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Saturday, April 13, 2013

THE HARP IN THE CIRCLE

FFireflies at Ochanomizu, 1880 - Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Kobayashi Kiyochika

Here is one of mine.

THE HARP IN THE CIRCLE

The hard songs come through
Holes in the night sky,
An impending electricity of purpose
Gathers into patterns, constellations
Remembered from dares we took
As children, stories around 
The night time fires,
The stars, reminders of our bone
Dust congealed within our sorry bodies.

Touched with grace for a moment,
They are able to form a mouth,
Then a music, then a welter of instruments.

We hear them as animal voices,
Frogs and loons, crow talk,
The coughing of a cat,
Slap of fish on quiet water.

Oh let us sing the hard songs.
Songs of goodbye and of parting,
Of winds on the moors and
Mists moving across bogs
where plants eat meat,
Dreaming they are gods,
Where love flees a room
Dense with violins and clarinet
Laments.  Pieces of loves across
Ages of time, dead ancestors
And friends turn from our embrace
To ride the night sky forever,
To pour through shining holes in the night sky.

The Rio Vista bridge, Sacramento River, 2012
photo: D. R. Wagner

Clouds Above Elk Grove, 2013
Photo:  D.R. Wagner

Another one by me.

A PROPOSAL

But I’m walking in the labyrinth 
And the labyrinth begins to wander
Away from me.  I have heard
About a ancient moon from Chaldea
That can decipher the climates
Of the heart and yet refuses
To do so until only the legend of its existence
Remains and even this is confined in a room
So silent it is said to exist only in a mirror.

I will go there and you may go with me
If you would like to see the
Kingdoms conquered, to learn to
Regret that the infinite can exist
In simple stories and uncountable
Rivers that flow through everything
We give meaning to every day
We forget or do not wish to name.

And there you may want to ask this same
Kind of question. Here is a personal souvenir. 
It is a footprint toward the center.
I no longer recall where
I acquired it and since I am going
Out to sea again, I have no use for it
At all.  Perhaps you will make something
Truly memorable of this day without
Getting lost in it.  It is not so easy to do. 

Night Light

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