Surely, I have misunderstood,
“Put my head where, you say?”
“But I have bones, don’t you know?”
“I wish I could obey.”
“Now, you say, my feet are too wide?”
“Really, what the heck!”
“You said put my head ‘tween my feet,
have you seen my frickin’ neck?”
“I wasn’t built to stand on my head!”
“What do you mean, ‘We’ll see?'”
“I’m not sure that you’re acquainted
with a thing called gravity.”
I
a gray day,
low dreary clouds hang down;
smoky air
clings to the earth —
all is close; nothing moves
II
tall puffy clouds
drift across the sky
like ship’s bridges,
moving in armada
through skies, calm & blue
III
a blue dome,
unblemished by clouds
if not for birds
looking to the sky
would stop the world
The clouds are on the mountain.
The world feels faint and fading.
I look out in the distance,
but my eyes can’t focus.
I believe the world is out there,
but I can never say for sure.
What’s beyond the shape of
that distant line of trees, there?
Is it something good, or
nothing of the kind?
There’s something in the cave that one can’t know.
It’s scary, but still the mystery becomes
a force that pulls one like an undertow.
One first looks about for a rock to throw
to see if one can loosen the beast’s tongue.
There’s something in that cave that one can’t know.
One baits the beast by moving to-and-fro —
an imagined sound triggers heart’s PUM! PUM!
A force; it pulls one like an undertow.
At the cave’s mouth there lands a big, black crow,
and now one ‘s sure the cave’s depth must be plumbed.
There’s something in the cave that one can’t know.
Then one sees a red eye begin to glow —
the product of a mind that’s overrun
by forces that pull it like an undertow.
Uh-oh, your mind ‘s the cave, that much I know,
and I hear nothing but a steady hum.
There’s nothing in the cave that we can’t know —
just fear that pulls one like an undertow.
I slow my exhalation rate –
my heart begins to slow.
The world then slows, at least my piece
just glides in glacial flow,
& all is well.
The seed of a scream sits somewhere behind my sternum.
It writhed, crawled, or (maybe) floated there with great stealth.
It’s the spark that fires the powder keg.
There’s no old-fashioned fuse,
slowly burning like a sparkler.
You never see the rippling shockwaves,
just the debris —
that detritus that begs,
“What happened here?”
Scream stifling
requires walking around with no air to gasp —
no air to scream.
I
the spider,
binding itself four ways,
in a sham rack
II
spider darts
to the center of its web —
tripped by false finger
III
spider dangles,
slanting in a breeze,
reaching to leaf
As I wade through tall grass,
it seems to be a hodge-podge of random heights,
randomly spaced,
and drooping in random directions,
but when I look out at a distance,
that tall grass smooths the world
into soft rounded shapes.
I guess a lot of things are like that.
Imperfections and differences seen near at hand
vanish into grace and beauty at a distance.
Dance that mad head-on collision
into that which spins like a top.
Let it roll; but don’t make it stop.
Cleave, but don’t create the division.
Don’t strike out for fields, Elysian;
find Eden in being unaffected.
Be none; be all, & thus connected.
Sometimes, there’s might in precision,
but, sometimes, it kills through indecision.
Heed the Way more than the result.
No one ‘s converted by insult.
Stifle the urge to spew derision.
Moral superiority won’t keep you warm;
it’s just illusion of another form.
My memories of autumn are clearest —
the harvest time, when fields had turned amber,
with desiccated stalks – devoid of spirits.
And in the grain, we children would clamber,
’cause cleaning out wagons was time cherished.
Those short days are now brighter and grander.
It was an age of colossal machines,
and kernels of corn and tiny soybeans.
