August 5, 1990

Wisps of Sand
Wisps of sand, tan and darking,
Cover the wet blankets as the rain comes.
Torrents send the waders under rafters,
Shelter sought down and under.
Huddled we, as rabbits in Arden
Or birds in New Guinea.

The arsenal strikes at the strand;
The sand quickens, steaming like as snow-cooled furnace;
And we huddle closer, further down and under.

In these shadows and under wet blankets,
My soul finds its sunlight,
Intense in the sound of the rain.
Rain on the boards, how chilled?
Wind through your hair, how fancy?
And here we lie, metaphors in God’s imagination
As the sea bubbles over the jetties;
And the gulls laugh at us as we huddle,
We, the rabbits of Arden.

The Band Played Merrily
The band played merrily
(It was the Fourth)
And my heart was proud to be alive and here
Beside those deep brown eyes
(A cool July indeed).

In pergola dream we sat
Speaking with nothing to say
But, "the weather’s cool, for July, I mean," but
The silence dwells within
The cup of an unknown rose.

This rose, an ivory dream kissed red,
Is a blush which wears
My mirror form as on my cheek another rose appears.
Those eyes are gone in a moment,
Leaving me a sweet remembrance,
A cool and icy flower’s tear,
A blood stained petal,
Record clear -
A first love denied in July of yesteryear.

Stone on Rock Shining
Stone in rock shining inward,
Never to see the light of native sun,
Is caught by the mineral hunter,
Cut from the womb for a brief time.
Then, shaped by this world,
Placed in a setting, saucy and peacherine,
The stone is housed in velvets and glass,
Calling to watchers to take it close to hand and heart,
Flawless except by the cost of it.

Yet, not until the shining comes again
And sweeps the stone to the womb
Does the depreciation stop;
Except in those often sleepless nights
When each of us glimpse those almost forgotten days
Before we were snatched by the mineral hunter.

Come to My Heart
Come to my heart, dear friend,
Come to my side this very day,
For I mean to pledge my friendship to thee,
To worship at your holy shrine,
Beyond the strawberry love,
Beyond the fading promise in the wave.
There I am, at your side,
At the altar to your beauty,
Despite the throngs of envious,
The harvest you could reap.
Here I am, watching o’er your dreams
By your bedside in the bleakness,
Standing at your doorstep when the winter winds take warning.
Calling by your trumpet when a whisper goes unnoticed,
Holding all your secrets
When the roses cease to flourish;
A mirror to your living,
Seeing you as in this moment
When the nighttime steals upon us,
Coursing you forever
Beyond the stroke of the sweet hour.
So, see me as the friendship, living and walking beside your being;
As we become old soul-mates,
Sweet mists over the morning sea!

Like Light and Dark
Like light and dark
The silent and boistrous moments of life
Cycle through the fires of our souls,
Chesnuts and cold lard
Warmed and brightly fostered,
So we can use each to reflect the other.
So, I sit in the Maypole
Before the time I stage my carefully rehearsed act
And see in the lonely reflection of the drink
The quiet critique of noise, applause
And the whirlwinds that move me from table to table,
Hotel to hotel -
Like light and dark on the cycle's journey
Toward the knowing -
The self evidence
That I am the only critic
In these remembrances between the dawns.

I Watch Beside You

for Tony

I watch beside you by the window
As the rain kisses the pane;
And your eyes, sad eyes pan the sky.
And I think I am not here, to your mind
As your soul joins the drops in their cold dance.
Yet, I hear their lullaby, rocking your tired soul
In their phantom text.

Silence, there is silence -
Like the silence of the first day,
While you remember times that I could not,
Secrets released only to the rain,
Only on the gale’s tender, cleansing whisper;
And you sigh - and I catch it;
And I know your secret parley to the storm.

I catch your glance beside the pane;
And like a moth to the candlelight I am drawn;
Knowing that in light there is truth;
In the flame there is death;
But in the rain our secrets wash together to the same anointed sea.

Never Two Alike We
Never two alike we,
No matter the attempt -
The state says different -
All children will think this way -
But souls know different -
When winds blow,
Souls seek and souls grow -
This is the congruent nuptial -
The great marriage of the spirit -
Children know by rote;
The soul knows by the wind!
Yet, despite the howl,
The souls are spare -
The dance is learned,
But the dancers sit still.

The question rises like the star;
Needs are in sameness like the grass;
And we to the guidebook can be lost,
In the same old reflection of our birth.
But, never two alike we -
Despite the packets planting news
And the party’s line or the lemming’s leap.
Deep in the spirit’s fold
Is one heart’s tale left still untold.

Alone We’d Walk on Sunday Morn
Alone we’d walk on Sunday morn,
To the lake’s edge rippled by the Summer sun.
Hands pressed as they swayed to the beat of our pace
While hyacinths crowd both cobbled path and breath.
Episodes he would tell while I smiled,
Half listening to the trials of daily toil.
Lost as it were in the undemanding flow.
Then, I in turn would tell my tale
As he, in deep reverie became lost in my eyes
Never hearing one of my thoughts.

Running ahead, he called me to follow;
Chasing, I would catch him on the bank.
Rolling, we passed daisies in their wink
And sit content cooling feet and love in the pond,
Laughing when the minnows kissed our toes.

Oh great friend of mine!
‘Though gone, I still see your hair
Gusting through the year’s song -
While my aging heart cracks trying in despair
To recall the words you spoke that I disdained to hear.

Oh great friend of mine!
There from the spot beneath the willow
Your silent fingers still my quivering lip towards dawn,
When I shall walk again by the lake’s edge
Beside the one I chose one Sunday morn.

Vine Spirits Kissed
Vine spirits kissed by the Autumn sun,
Sing your lullaby to me and melt my mind to mire.
Lie me flat with your big breasted yield
Covering me with the Somatic counterpane.
Mercy in truth, call from the golden cup
And accept your true follower to the altar -
Sacrifice my lonely hour to the harbor,
The silent ship you sail on harvest seas.

Spin me away as the conqueror would -
Discovery made beyond the bounds
Lift me to new worlds. air-cooled
As I float to the sun on your waters.
I fall, but you catch me -
I bruise, but no matter -
They laugh, but a mirror is held to their mocking stares -
For they envy my soft slumber -
My gentle death in your arms
While they must wait for a time without their choosing.

I’m Out
I’m out, standing before my God,
Singing my very best song,
Knowing finally that in his image I am truly created;
For when God made the world, he took a day aside to create what the others would call folly,
But He especially deemed.

Once I thought like the others,
That the special world contradicted all good;
It was perversion thought I
And nothing could make me act,
So in the cave I stayed at peace with the world -
At war with my God.

But now, the lamplighters are here;
They say we bear the eternal torch,
The true knowledge of love and pain and geese flying south.
They dance around me and tell me of gentleness.
Who are these Priests of the high art?
They are all around me; but I never saw them before.

So, I jump aboard the raft of my favorite boatman,
Who teaches me to navigate to the Eastern shore.
Never leave me boatman, even when I reach the new land,
The land beyond the closet door.
The confessional flies open; and I jump out,
Out before my God who tells me more of love than I have ever known before.
Out before the others He created,
Not to question “why?”
But to sing the lamplighter’s song.

I Sip the Cup of Everyone
I sip the cup of everyone,
Every year brings fresh wine,
Wine pressed by the year before,
Before the world decides its mind.

Color comes and spins its weave,
Weaves I know I love to sport -
Sports I know will all endure,
Enduring now but half a year.

Here it comes, the harvest craze,
Crazed I run to greet the sun,
Sun which rises but once a day,
Days not mine - but everyone’s

Strip I of the portion I fear to take,
Taking sells my soul to the moon.
A moon in phases born to spend,
Spending minds to the passing winds.

I Often Wonder
I often wonder why we see the mirror,
Stop and stare, admiring the image all others see -
Day in -
Day out -
Beasts of Bedlam see as much on shadowy walls;
Or as crows fixing sights
On new fields to impress our hungry beaks
Creating a foraging feast;
A feast of famine we would reap too soon.
As bright pennies tossed,
The either/or of us can be compared,
But whether in motion or at ease,
Coinage still - defaced by time -
Bronzed with no soul -
Just a flock of fleeting portraits.

Transfixed on meeting shadows
And casting umbras false,
We miss a rare, rare meeting,
Self-knowledge under glass.

Through the Trees, the Moon Peeks
Through the trees, the moon peaks out
Kissing light and spewing mood
Through the leafless autumn bark
The friendly orb flies over boughs
With luster, lent by daylight’s queen;
Here the shadows cast are bound
With heaven’s nightly pallid pall
The tarnished elms breathe crystal care
From pools of light in fountain ball.

Beneath this scene, I lie with her
And speak of truths I dare not tell
When blazing rays are evident
And lies just bear away the bell
And there, in dark, I ford the crest
And challenge self in baths of shade;
And pass the truth and little smoke
And into limpid pastels fade.

The care of world, they pass away;
They are a distant memory
Although they shall again return
They do not carp and bother me,
For safe within the moonlight’s arm
I sit and gently, calmly wane
And think of nothing pressing me
And my world with Mary Jane.

I’m a Simple Man
I’m a simple man;
Plain’s cud be,
Who sits on plain
A-fore de sea
And counts de days
And list de ways
To ‘scape de hand
O’ death’s decays.

In sky’s a -blue
I can’t a-find
De ballyhoo
Dat’s in ma mind,
And spread id out
Wid yell and shout
De trubble felt
‘Bout dis last bout.

Ma ugly han’s;
Ma tired feet
Will be no mo’
‘Neath dis defeat;
But I’ll cry not
Fo’ what I got
Can neber go
‘Yond dis here plot.
So, here I am
De simple man
Who’s gots to go
And leave dis lan’;
But bees id known
To grow’d and growin’s
Dat dis here world’s
Built on ma bones.

Sunrise on the Peng-yu *
Sunrise on the Peng-yu you must see,
The beauty of the classic rustic wave.
The calmness of the billows catching dew;
The churning of the eddies in their fold.
Yet, beneath her tranquil gathering arms
Remains a history secret still untold

Scholars two sat by bank of river’s flow
Absorbed in Middle Kingdom’s text.
They little saw the billow formed by streams;
And never could provide the chaliced glare.
Too busy in their quaff of history’s doff -
The Unknown known,
The Unseen rare.

But, one scholar gazed up and viewed the knotted pine,
The twisted road, whispering willow hair.
And Spring’s frolic touched his heart
And gave the dusty char some solace lifting mind away from the burning land of study’s lore.

Scholars two now communing with the books of nature,
Nothing read in lists of classic notes;
Into the stream they plunge,
Naked to the spirits that they feel.
They sing some songs and splash their backs,
Then lift the wine to the lip to ease the mind.
At the lip touch and the eye seek,
The lore the scholars know is lost.
Here in the lost spots, the secret river of the Peng-yu,
They share a feeble touch and heart hold.
Onto the shore they embrace the fiery spirit that no book could catalog.

Light over brow, that certain light of magic,
Drew the attention of scholar to each other.
Into the eyes, the eyes which can be beacons,
Calling to each other, for a tender touch.
Lips being drawn over one another,
This is the fire born within the heart.
And in no book, no book of condescension,
Can the body learn how the art of love imparts.
The pines shade their passion with wisteria laugh and willow sigh
As the sunlight bathes the full course of their studies.
If the master saw them now?
What of it! As long as they had each other, what better classic to learn than this!

If the scholars two could ever know
That this love would grow from dusty tomes,
They would close the book and place it back
In the quiet secret casket which hold such hidden passions under sway.
But into their eyes they drank the wine,
The river boiling over banks and close to heart;
The sun played heat until the two were one,
And under gushing Summer blossoms,
They collapsed into each others arms,
Singing songs known only to the arcane world of the forest.

Many brothels were forgot as they slept away their charm;
Many sporting tales of lust were mocked by a casual tongue;
But here on the River Peng-yu, in the unexpected boat,
The scholars two took refuge and slept in their unfurled sails.

One scholar awoke to find that night had spread her cloak.
This scholar groped in the moonlight to find his study mate.
But there was no man.
But in the forest near there was a flame,
The flame of brigands stealing through the dark,
Who snatched his friend while in his arms he slept
And spiked his heart before he could alarm.

Toward the flame the scholar crept
Like cautious boar or field mouse stunned.
Then there, it hung, his friend’s head,
With bloodied maw, and plucked eyes.
The body sweetly taken was now hacked and strung between the trees.
No sign of villains but for their murderous track.
They moved upland to continue their attack.
Broken and awry, this body so well taken;
Bloody and travailed, this handsome youth impaled,
Impailed not now by love, but by the hate too striven,
Wrecked by a forceful rape, the terror of mankind.

A wail more painful than ever heard on earth,
Tore the forest night, to scare the crawlers in their lair;
Never was known such unending sorrow as this,
As the scholar one spun headlong to the ground.
The nightbirds watched the howling of the boar,
They dared not brush his tears away with wing,
Nor could they if they tried a classic’s age,
To stop this bristling boar within his rage.

“Chang Li! Now that we have met as never I could know,
You cannot leave me in this world alone and sought by foes.
Never will I touch the skin of womankind again,
Nor have a moment’s peace without your loving mane.”

Until the dawn, this tender creature wept,
Cradling the sweet quarry of his friend’s remains,
Then, the light made every course more clear,
Every course is clearer when the day attends.
The living scholar gathered the pieces in his arms
As if to sew the threads of history back and make them whole;
Then to the river washed each part with loving touch,
And into silken robes he wrapped his secret love.

“Chang Li, you live forever in my sight,
Together we shall never see another night;
And in this pledge I give my love away,
By water’s kiss we’re both together turned to clay.”

He held him close beneath his tears into the stream,
Then plunged himself to kiss the waters even flow,
Until no mark of either man was ever known,
Nor of their brief encountered undertow.

Sunrise on the Peng-yu you must see,
The beauty of the classic rustic wave.
The calmness of the billows catching dew;
The churning of the eddies in their fold.
Yet, beneath her tranquil gathering arms
Remains a history secret oft’ retold

* Peng-yu means "friends" in Mandarin

© 1996