REFLECTIONS DISSOLVING

Wyeth - The White Company

Waterhouse - Wind Flowers

Bok - nude in design

REFLECTIONS DISSOLVING

It was as if you had just left the room.

If I looked hard enough I swear I could

See the imprint of your heel on the carpet.

The door was slightly ajar, being held

By a breeze for a few moments, sunlight

Leaking into the room to dress the walls.

I stood up next to the bed waiting to hear

A voice, any voice that would indicate you

Had actually been there.  I must have been

Sleeping, holding the ribbons of dreams

In my hands like precious myrrh or water.

When I looked across the room to the mirror

I could see you dissolving into its surface.

I must have been wrong.  Such a thing is not

Possible.

A VISITATION BY SEA SPIRITS

Waterhouse - Miranda

Illustration for The Tempest

Simi - 1910-Dreamer's Tale-Bird of the River

A VISITATION BY SEA SPIRITS

They were lighting small lanterns

All the way across the headlands.

Ships were coming.  They

Had been seen from the pilot hill.

Bright flares on the tops

Of their masts.  The lights

They carried were of many colors and

Occasionally shot bursts

Of colored flame into

The high atmosphere

Illuminating the bottom 

Of the clouds.

The coming of these ships

Had been foretold but

They were not expected

To arrive in the dead of winter.

The children had begun

Behaving strangely about

A month ago and the Teal

Gulls were seen on the 

Edges of the Father glade.

At night the booming 

Of the fisher bells

Could be heard at

Curious hours of the night.

There was a hesitant

Music coming from the

Taverns that was neither

Joyful nor sad.  It held a

A great sense of longing in its notes.

We were unable to determine 

If there were words to the songs.

The crowds grew well into the night.

The ships arrived much past midnight.

Were these sailors Gods

Then, plucked from the night

And to be proclaimed

Throughout the land?

Their garments were magnificent.

Some of us could see 

Them, some could not.

Quickly there were stories of them

Before the morning came

People were waiting upon

Them for answers.

The ships glittered with lights.

In the morning they were but

Hulls abandoned and gray.

Peopled by shades the same gray

As the forged bullets with which

the world infects itself.

There was no conversation.

There were no oracles.

Glimmers ran softly up the sails

Like fairy lightning and

Nothing was forthcoming.

All day they sat in the harbor,

A kind of fungus on the water.

By nighttime fires were

Started on their decks.

They burned with sickly

Colors and drove flights

Of dark birds around

And around their sails

Even as they burned.

On the following morning,

Ashes on the water.

The children packing 

Their lunches and

Heading off for school

Whistling tunes and

Singing songs we 

Had never heard before.

By the end of the week

We were once more

Upon the beautiful

Hills gazing out to sea.

RIVERS OUT

This poem is from THE DIMENSIONS OF THE MORNING originally published by Tom Kryss at BLACK RABBIT PRESS. San Francisco 1969.  In 2009 the book was re-published by RATTLESNAKE PRESS, POLLACK PINES, CA. as Rattlesnake reprint #1

RIVERS OUT

She was thinking about the sky again.

All the sky things: clouds, tall horses

with silver manes and breath the temper

of all winds, stars and their small brothers,

rain and its sister sea, jewels and the

hopes of endless halls, of fish in them.

She thought the sky around and the spirits

of earth came to her, colored robes whirling,

speaking strange tongues and fishing out the sky

with questions of themselves, clicking and hammering

like typewriters, like men in the streets tearing

holes, like gunbursts that slam into the page

and die there, never showing their ugly faces

to man as more than words.

The sky changed, the robes descended and

long rain, the time of unrest, the gathering

of ways to one way began and she was sea

in herself, her many arms depending.

THE HARP IN THE CIRCLE

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.

THIS ROOM OF BRIGHT MORNING

Scott G. Brooks

THIS ROOM OF BRIGHT MORNING

This room of bright morning,

Full of the drift come down from

The ways we have learned to speak with one

And another.  Oh yes, there were times

When one could stand upon the ramparts,

Whistling the rain down the windows, not

Caring what might be blown in to our

Sad feet.  Now, it seems things are different.

The cat crosses the alley.  It has no mind

For the dealings of man.  It has

Seen the light of oceans of fish.  They pour

Past its nose and fill the doorways of the piers

With a kind of knowledge you and I can only

Dream of; a wishing for the smells of our ancestors.

Oh sweet burden of standing this way

Before the morning.  Full of each other, the way

We want to be, I look out past the rain and its pools,

Past the drift of song caught in the puddles.  I am

Here with you once again.  We seem to understand

The language all this world noise makes.

It has a clarity known only to those who have

Loved a long time.  I do not recall any time ever

Being like this one.  Perhaps I am mistaken.

Perhaps this music is only the sound of being

Ignorantly profound, listen to the heart.

TALKING TO FISH

Agnes-Boulloche-Ainsi-Rats-Vivent-2009

TALKING TO FISH

They do not know what water is.

They think the world is dancing

Constantly.  Songs are ecstasy as they

Enter their bodies completely.  They do

Not need ears to hear them.

o

We seldom see them in trees,

But there they are, thousands of them,

Decorations of the Amazon jungle

In flood.  Leaves are the souls

Of fish, sculptures of fish

Never previously seen.  Here

In the high jungle they become gems,

Tales of the elders.  fish.

o

We used to walk along the edges of the smaller lakes in the summer.  The crappie and small perch would rise in the evening and jump at flies or gulp bugs that fell into the water.  They would make concentric circles on the surface of the water, soft splashes in the twilight.  It was a language.  We had no idea what the fish were saying but they were saying.  Maybe it was about the heat or the rain coming the next day or what they had seen beneath the surface.  All those years later without a word yet so much of blood and its salt, reeds and thin lines trolled through the water, the quiet that came from eyes that never close, from pressure on lateral lines, from talking on and on to fish.

They do not know what water is.

They think the world is dancing

Constantly.  Songs are ecstasy as they

Enter their bodies completely.  They do

Not need ears to hear them.

o

We seldom see them in trees,

But there they are, thousands of them,

Decorations of the Amazon jungle

In flood.  Leaves are the souls

Of fish, sculptures of fish

Never previously seen.  Here

In the high jungle they become gems,

Tales of the elders.  fish.

o

We used to walk along the edges of the smaller lakes in the summer.  The crappie and small perch would rise in the evening and jump at flies or gulp bugs that fell into the water.  They would make concentric circles on the surface of the water, soft splashes in the twilight.  It was a language.  We had no idea what the fish were saying but they were saying.  Maybe it was about the heat or the rain coming the next day or what they had seen beneath the surface.  All those years later without a word yet so much of blood and its salt, reeds and thin lines trolled through the water, the quiet that came from eyes that never close, from pressure on lateral lines, from talking on and on to fish.

o

THE WAY THE COUNTRY MOVES

Another poem from CRUISIN' AT THE LIMIT, Selected poems 1968-78, published by Duck Down Press, Fallon, NV. 1982.

THE WAY THE COUNTRY MOVES

Grey clouds of unknowing

if the answer were just

it would hold up its head

like the rest of us.

I could talk about her hair, the way the country

moves in it, making cities and towns shine oh heart

with its rose, oh reminder of the weaver, sayer of the name.

Out she came from Belvador w’hands that sang themselves

into the air and gathered to her animals and birds, sparrows

in rings around her good feet and loved them all she did.

And wind across the desert under stars, they come and go

with their bands of dogs, travelers to the other fair,

I’ve seen you there among them, caught at your ankle

and tossed you down laughing to the silks, camel smell

on your body, you said you were the watering maid

and I was son to whom?  It comes and goes so quickly

I miss the shape of your foot, the lashes of your eyes

so quick there.

Who has in hand the answer fair

I would give them to the fire

who has in hand the dreamer’s light

You’re well to call them liar.

Come out with me, come out with me

the night the stars are flame

all opened up like rose and tooth...

it shall not come again.

And what then this bird that rides above the words?

A sparrow or a dove it matters not,

it flies, it flies, it flies.