It wasn’t until the flower garden
When I felt the presence of the poet.
In that rarefied air high above the Adriatic
I thought of the roses as incarnations
Of the souls of poems
He’d only imagined or half-created
In the garden of creation’s greater half,
Waiting for a breath of wind to bloom
And to drop their petals on those who dream.
Uncategorized
Venice, 2023
Water climbs steps, stone softens,
People are aquatic and lyrical,
Time is steeped in glass,
Shapes of dreams and light
Wash away and are restored.
Beside her nursling waves
Every hour adds an hour.
On vaporetti, being vanishes.
We are as the mist
And out of mist we appear,
The palaces seem imagined,
The Grand Canal bends time
And the domes of San Marco
Complete the witchcraft of the waves.
From the conservatory
Cellos navigate canals,
Pianos touch keys of water,
From open windows voices glide
As though on seraphic wings.
In a piazza, a ball rebounding,
Echoes its flight
Above the children playing.
Otherwise the city is silent.
Lapping waves, church bells
Melting over the waters,
Boats absorbed by space
And the currents in their wake,
And the deeper you go
Into the lanes of the city,
Andare per le fodere,
The quieter the city seems
Until by a mirror-like canal
Silence flowers from its fabric.
In the floating city
Sleep is pledged to dream.
The elements combine
Like elixirs of well-being,
Elixirs of love.
Sibling Tax
When my brother died
our family resemblance
was sanguine and transmittal,
costing me more than I knew.
Spring Reading
Spring is like a picture book,
each page offers more green,
some gold of the unseen
and a root planted in the spine.
Each page is a leaf on a tree
that turns the day toward the sun
and the book has endless pages
even though the story must end.
Accumulating Wealth
Just because.
You must amass currency for eternity
and be parent of your best memories
and adopt the child inside you
and guide the sick and the blind
as you’d wish to be guided
by the kindness of a blind hand
and to never lose what you love
you must love loss
not only the promise of freedom
but the wealth of it all
Ancient Echoes of Ancestry
Typo revision
Ancient echoes of ancestry
sound waves in the bloodline
like a river of origins
mysterious avowals of place
like stone steps to nowhere
and what reechoes there
brings you back to thought
accepts you back to naught
rejects who you are not
withholds what you were taught
the murmurs of a trace
vestiges in headspace
requests without a you
all antecedents to a who
Qualia
Thankful for autumnal insights,
They open nature’s windows and doors
And like leaves, invite themselves in,
And even blow across our floors.
Thankful even for the fruit that falls
And for the absence in the distance.
I know springtime by its perfect recall
And fear no evil now or in nonexistence.
Photo by Brigitte Ala
In Memory of a Friend
RIP to my old friend,
Too many stories to attend,
Late night discussions,
Love life repercussions,
Readings and road trips
And memorable quips,
Surviving a fire bombing,
Living for poeticizing,
Other wild and surreal times,
A few misdemeanor crimes,
Hilarity and sadness,
A touch of divine madness
That defies death,
Friendship its frozen breath.
The Cost of Writing
Shameful to carve a falcon in granite,
To cage swallows in starless stone,
To mummify crocodile and Nile perch
And bury them in the desert, sacrilege,
To imprison lions in mineral,
Predators trapped in pictographs,
Prey powerless to escape pursuit.
The cobra has no spit in sandstone,
The bee has neither sting nor honey,
The sacred ibis sinks into sediment
And vultures weigh a ton a piece.
Scavengers face their own erosion.
Baboons gaze at stonework sunrises.
Sparrows eat the last grains of light.
Figures of famine begin to fracture.
Cartoons of war crack at the core.
All this weighs humankind’s entelechy
Against the weight of a feather.
Awake or Dreaming
I won’t know if I’m awake or dreaming.
I’ll be carried by water
A long way out into the open.
I’ll feel what the birds feel
When they plunge into the cold.
My bones will never be addressed again,
My ashes will cease all communication
With faith or doubt.
A star will alight on a leaf.
I’ll be at the birth of time,
The beginning of music.
The natal universe will embody me.
