NEW MATHMATICS

NEW MATHEMATICS

They are busing everyone

With new ideas to a single

Room.  It is huge.  They are

Assigned a single letter of the 

Alphabet and are told to 

Explain themselves.

I don’t go.  I am able only

To speak in numbers.

Some of them are significant.

I recall there used to be

Noises coming from the sun.

I thought it was music.

A single wave breaks in

The collective imagination.

The room of ideas is opened.

It is filled with the sea.

Language floats upon it

Like garbage.

I am asked to explain this in numbers.

These are visual calculations.

They are made with language.

I, FOR ONE CHOOSE RAIN

I, FOR ONE, CHOOSE RAIN

The bones were all disordered and covered

With a fine layer of dust.  We were as 

Surprised as morning that we had found

Anything at all.

We heard a voice crying out.

It sounded like it knew

Our names but we could not 

Be sure.  We could not be sure

Of anything.  A green belt around

A pool of water, both deep and 

Clear with a black bottom

That made the surface dance.

And it was exclaiming something

Very important.

The entire scene was an accident

Of the tide.  A blind wind and a blind

Water forced up to make a statement

That could never find words

But which would stand as firm

As God’s promise to a blind man

That he would see again.  But no one

Ever saw.  It became a clipped 

Presence, never offering comfort.

I, for one, choose rain

As a veil.  I will only see

What it allows; the edge

Of an alley, a man hurrying by

Bearing a large vessel that smells

Like coffee.  He has long

Mustaches and wears a turban.

I had a fever and forget how the thing

Ended.  She asked if there was real

Fire in my heart and I showed her

the pile of sticks I had gathered

To feed it.  She looked deep

Into my eyes.  I could see

Door after door closing, until there

Was only me and her once again.

Bones scattered all over the floor.

A HALLOWEEN

HALLOWEEN

She filled her hands

With winter light and October's

Crows, a calcophany of wings

Against the blue of early evening.

Children used to come here.

There were hills and copses and woods

Challenging the imagination with shadows

Caught alive in stories of the Fall.

The road ended at her mouth,

Full of weeds and drifting terrors

Searching for a body to accompany

During the dark evenings of the waning year.

Shaken, she reaches for the twilight

As if it were a vessel of some kind,

Easy on any sea, unmoved and with sails

Painted in the colors of forgetting.

To dream was to vanish into memory,

The twinkle of an eye,

The brush of a hand across a shoulder,

No place for sharing stories, whispering.

This time of year is full of stuff

Like this, fine of hand and bathed

In a crystal construct made of wood,

Made of fire, made of singing.

She was not given to understand

More of this than her hands covered

With the cool and brilliant light.

She wishes us luck as we continue

Toward the shoreline, the same light

Glinting  off the water, infecting

Our minds, making everything in life

A challenge and the turning of the days

Borne on the backs of black birds

Exploding time with cackling and shrieking.

FALLING INTO THE FIELD OF TIME

 Fairy

William Ricketts Sanctuary 

Pink Cloud, Locke, Ca  - D.R. Wagner

FALLING INTO THE FIELD OF TIME

From the edge of the boat 

We could see the stars

Reflected in the water.  We knew the

Many names of the moon and sang

To the fishes there below, the ones

Who swallowed stars and dreamed

The night sky beneath the sea.

The fish believe we are their rapture

As we sing.  We believe the fish

To be gems of priceless value,

Wandering through the mind,

Bearing the names of the seas.

That night we slept on deck

Listening to the wind and waves

Tell stories of fire on

Islands so far away that one

Can but learn their names,

To visit these places is simply

Not possible in a single lifetime.

When dawn came we could no longer 

Tell if we were male or female.

Deer gather at our feet.  We

Feed them from bowls.  We see

Death with its flocks of birds

Wheel and circle overhead.

We decide to make music forever.

We dance and sail on.

WHERE I WORK

a snapshot of most of my studio in Locke, CA where 

I'm doing much of my writing these days.

THE PERFECT BALANCE OF THE SPIRAL

This poem was originally published in my book A LIMITED MEANS OF EXPRESSION, 2011 - Rattlesnake Press, Pollack Pines, CA.  It is out of print.   ISBN 978-0-9834433-0-8

The Perfect Balance of the Spiral

I started out to tell you something,
Something of the morning, the exclamations
Birds orchestrate as marks of color
Against the insistence light makes
Upon us as we move slowly away
From sleep and into the crisp
Air of Autumn before everyone
Is awake and we can sit for a moment
As the day establishes itself in our
Minds as something substantial but untouchable.

But I got lost turning around and
Around on the lawns far from
The house, eyes open, seeing that
Small grove of trees,then the
Lane toward the house, the creek,
Its stone bridge, the two hills
With the folly upon the higher one
Trying to find a classical landscape
This close to the city, finally,
The house itself with the window
Glass looking golden and unreal
As I reeled round and round.

Perhaps a song would help here
But the whole thing will not stop
Turning and the earth itself knows
that and continues to throw up
Wonder upon wonder into our being
Here in early October.  It has its
Own music.  The birds still sing
In the nighttime and we have a piece
Of the whitest moon to take to 
Our beds as we move through the
Picture galleries and the night views
Of the fountains from the second
Floor toward the garden.

We hear string music come from afar.
Closing our eyes for a moment
We find the balance once again,
The bowing to each other, the delicious
Fragility of the dance.

THE STARRY RAMS

COLD RIVER PRESS will be doing a chapbook of my work.  It will be titled ETERNITY REMEMBERED. I am delighted they are doing this and am posting a poem from the chapbook here today.

THE STARRY RAMS

The starry rams that vex

The starry plow and trundle

Cross the heavens at the edges of the hex

Signs, tipping huge and noisy beacons

Toward the table of the morning,

Lower head and butt, no warning,

But continue toward the dawn.

Oh sparkle, clean and burning,

Clustered in the arms of the sun

That makes no claim to

Planets. Air like flying junk

That litter space as it races

To the limits of what is known.

The starry rams perplex us

And the starry rams suspect us

Of having forgotten them.

They left us perhaps, we left them

And see them only in the heavens

Or caught inside a wish

They could be less than poetry,

They could be less than verse

Or could become a simple myth

And the whole construction burst.