Stalk-stubbled field dusted white.
Four in the afternoon,
yet drifting into night.
How’s dark descend so soon?
Visible breath eddies
from lips dry and cracked.
Shoulders shrugged up ready —
cold collar cataract.
Light of low sun passes
through the barren hardwoods.
Moving like molasses,
people wear all their soft goods.
The jnani knows:
I’ve skipped stones —
flat stones with rounded edges,
side slung with a snapping twist of torso,
watching the bounce – bounce – bounce of bounding rock.
Choosing a stone,
rolling it in one’s palm,
feeling its heft;
that’s where the skip is made,
in quiet contemplation of the right rock.
Stars framed by the dropped rock chasm in the cave roof.
A smoky man and smoky woman sit,
staring up at that rhomboidal field of stars —
a window to the infinite.
They can’t imagine by what means the picture has changed,
when they awake in the middle of the night.
But neither can they grasp how tongues of flame eat wood and glow heat,
and yet they’ve learned to spark fire.
breezy days
cool air weaves its way
through the pines
birds abound,
passing through again,
heading home
the spring thaw
muddy ground squishes
underfoot
dripping leaves,
patter of bulbous rain;
din of spring
color bursts,
fatal assault upon
dreary days
Heaven and hell are filmed
on a lot inside the skull.
Not shot on location,
nor before a live studio audience.
Only one can be shot at a time —
heaven, or hell.
But the sets and props
always lay about
for rapid re-staging.
The man on a metaphorical soapbox said, “Aren’t you concerned about the afterlife?”
I replied, “My hands are full with the duringlife.”
Of course, nobody thinks about the beforelife,
because that requires acknowledging your parents made a bi-backed beast.
[Not you. You’re a single-backed beast in this story.]
over the boulder fields, and the
stubbled but glassy rice paddies
rises a red ball, the dawning sun
farmers wade, lungi to their knees
bending to plant as the steam rises
day’s just begun, yet needs a breeze
frost on grass
early morning chill
felt through eyes
wave wall warps,
becoming tubular
surf crashes
mountains turn
to smooth, round boulders,
then to pebbles
lost ruins
a temple overgrown,
recycled
slate gray lake
will be turquoise in time
new eyes, new lake
Taken in August of 2019 at Big Almaty Lake
Imagine standing on the train platform,
listening to the distant approaching train,
and you hear a voice say —
unprovoked —
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to shove you.”
I predict you would take two steps back before you try to divine meaning.
And when that speaker objects, saying,
“Brother, you misheard me. I said I’m NOT going to shove you in front of the train.”
He’ll not have improved his credibility through clarity of negation,
especially if he gently lays a fraternal hand upon your shoulder.
It’s like being told to not think of a white bear.
An inseparable seed of murder is sewn into those words.
