The Last Line

White Noise

The white gull’s wing on white sky—

The wing beats not like the heart,

A slanting tip, a suggestion of air.

This silent air filled with wave noise,

The noisy waves filled with air—as here.

Look: this is the sound of transgression.

I mark the gull, the gull marks me.

Each distinction in succession

Disappears, and the I inhale the waves,

The sky, the intimate space of the horizon

As if it were a skill and not my nature.

 

 

The Desire for Meaning

All of us a word in this sentence,

Stating the ambiguity of space,

And you can change it but you can’t

Make it change, conjoining

Until you feel the forward moving

Of the sound, see the space

Between the shapes of letters,

White with heavy winter meaning;

Maybe there is clarity there,

Marking the ground of the conceit,

But certainly there is no distinction:

The story of my soul is here—--

The white gull’s wing on white sky.

 

The Maker and the Made

 

The shining Sun that knows no night

Makes it all the same—that’s its grace.

The beautiful collective is pattern, is

Rendered like song and certain clouds

Seen askance, barely more than seen,

Like dreams the next morning: Part

Of a larger whole we can’t know,

Context composed of composite us;

All of us a word in this sentence.

The Poet Imagines (She Is) the Sun

 

This is the day and I am its creator, 

Says Sun s she seems to arch—without movement,

The day faces her always--clouds cast

No shadows on her face: she sees no shadow,

But below the still water is a mirror where

Her face is reflected back to her in her

Self Illumination; it reflects her back

Again in a loop of perfect contemplation

Where she knows she is the only Sun:

Sudden joy, and she flares and again sees

Her joy, what joy looks like—like herself,

Sun in the mirror, the colors of light:

Here there are images immersed in white,

The shining Sun that knows no night.

 

The Solstice Approaches

 

Me all contrast and shaping the line:

The contrast changes; so can I,

Moving the dream around, foam

Upon the surface of the sea

Of my perceptions. Am I mystical?

So says my muse. She lies

On my skin and waits to be called.

 

There may be mud on my boots,

But I can shake it off.

There may be snakes in the garden,

But they kill the rats.

There may be repetition—-

That’s a the refrain.

 

When there is beauty in the movement

From idea to idea, ad infinitum,

That’s where the love is, lucky

As you are in the finish

Of the surface. Does it shine?

Like burnished bronze. It calls:

This is the day and I am its creator.

 

Strophe and Antistrophe

 

Until you give the thing a name, nothing’s there—

You’ll make it as you shape the word, as I do here,

Aware. I’m not telling you how to think or see

The crown of thorns formed by the tongue’s decree,

So full of pattern the pattern’s lost—

 A mark of martyrdom, a song of praise:

A paean or irregular cry—yet it can be a cloak

Or a cover, a blinding with the banal familiar. Savor

The beat of the line, stroke of the pen or key: Say,

“Crow,” and a it’s a miracle or mystery—a

Crow appears, a gift in a word from me to you.

 

The crow appeared, dipped a shoulder,

Fanned his tail, and lighted lightly on the rail.

He cocked his head at the rustle in the grass,

Hopped to the ground, a picture of green

Under black. The sun was lost in the gloss

Of his back as he nudged aside the blades

With his beak, precise and neat, then he

Turned to me his lidded eye and leapt

Away, aware that my seeing him was a dangerous

Making, he all hunger and seeking,

Me all contrast and shaping.

 

Nomenclature

Into the place where the next begins,

The Shiva in me strides to destroy

The past, dancing on light feet, on fire,

The dance of the soul with slow-moving

Limbs and lifting hair, danced each instant

To the beat of the heart, the circle a circuit.

The walls of a working brain contain it

Not—I know I’m keeping you in mystery,

Staring at you now, holding out words,

You wondering what it is, how it began:

Until you give the thing a name, nothing. 

Finding the Horizon

If you leave it be, let it be, and let it come

To the blossoming—it may change with you,

May be the morning desert full of dew,

May be the direction of your gaze, awake

In a different body, the body of your work;

At the end, then, you can touch the eye,

An instant where two senses meet:

I stand behind the sun at each setting

Into the place where the next begins.