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