinctions are real

Yet fully inexplicable

I’m relatively older as he is young,

Soaked with experience

As he is clean of it,

Yet some day he’ll be old

And I relatively younger.

The ellipses and orbits of our existences

Crossing briefly

Then separating again.

The full depth and meaning of his existence though,

Will still be as inscrutable

As his care and love are indelible.

I imagine it will seem a beautiful and

Sacred mystery

To walk, feed, pet, play fetch, and tease him

For a lifetime,

And still not understand him.

Life in a Two-Day Case Study

Arms outstretched

Legs free

Laying in the grass

The cushioned maw of the earth

Ringed by rocky teeth

Momentarily lit in vivid gold

Peacefully pinned to the side of the earth

All degrees, tilts, speeds, and rotations

Made absolutely and beautifully meaningless

By my own sheer insignificance

Which feels significant

Staring into the twilight

And the atmospheric ecstasy of light

While the world blurs at the periphery

—

Hands on the wheel

Sitting passively as I turn the car

Eyes momentarily distracted

As the world shifts instantaneously

The car grunts as it scallops a curb

–I have still never seen an airbag,

At least the real ones, the cement sack that pummels your face,

As retribution for vehicular intransigence–

Yet still

My head spins

And my nose bleeds

—

Fear and wonder live on the same sliding scale

The experience of life

This insane consciousness

Our tenuous and broken grip on reality

Is terrifyingly beautiful

And dares us to look away

Moving Out

Staring at open space

Remarking how spacious it all feels

And how empty.

Remembering past promises

–Whispered implicitly from vaulted ceiling–

We begin to clean,

Scrubbing hard to remove ourselves

From this borrowed space.

Sweeping up crumbs and memories

Working hard to leave none behind

Wiping away smudged fingerprints

–As if past expectation personified reaches backward for us

Or at least looks back

To scrutinize us one last time–

Until all that is left are Windex streaks

On transparent panes.

Now checking the mail one last time

And finally setting down the keys.

Minds spurred forward

In subtle parallel

To another time

Now only faintly grasped

When keys and rings are surrendered together.

When the spaciousness of existence

Is matched by our untethered souls.

When that borrowed space is cleaned and readied one last time

While we are gracefully removed from it.

When that which should moulder

Moulders

And that which should live

Lives

And that which should move out

Moves on.

A Stilled Dragonfly

I saw a dragonfly today

Lying quietly in the grass.

On closer inspection

It looked perfect

Whole

Beautiful

And still

As if frozen in time

Or just plain frozen.

The first cold spell

Breaking summer’s fever dream,

Taming the heat,

Softening the sun’s rays.

The intricacy and delicacy

Of the dragonfly’s stilled wings

A vivid type

And foretelling

Of latticed ice

And ephemeral frosts

A coming and going,

A changing of the guard,

Passing nearly unnoticed in the night.

No bells tolled

Or bands played

For this single quick departure

–Among many others–

Though elegant as any.

Spring

Is it me or the world?
Who has been asleep these past few months?
The answer should be easy and clear
–And yet
Sometimes I wonder
Is it me or the world?
My hand now warmed by the steel of the bridge over the swollen river,
Whispered on by soft rays.
Was a warmth there during those long, dark months?
And I too afraid to touch it out of some fear of disappointment?
Perhaps not the same warmth
Yet a semblance of it still.
Is it me or the world?
The soft new buds,
The growing green,
Is this only a seasonal change?
Or am I just now beginning to see?
During those long nights of frigid darkness
Was it growing and blooming?
Or have I attained clear sight at just this time
By perfect coincidence?
Is it me or the world?
The swirling and buzzing swallows,
Glimpsed on a sunny day,
Framed against a topaz sky.
Have they been there all along?
Was I unwilling to catch sight of those forms upon white clouds
Amid silent snowfall?
Is it me or the world?
Has my tiring of blindness led to the restoration of sight?
Or is it our tiring?
Have we collectively willed this new season?
Or are we all just now beginning to see
And feel
And touch?