…2019
There are mirrors, throughout the house
reflection of whatever passers-through
and flashes that windows let,
taken so easily in as if
interior-exterior were passing
mis-impressions.
**
like A R Ammons, my backyard
is my nation-state
and perhaps the thousand-footer
a hundred yards or so beyond—
what else: well, you may ask
who A R Ammons is:
**
barges lay distant
on the bay
rain drops
**
the experience of experience
holds its own
**
“Firm ground is not available ground.”
—A R Ammons
**
The storm comes to turn the lights off,
leaves candles in place of stars,
heavy blankets, flash lights,
robes and bared feet padding
chilled floors leading to a toilet
that still flushes.
**
Sleeping deep
throughout a storm-torn night,
waking late
and long alone
where hours alone
take me—
waking from hours’ spell,
we’re told, will toll for real.
**
—A R Ammons…
“…we really are in a poetically inexhaustible
world, inside and out.”
**
You can follow your own steps
back to the well.
But where our feet have not yet pressed
is where something new can happen:
how the water tastes
there.
**
Verbal encounters of the first kind
enquire of both parties
where they’ve come from
to reach here, but do not demand
spoken answers.
**
—Nature’s way
The oranges on the tree
across the street
ripen, fall and roll
often the entire distance
to our side,
and if not damaged
or crushed by parking cars,
are recovered, peeled
and eaten.
**
Tiny pink-red petals
blink from beneath
the tangled green
hiding the fence
holding it all.
**
The Buddha on the altar is wood,
from Bali, folded legs firmly planted,
holds the left hand horizontal in the lap,
the right, center chest perpendicular
with the grain. Eyes lowered,
not closed, thumbs meeting tips
of curled index fingers—impervious
to successive clouds of incense,
all comings and goings, waits
without calling my name.
**
—The arrangement
The car takes me
from A to B and back—I take it
from tune-up to tune-up,
fuel stops in-between.
**
In times like these, continue
doing what you love best,
even, especially
if you can’t remember what
that is.
**
Letting go attentiveness,
letting attentiveness do,
loosens loneliness
into light.
**
Wondering
what it was
he sought, he
thought, nothing
which made it
all the more
illusive.
In this world
not wanting
more is odd,
is suspect—
doubt arrived
but found no-
thing wanting.
**
Flowers do not visit other fields,
but grow with all their might
for themselves: their contribution
to the fields.
**
A R Ammons,
—from “Poetics”…
…
“not so much looking for the shape
as being available
to any shape that may be
summoning itself
through me
from the self not mine but ours.”
