The Last Line

Darkness in August

 

The heat of the absent day: The cicadas

Are finally silent but the soundless heat

Remains, sourceless. The hot night’s black

Is as baffling as a frozen bright day. Skin

And air, all there is, all thoughts absorbed

By it. In the hissing obsession with my own

Sweat, the sweating air, I’ve found a kind

Of Enlightenment. Eyes closed on the Darkness,

I know the way to wisdom can be found

In feeling the world more than I can stand.

 

 

Can It Be Touched?

 

I felt the bee underfoot before

It stung, the body marshalling

Its chemicals, endorphin-bathed

Senses turned prescient: Furry

Squirming, grass blades suddenly sharp

Between my toes, their intense green

A blow to my eyes, seeking a source—

And there’s the worker’s dying agony.

This is the point of contact, the tactile

Moment when the mind is clear, one-

Pointed and precise. Slapping out

The stinger, I watched the bee die,

And wondered: Will there be Intention

When I touch the thing I sting? Will

I know it, when I give it my life?

 

 

Can It Be Seen?

 

I can see the morning in the distance,

The dawn like a mango skin in mysterious

Unnamed shades of gold, demarcationless

And deepening down to red. Aurora

Is tender, they say. It’s an innocence

Repeated and ever-fading, like the grace

Brought on by the night, remembrance

And forgetting, the thousand moments

Captured and lost in our blinking eyes.

 

 

Returning to the Mountain

 

I’m casting my memory North to the Mountain,

Lost chasing the Present. The many kinds

Of pines know what I need: I’ve never seen moss

So green, so thick, on something so alive.

(I’m seeking Metaphors.) They give good reasons

To be still. I would have understanding,

But that’s why I don’t—the Moss as much a mystery

As the Mountain. I’m lost, after all,

In the manifold ways of the body.

And when I surrendered, I knew the reason.