When the light goes out
In that city on the hill,
The message will still echo
But the words will come up empty
And the chalice will be spilled.
When the waters break,
The labor pains of the new earth
Will shake the old until it passes on
And becomes new.
The consciousness of those who see this shift
Will split in two.
I remember the rosebush
That climbed up the front porch
And filtered the afternoon sunlight
Onto our laps where it curled like a cat
That was wrapping its tail in its paws for a nap.
I remember the effort
It took to remove the decades old
Underground kingdom of roots
That anchored its visible network of thorns
To the earth where its petals
Would fall one by one
Under foot.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes as a parent, but one tactic I chanced on that seemed to work was to focus more on shaping future behavior than on denigrating present behavior. In a way I think it gave my kids the notion early on that their continued change and growth was a given. For example, I would always make them try a bite of a new food but if they said they didn’t like it, they didn’t have to eat it. But if there was something I expected them eventually to eat, like a salad, I would say, “Oh you don’t like that yet? You will when you’re older,” and then drop it. Then they would have the idea in their head and often decide to prove themselves older by proudly announcing that they wanted to try salad again, and now like it.
I think that’s a tactic we can use on ourselves, too. When you come to the point of recognizing that you must change something in your life that you know will be difficult to change, sometimes it helps simply to declare to yourself, “This is something I’m eventually going to have to change.” You can’t actually make the change until you fully commit to it— and you won’t know you’re there until you suddenly know you are there— but that’s a big step in getting there.
Time’s not a gift of arithmetic—
What I take from my store
Can’t be added to yours—
It can only be shared—
When it is, we’re aware
Of its absence,
If anyone asks us.
This morning at the water’s edge
Near the wastewater plant at 10 am,
I saw three friends with a bonfire smoking
And music playing on someone’s phone
And I kept on running and left them behind
And went back to my house and drew the blinds.
I cleaned all the floors and prepared for the week,
And I thought about scheduling several things.
And the river looks more the same than not
As it did on the day McKinley was shot
And those who live by it know better than most
The way that time turns us all into ghosts.
With the world on the brink
All the borders are breached
While new fences enclose
Smaller and smaller spaces
And even the smallest
Conversations become gated.
The walls that we build
In between our own thoughts
Find their way to our hands
As we carve the world up.
Black pools with cerulean
Beneath the trees at summer’s end.
This season’s leaves are laughing in
The breeze that leaves them on the limb.
The memories of inner rings
Are buried deep beneath the sleep
Of winters they have never seen.
Their inky shadows hug the cool
And pull the dark into the wood.
Thank you for the sacraments
And your stewardship of
The sacred texts. And thank you, too,
For handing me, while I was lost
In lucid dreams, a box so dark I could not see
Its contents until I was older.
Sometimes I sit and think of you,
But do not turn my head or halt
Because I know that if I do,
I’ll turn into a pillar of salt.
The moon and the ocean
Have pulled on each other’s
White cords for as long as
The earth’s been in motion,
And it has been slowing
Its spin as if answering
Unspoken questions
About its intentions.
Gravity can pull in
Bodies in motion
And hold them in orbit
Until they can absorb it.
When you think about how narrow the scope of human vision is in any single moment— how small your actual perspective is— it’s amazing to realize how much synthetic data your brain adds to your memories. I have many memories that I recall from up above rather than from inside of my body, even though I was a part of the scene. How does my mind conjure so cleanly a perspective that I never inhabited? When and how and why does my visual cortex set about fashioning an omniscient perch from which to view my own lost history?
And for that matter, why does humanity so often presume to narrate its own history from an omniscient point of view? What is it in us that so easily slips into an outsider’s perspective and escapes our own? Even in our memories, we escape the confines of our corporeal being.
*************************
The lust for freedom always needs a boundary to transgress,
Whereas a freedom freely given provides for rest.
Take me with you to the hall of mirrors
You retreat to when you think that
I see through you. Let me shine
My light on all your solid edges that you fear
Are disappearing when you’re near me.
Let me stand beside you
While you learn to see yourself anew.
When the nights grow short
And the ground sheds the heat
It’s absorbed from the sun
In the circle of days,
There will form every once
In a clear, still night
A mist that hangs low
And close to the ground.
And it cloaks all the beings
Who already know
How to wrap the night
Around themselves.
Some people, too, share this
Curious gift—
They know how and when
To be wrapped in the mist.
Perhaps it is my future self
That stands behind a creaking pine
Along the hill that, in the sun,
Becomes a slow and labored climb.
I hope she sees that, though I slow,
I do not stop my quest to meet her
At the top, although I know her quiet knack
Of vanishing before we meet—
It is a skill I have honed well
And taught to her to spite myself.
I’ve seen a thousand visages
Bloom like day lilies
For an instant on
Your features and
In each one there’s this
Completeness, like a poem
That ends just like this.
When I run, and the metronome of my steps and breath begin to tick, some autonomic function in my brain begins involuntarily to count each step. I have trained this part of my brain to count in increments of 180 steps, as this roughly correlates to1 minute; 8-9 minutes is a mile. (And it's helpful that 180 is divisible by 3, because I take 3 steps for each inhale and 3 steps for each exhale). If I am mindful, I can tick off the miles with rough accuracy without looking at my watch. But despite the automatic nature of the counting itself, my ability to maintain focus long enough to remember which 180-step block I am in is hopelessly flawed; my mind always wanders to other topics and I forget where I am.
As my concentration slips and I realize I have lost my simple, monotonous thread, two separate mental functions-- perhaps best referred to as my conscious and unconscious mind-- begin to work along separate lines. My unconscious mind is a great flatterer; it would always have me believe that I have run further than I actually have. Knowing this from long experience, my conscious mind makes corrections; it backs up the mental count; forces me to start counting anew in the middle of a cycle; it over-corrects for the weakness of the subconscious mind.
Both my subconscious and my conscious mind are aware of their deceptions, which lean in opposing directions and attempt to cancel each other out. They seek, through compromise, to convene at the point of truth-- seek to perceive accurately and without external assistance, the position of my body as it moves through time-- an inner and outer harmony achieved through the rough, inescapable mechanics of self-deception.
To arrive at a correct understanding is perhaps not to avoid self-deception but to understand fully its mechanics, and to correct for them.
Eve
I am that She who slaked her need
Underneath the apple tree,
Who cursed the whole of womankind
Through our yet unbroken bloodline.
“Yes I would do it all again,”
Say both pride and humility—
And that is because the two are one
As long as we continue to bleed.
Sprung fully formed from the mind of a god
And an Apgar score that’s off the charts,
She can see the world in six dimensions at once,
Tracing every intention back to its heart.
She will give you a gift that will meet you halfway
In becoming who you’re meant to be,
And she’ll make you a spider
If you sit down beside her
And dare to think you could ever outshine her.
She crouches behind opposing perspectives
Then holds up a mirror to show your reflection.
Perhaps at twelve, as Mary perhaps was,
I may have said yes out of love,
Or at least I would have thought that’s what it was.
Consent, to faith, is a strange drug.
When Gabriel left and silence fell,
And the impossible came to dwell
In such a space as small as me,
I may have felt the infinite
Reflecting on the price of love
That weds it to its opposite—
How could it ever (always) be
That women house such mystery?
Sprung fully formed from the mind of a god
And an Apgar score that’s off the charts,
She can see the world in six dimensions at once,
Tracing every intention back to its heart.
She will give you a gift that will meet you halfway
In becoming who you’re meant to be,
And she’ll make you a spider
If you sit down beside her
And dare to think you could ever outshine her.
She crouches behind opposing perspectives
Then holds up a mirror to show your reflection.
