Curious
how a three-chord ambient sound
https://alphaphile.files.wordpress.com//03/tryptich-ambience.mp3
repeating over and over
for a half hour or more at a time
can hold me –
Major mode largo
effexed for deep tone and soft transitions
moving like a quiet slow-rolling river
in no hurry to get anywhere
My soul to flow like that
So give me that home
where the mysteries roam
and the violins quietly play
where never is heard
a discouraging word
and my mind is not clouded all day
it’s of no consequence
the bare black trees in winter’s drab stasis,
vertical snags frozen in tableau like gnarled crones
all black-souled and twisted
but no consequence to me,
nor the solitary heron still standing, still
stolid sentry in a field’s dead center under grey sky
watching from the corner of his eye that sliver of blue
drifting this way if it will alter his view
or mine,
for my wife thinks dead wood is beautiful
and maybe she’s right
but my mind is on gnarled twisted humans
in their extremity frozen alone
in fields of their own
scanning to see what slivers of blue
might alter their fortune too.
they, I think,
they are beautiful.
therefore, none of us has it easy.
this diminutive pre-pubescent lad
(one-of-a-kind and everyboy too)
possessed already of that sense of humor that
pops out unexpectedly here and there
midstream when you won’t expect it
makes us laugh every time
singular short pre-man with long stringy hair
terminating in dips of experimental purple
as random-seeming as the words
that pop out of his brain
look close and you’ll make out
the troubled itches of his mind
furtive insecurities scanning his environment
evaluating, secretly navigating
and so when we sit beside him for a second
to see how he’s getting on in his project
(his project is his life)
the unmistakable stench rising up from his seat
makes us want to back the fuck up
but we can’t out him
and we won’t let on
because he knows
and he wonders if we know
and he probably knows that we do
and we wouldn’t for the world
so we mouth-breathe
(management skill in acute care settings)
and hang as long as necessary because
we’d rather give him something we didn’t get
than take the focus off
the man he’s going to be
i like this kid in me
“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”
–Pema Chodron
It’s now softly blowing and now and then softly raining
not even very cold; but a winter breeze carries its own frosty edge.
It’s walking weather
Here it doesn’t surprise you at all
isn’t unusual for the wind to accelerate into gales, gusts
for the rain to fall swiftly, urgently
It’s walking weather all the same
albeit with an edge
the element of discomfort
a challenge to accept and enfold into the walk
allowing the energy of atmosphere to infuse itself into you
until it becomes yours
you matching the wind and rain
you acknowledging and answering
gusto for gusto, pluck for pluck
respectful determination to claim your place
I live here, too.
Do you wish you were the horse standing in the corral
somehow patiently ceding the wind, enduring it
your back turned toward the wind with your head to the lee?
Do you wish you were the straying dog
glad of freedom, always looking for a post to pee on
oblivious to rain, even of the coat you wear for protection?
Do you wish you were the songbird now huddled in the hold of a pine bough
waiting out the earth’s fervent lecturing
glad of a brief reprieve from scavenging and watching for every sign to fly again?
Well, smile at them and let them go
It’s you that notices after all
who walks here, who breathes your way through;
you all the way home.
under winter coldest stars the rural burg
refuge of a toiling caste in remains of a dream
stronghold of brave young mamas
dodging grimey bristled beggars
huddled at night downlane
wornout worker bees quaffing on the cheap
puffing in the alleys, refuge of the sinners
their urchins wheezing new diseases of the world
and yet will any here deign to drop a dime
in a bellringer’s bucket just the same
for that worndown ancient tale
mystery of a god showing up
beyond notice of the sparkly noise
in the alleydark as one of us
humana incognita
the quiet consideration
of such a thing
I never seen it before, just only in pictures, but that’s not the same, the same as being somewhere.
To really see something you have to be there.
Like those willows bowing under the blanket of its pillowy weight.
Watch it fall like cotton from the white sky and wonder if that’s where it got its color.
It only tastes like something that was there and then wasn’t.
There’s nothing to hear except the sounds of birds chirp from tree to tree.
What kind are they that didn’t go south where I used to be?
If they fly and don’t leave tracks like me, are they really here?
I am like the soft nod of willows.
she has a say in what this is
this sorrow taking residence in her bosom
staking a claim there, sure to make good
the urn she cradles in her hands
made of clay, like we all
goes before her, in solitary funeral march
against the wishes of her people
perhaps the law of the land
in coded disregard of their common end
the food of worms and purifying fire
wholly reduction of our earthy homes
to their component elements
and so going step in front of step
in divine obedience to her very heart and
the sweet, severe and redeeming verity of
spring’s insistent answer to winter’s demand
this knowing, knowing, knowing
traced in muted tracks of salt water
like misty waterfalls from her brave eyes
to where the arable soil meets the ageless sand
and the sand the salt-soaked seas of a million such tears
to stand there nobly broken and fragile strong
she opens the cradle of her swaddling hands
and lets pour herself as she might have been
upon the winds that bear her child’s bones
upon the hallowed waves of each days turbulent tide
for there are ways in which
these things ought to be done
and so
she will have her say in where it lies.
Word Pictures 