The Last Line

Sun Sonnet

 

The sun’s scrawling leaf shadows on the grass—

Clapping out a beat to the harmonious wind,

Watching underneath the tree: Me. Delight.

 

Dead twigs like busted guitar strings twang

Among the living…Grounded in Los Angeles,

With summer coming and an uncertain fate,

Making decisions every second—to breathe,

 

Even; it’s a mess, this place and Being in it. But

There’s the shadow writing to read, the music

Aeolian, and The Maker Sun to study in the steady

Discipline of Doing Nothing, the way the many

 

Moments pass without intention, like the Sun

Making leaves (and simulacra leaves) by shining.

 

 

 

 

The Rain Thief

 

The thyme creeps along under the rose

In soil impoverished with use — Early morn,

And clouds are gathering. . .West. Heat rises

From the other side of the Eastern hills

So swiftly. Desert there, Rose / Thyme here;

The systems clash, and the rain vanishes.

Even from such distances can solace be stolen.

The Temple of Memory

 

The water is a place of edges, silvered Winter sun

Defining distances, an illusion: I am here, yet I stand

Watching the black kites hunt the ring-neck parakeets.

They hide among stories of Gods, high in the gopurum—

The mirror of memory and present tense, also places

Of edges and illusion, distinction and disappearance:

I am no longer here, and This is an event that is now past

For me, and will be for you. All the same, and without us,

The winter sun is shining on the Bay, and the Siva watches

The hawks hunt the parrots as the edges vanish into night.

 

 

Realizing Sycamores

 

The machine of meaning turns, and I look

Down the generations of its sense: Word,

Self-making, the thing that meets itself

When it seeks its definition. I look again,

Up into the sycamore branches, bare now,

And lines of shadow cross my face unseen.

It’s not, I suddenly know, knowing anything,

But instead removing what’s not real.

The sycamore, or its shadow; word or word.

Does it matter? This is all I can do, can make.

But what is given me comes in whispers,

The dark markings of the unmanifest.

The limits of understanding are there:

I am in the circumference of my skin.

November Occurrence

 

Mid-morning light on the East side of the branch

Much the same as mid-afternoon on the West—

There’s an equality of time, an ease of motion

In November, like being destinationless while lost.

Even sounds, even shadows pause—and the dew

Lingers late into the morning. The trellis holds

The trumpet vine while it waits, and the harrier

Pauses above the vole’s den, a pendant.

The loss of an hour now seems a little thing

Compared to Spring’s insistence, so I’m

Wasting it, watching nothing in a willful way.

It’s Autumn’s blessing, a moment of contentment

Cast off from Being like the iridescence

On the blackbird’s back, shining unaware.

 

Autumn No. 48

 

The sunlight slips into a more golden range

So imperceptibly—but it slips, and of a sudden,

There it is. I ask, How are you feeling?

And I see acceptance in your eyes,

Fine on your lips. It doesn’t matter at all

That the maple’s red. The starlings

Will stay all Winter, and the water

Of the River will receive the sky’s Image:

It’s the time of year to receive—Such

Sweetness and ease in the shortening day,

The lengthening shadows—you can’t help

But relinquish to the paradigm of the leaves:

The thing that flourishes must attend to its end.

But not yet.

 

Self Study

 

The open ended question of experience keeps

Me on the return path, path of the curving Line

That will meet itself one day, become a circle—

I know this, even though I cannot see its form:

The form of all things: That is me, and for this

I came, to turn my attention the right direction,

And turn so that my attention will return to me.

 

 

Truth and Unbelief

 

The Truth is a dim and narrow place

Compared to the expanse of the Uncertain;

The light on Your face allows me to embrace

Opposites. What will I find if I seek Faith?

It, too, is like the location of the horizon: There,

Then it recedes as I approach. Presence

Or Absence, It makes no difference, in the End.

 

 

 

Summer Rain

 

The summer rain left us with a sense of the miraculous:

The sky at sunset like a Rothko, soft taste of air in a sated

Garden. I watched the light like a mirror, let it define me,

And faded to darkness. Then I was a clear vase of memory,

The air and the rain the same, the bands of red and white

My last gesture, sign of departure—It made the night

A fluid black, the clean atmosphere showing clearer stars--

The summer rain felt like a miracle: Rothko sky, sated soil.

 

 

The Cicadas

 

Sound like a river, silence as their source and sea.

The summer light is there; even with closed eyes

It becomes the translucence of skin, the song

Of the blood in August. I wait to find a meaning

In the heavy city air, the sky encasing us in silver blue—

 

Trying to finally hear in insect song my own presence:

Be thou me. A borrowed line, a borrowed self, pretending

To be an origin, but only an echo. . .What happens

With each failure is yet another now that trails

Off like the last few thrumming thoughts before sleep.

 

So far away they seem, the memories of waking to joy;

I’m facing the wrong direction, perhaps—aiming away

Instead of not aiming at all, the nature of natural music,

Singing because I can, to the empty, heavy air of silver blue.