Thoughts, photographs, poetry, music etc.
THE PRESENT
They broke the early edge of morning,
Filling the positions of the day almost
Immediately. Great platoons of moments
Forming ranks, files, minute by minute,
Hour by hour. There were so many
Ready to greet the dawn that it became
Impossible to predict what might occur
Between morning and evening. Love
Songs rose spontaneously from myriad
Places, decisions and resolutions assembled,
Sure of success. It was as if everything
That could happen on any given day
Would happen today for certain.
This went on every morning, no matter
What; Winter, Summer, Spring and Fall,
A seemingly endless parade. Surely there
Must be something to all this activity.
We stood on the hilltops watching.
We looked from out our windows.
We greeted one another and discussed
Every event as it unfolded itself. Each
thing seemed new. We hardly noticed
How it all worked until it became
Necessary to remember where we
Were and what was happening to us.
By then our joy had moved to the children.
We continued this way for an indeterminate
Amount of time and then it was over.
At first this seemed strange. Later we
Involved ourselves in the making of it.
We became the things we observed.
CRANES
The slow high step the cranes
Make seems of little consequence.
This is the beautiful. It lives
In the simplest of things.
We are listening to love songs.
They fill the mouths of birds.
They fit our ears perfectly.
The river gets very wide east of here,
Doesn’t seem like a river at all.
Eventually it isn’t. It becomes the
Great Lake that it is and finds
Its way through a thousand islands,
Rapids and gains intent to find the sea.
Here no one seems to notice. It’s a
Difficult place to live. Things like
Those cranes are a fine dessert that
Is too seldom found. Still we
Wait here watching. We are listening
To love songs. They fit our ears perfectly.
CEREMONY
So many voices. A chorus
Speaking together. There is
Grace in the way the words
Form here. We have no idea
What is being said. But there
It is, pure and outlandish
As late June with its
Dreams of water and Summer
Love caught in its loins.
We walk along the sidewalks
On the edges of the park.
The fireflies are just starting
To be seen so we sit and wait
For the dark to consume everything.
I am in love with you, you
The one reading this. I want to
Take you in my arms and touch
You intimately, make love with you
With great ceremony and unbridled lust,
To be a chorus within you, not
Singing at all, but speaking so we
May hear in our core, abandoning gender,
Fine and carnal, pleading another kind
Of Summer, another mouth upon yours
Where speech stops attending us
Where all becomes sensation,
Steam rising from the ocean surface
Even before dawn is aware of it.
FAULT LINES
Sometimes the fault line, sometimes the fault.
There will be consequences for all the actions
Taken here, the wind, the rain, the mornings without
Incident when we neglected to differentiate between
One day and another, believing each day was just
Like another because our surroundings remained
the same. One cannot trust to consciousness
To explain change. People die totally unnoticed.
The kind of music they loved may appear in a dream
Shifting between call and response, Ol’ Hannah,
then that sound of hammer against huge steel nails.
We struggle and swim ashore. “Are you having
A good time?’ The ground beneath our feet
Opens and the tectonic plates move slightly,
Not much, just enough to bring down Los Angeles.
Our feelings are electric. They belong to the realm
Bounded by animals, guarded by animals, surrounded
By others who bear a resemblance to ourselves but
Will always remain other. We still choose to call them
Brother, afraid that if we do not we will no longer be able
to read the book, stand in lines with them waiting to get in.
This is a form or praying or so I am told by the swirl
time puts on on our presence here. There will be
consequences for all the actions taken here.
Sometimes the fault line, sometimes the fault.
