Fragments caught in motion
When mind is chaotic, scrabbling for nature,
sometimes I forget that Earth is here,
just inches below the pavement.
I am the perfect fifth,
crying out in mournful exultation
Awaiting my following chord
Even as I fade
Knowing I am the beginning of an arc
To a greater closure
Along a distant path
that comes only through falling.
Green-diffracted light-not-light ether-rays from Sun that doesn't burn the
Heat-peat of the living, mottled-matte ground-mat
Of autumn's fallen blades
Which sink with the wood and are consumed into the trees, into the mist. Into dust-chariots
On which great fog streams of God-thought-breath ride until bursting-emerging
In enlightenment through the leaves…
And the alien Power Lines stood tall in fire-barren field on the scrub hill,
Surveying the scorched skeletons of ancient stumps.
Yet they wept in anger,
At the fresh buds they had wrought
Even as in wrath with flame they smote the mountain,
At the life that yet persisted betwixt charred exterior and undying core,
At Nature, immortal as they were impermanent.
Which cycles surely as the moon that daily rises upon the woods,
Which cannot be long defied by infernal lightning nor the man-made destruction
With which we ourselves smite,
In foolish attempt to score a lasting mark
Into the quicksand on which we rest,
That broadens as we hack away the roots beneath.
I think the place I am right now actually has a lot to teach —
I'm walking on a trail around this lake,
seeing the fireflies glimmer in the deepening twilight,
listening to children laugh on a white sandy beach
as they play in the lake,
moving to sit down on a rough hewn wooden bench
and stillness is effortless.
I wish to find that which is essential
to making it so easy to be still here
and bring it into my life wherever I go.
Rochester
In the cold as the garage opens,
all I see is peace and excitement
and crisp, pristine snow.
The stuff I do automatically,
against my conscious intent,
is a fountain of energy.
The ultimate surf to be ridden
in spite of myself.
Redirect and neutralize the forces coming at me,
inside and out.
Doing battle or dancing,
it is my choice.
Muted, muffled, time-constrained friendships
like our hearts are slowly going deaf.
That voice of wisdom, small but deep.
To the eagle, or to Spider-Man,
San Francisco — a craggy mountain range.
Love is what ruins your ability to regret
your 10,000 mistakes
because now it's here
and you see it's what you actually spent
all those preceding years trying to build.
The spirit of the hacker is in some way
the spirit of wanting to build utopia,
one tool or cool project at a time.
Ideas skimming beneath the surface of my mind
like dolphins in the sea,
moving faster and faster,
orbiting, gyrating,
around the water-globe of my head
until suddenly they breach the waterline
and fly free on the wings of my fingertips
into the eternity-realm beyond thought.
Hand swells at the caress of the sea.
Evening lights rippling in the surface of the sea.
The rippling lights.
Seeing the treetops connecting the treetops to each other,
connecting the forest to the trees,
remembering that earth is here just below the pavement
and connecting to it.
Getting up off the bench, noticing I'm leaving,
then returning to center.
I am like a surfer now
on the wrecking section of these wings.
Your eyes —
apertures — doorways —
to the Elysian fields'
thick air,
and heart space.
It feels like I know you.
Something in your sad eyes
and free heart.
Your locks
like the sunset
gleam like the doorways
into realm of dream.
Your buoyant brightness
like blooming chrysanthemum tea
is water into which my heart unfurls.
Vast and slow and silent like the tree,
the wisdom of its energy and voice
resonating quietly like the ringing silence
the ringing silence of a temple.
Holding down the wisdom —
the moon and a single star
in the towering arms of the tree
lifting to the sky,
and the sister tree stacked like a fire
stacked in its majesty.
A radiant halo painted on the sky, the moon.
Oh you are the earth sprouting humans,
you are the earth reaching for the stars.
The tear-washed altar of the heart.
Dusk in the forest clearing of Menlo Park.
This parking lot is a settled place —
it's only my projections that make it otherwise.
The trees and the stone are perfectly settled.
Poetry is just a way of talking about healings
which are higher dimensional objects
that are in space and not words.
We need to make space for poetry.
Poems are vectors.
You are the ocean waving.
The heart field is continuous with waters of all hearts.
The heart mind is non-individual.
Melting the ice cube of my heart
so it becomes one with the waters of all hearts.