On the cusp of each journey that matters,
a mingling of wonder and fear flushes the body.
If you made the journey,
wonder outshone fear.
Death is a journey.
I can’t tell you whether it’s
-a journey to oblivion
-a journey to spread one across a web of consciousness
-a journey to be uploaded into another body
-a journey to Heaven or the Elysian Fields
I don’t know,
but I don’t have to know.
All I have to do is be ready for the journey, and
Let my wonder burn brighter than my fear.
My brain has a label-maker that pumps out bifurcated tags for everything it experiences:
good… bad…
pleasurable… painful…
in-group… out-group…
familiar… strange…
It pastes these labels all over my world, a world once painted in feeling. But once a label is applied:
-I think I know the labeled thing.
-I can’t really see the labeled thing.
-And, I can no longer be awed by the labeled thing.
As it happens, my brain also contains an inner mischievous boy with a penchant for picking at the corners of those labels. And whenever one comes loose, he looks around the joint, and — if the coast is clear — he rips away the label and runs. Running not to escape punishment, but to find the optimal distance for that thing’s radiated splendor.
And sometimes when that boy sees another staring intently into the distance as if hoping to see magic or a fireworks display, the boy wonders why that one doesn’t watch the magic near at hand. But they can’t see it. It’s invisible to them. And instead they suffer blank hope, drowning amid a sea of bliss.
on a fence rail,
i saw a scorpion —
dead, but menacing
a dog nudges
its dead companion,
whimpering
after life,
no one contemplates the
Afterlife
grasping the sword
like nothing depends upon
everything
when you accept
that you, too, will be food,
death holds no sway
When they’re dancing down the alleyway
in their death’s head masks,
neither join them nor delay them,
nor stop each one to ask,
“Is there salvation down this way?”
That old valley was too narrow —
too dark for larks and for sparrows
who overflew the shadowy village,
neither stopping to peck nor to pillage,
but just wondering who worshipped
shadow more than sunshine.
orange sunset,
casting the lake afire,
cooling to dusk
gibbus moon,
fooling so many souls
who thought you full
shadows thin
as the sun creeps higher
then fatten
tugging seas,
the moon’s unseen hand
is at work
It was too early to be dark
-even in winter
-even at this latitude.
A cloud of cataclysm drifted overland.
A distant hilltop remained illuminated,
the dirty gray sheep’s wool and green grass
warmed by yellow light.
But the shadow line glided nearer,
climbing the hill with steady purpose,
soon it would swallow the hilltop and its grazing sheep.
They’d become the dream sheep counted to fall asleep.
But no one was going to sleep this time of day
-cloud or no cloud.
waterfall,
too high to flow, stretches,
hanging mists
crawling snake
in undulating glide
lazes through
taiji lady
does she drift slowly, or
slow the world?
gravity grabs
and slings a comet
soft hand unseen
glazed stone
water rolling over rock
sculpting pebbles
There’s an orange that warms my soul
when sprightly fires are dead.
It blazes back to old school days,
or the day that I was wed.
It piles the smiles on frozen faces
when they think about long gone places.
amid ruins,
sitting on a worn stone,
knowing ancients
valley below
suggested but unseen
who hauled water?
dry stacked stones
placed with precision
by masters
jungle swallowed,
spreading like a fire, but
imperceptibly
tell me, Old Stone,
what secrets did you witness
post-chisel?
