Thursday, December 30, 2021

I lose time,

cannot sleep until deep morning.

The rats in the walls wander

like dogs in chains.

A cat on the roof pounces,

an animal squeals

like a rabbit.

There are no rabbits.

Friday, December 17, 2021

worry



My gemstoned anxieties

worn everyday

as pierced earrings,  

ordinary things,

with a "not good enough" gleam. 

                                                                                                                                                       

Words leave my tongue

axially off, wobbled.

 

A broken rib, collar, or rim,

are remnant anger, or hypocrisy, 

held in. 

 

As a woman I must sense

be vigilant 

of all things that define my surroundings.


Why was I "gifted" a candled insight 

that illuminates but never warms, 

a warning, not a companion?


Will I find, too late, 

 I’ve fled

some part of myself 

I might have saved?


Saturday, December 11, 2021

 "I'm all alone."

"And who do you think isn't?"

- Hugo and Josefin 1967

 

 

Friday, December 10, 2021

 




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love the independence and grace of solitude in urban and rural places. 

To see and meet the world on your own! To me, this is one of the great 

joys in life. For most women, this experience is indeed hard to achieve, 

one we have had to train for mentally, spiritually, and physically in 

a far, far different way than men.

We know also it will be a cyclical battle, one repeatedly fought throughout life.

Tuesday, December 7, 2021


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

these  two

renew

2

southern wind

rain

I see your tie

again

3

it never feels like much

such busy

lives

 

 

 

 


Sunday, December 5, 2021

Ultimately, where do we want our attention to go?

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


barbed stone tools

 


 Hard-wired lives

we work in tribes

conflicted but resolute.

What we really need

is to ignore more,

live with less.

Rest.

Test the limits of you

who are your own disturber.


 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's not easy, this new life.

I've been searching for

3 years reprieve but I'm offered days,

paid one by one.

I'm left a bit unfit from this, and the cold.


A barking dog at night delights me,

as do playground voices of children,

gulls shrieking, animated conversations,

and cars grunting up this hill.

Here's the clank and whine of the iron gate

next to my house that's opened and shut.

What comes next?

I do not know.

Did I ever?



yellow

It turns out that the absence of color makes you more attuned to everything else."

- Olufur Eliasson 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



notes


 

 

 

Binaries of Tikum Olam

or more, with polyphonic overtones.

Sing, Anne Marie.

Bring Eliana's ashes here.

It's twenty-twentyone's end.

Charlemagne Palestine's bejewelled

notes

aren't

alone,

knows

Pauline Oliveros 

has an accordion.

Monday, November 29, 2021

Columba

 pigeon or dove's gone feral

as did jonah

swallowed by wildness

and waterbeasts

both men islands at sea

abecaderian he

altered, zealot,  not

without violence

his learning,

his poems

Iona

there where

refuge and raid met

he set stone to bone and paper

wrote gods and liturgy

into Latin.


This dove of death in life, peace in prayer

there where stones remembered,

a wake and its night soil 

left for the rest of us.

_______________________________________________________________

Altus *prosator, *vetustus
dierum et ingenitus
erat absque origine
primordii et *crepidine
est et erit in sæcula
sæculorum infinita;
cui est unigenitus
Xristus et sanctus spiritus
coæternus in gloria
deitatis perpetua.
Non tres deos *depropimus
sed unum Deum dicimus,
salva fide in personis
tribus gloriosissimis.

High creator, Ancient
of Days, and unbegotten,
who was without origin
at the beginning and foundation,
who was and shall be in infinite
ages of ages;
to whom was only begotten
Christ, and the Holy Ghost,
co-eternal in the everlasting
glory of Godhood.
We do not propose three gods,
but we speak of one God,
saving faith in three
most glorious Persons.



Friday, November 26, 2021


mother, father

I return to you  

what is yours

 

 

 

Monday, November 22, 2021

Sunday, November 21, 2021

takes longer to recover

from what's said

when you're led

to translate

everything

even english

your tongue

among strangers

and friends.

losing the skin

to begin

to understand


 

papagaia (the parakeet)



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Papagaias?

Não, senhora pombos. Porto não tem papagaios.

Ele ergue os olhos.

Não papagaios, senhora. Apenas pássaros estranhos que eu não conheço.

Não papagaios?

Não papagaios .

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Monday, November 8, 2021

salt

Was it an r, full sailed,

or an m sinking below the waves?


Mizaru, Kikazaru, and Iwazaru, cover continents with eyes, ears, and mouths. 

 

Salt at the door. What for?

 

Where is that word for something? Anorexic recall.

 

Ondol, onsen, earth and water. 

On a warm floor, dreams remain, and sleep keeps them company.

Steaming pools admit fugitives, drown downed ares and ems .

 

saw in the mind, this bluntness of date -

 

1543 - when three sailors were blown off course.

The fourth, Shizaru Xavier, arrives,

survives as a worn stone and shadows.

 

You go first. No, algo.

 

Mallows brought on ships, and other seeds of weed.

Thirty-three weeds, 

seeds growing where they're unwanted.

Unzen admonishment.

 

Sizaru Xavier earlier, instead, dead

on Shangchuan. 

 

なにか.

 

Waves separating us. Divisions of sounds,

salt surrounding homes, and fish.

Dishes of salt

turn to seas in the rain.




 





 

 

 

 

António Mota, Francisco Zeimoto and António Peixoto 

(also presumably Fernão Mendes Pinto)

 


 

 

Soseki translated by Merwin and Shigematsu

(random selection on a cold moring)

Pine Shade

 A hedge

of a thousand trees

standing in the cold

The green haze so deep and dense

it keeps out the light

Don't blame me 

for staying alone

with my door shut

The guidepost

always stood open

for anyone who passed

 

Wednesday, November 3, 2021

 

 1

Spent camellias 

and five lichens

2

 persimmons

and

Araujia sericifera, 

cruel vine, 

moth plant, 

bladderflower

 

3

cool rooms

common mallow

goosefoot

 

4

black mustard

rosemary

fennel

 

5

marigold 

fields

a dusky dog


6

Flax-leaves 

daphne

yellow fleabane 

7

soon

Field Fumitory

Fumaria agraria

Fumária dos campos

8

now

Common Morning Glory

Ipomoea indica

Glória da manhã

9

autumn squill

(Cila de outubro)

spindled groundsel

10

Black Nightshade

Solanum nigrum

Erva moira

year round

11

and

Corn Spurrey

Spergula arvensis

Cassamelo

12

saw 

navelwort

(out of season)


 

 

Saturday, October 30, 2021

afternoon

 

Rain seeps through the skylight.

A centipede I found

turns round upon itself and

dies.

Outside, 

wet oranges ripen

on trees.

 


 

 

street signs (prose poems)

 1

deus vêtudo etu nem o vez

god knows you and you don't even see it

 

2

Sim a em órbita dualas causam caos cultural

Yes dual orbits cause cultural chaos



 

Saturday, October 23, 2021

d o g s

Dappled light, and trout.

Ants spilling sand onto brick.

Thick trees.

 

Cars throbbing

with

bass frequencies.

 

Where are they?

I am searching for them.

 

Dogs.

 

I'm above the sea, 

sitting on a stone bench.

Masks on the ground.

I wear mine outdoors.

 

Sickness is again spreading.

I find dead birds,

kill carpenter bees.

 

Children die,

buildings collapse, 

villages wash away.

None of these are signs.

Not one, none.

 

Planes

plow rows of sound,

like birds in bushes, 

and as hidden.

 

No dogs.

 

Cicadas have brought heat,

and with heat, 

aspects of elevation.

 

Still no dogs.

 

Dog days have passed.

We remain high,

dragonflies 

darning through

cool cloudless blue.

 

Up here,

in the returning chill,

evening caws.

 

But no dogs.

 

Where the dogs are

I think of as lapses in consciousness,

warnings -

the world's next sedition.

 

Listen.

 

A bark?

Long shadows now.

Colder.

Dark.

 

Just out of eyesight, 

legged shades, 

dissembling,

move closer.


 

 

 



1

 You, crows, pass

sea onsen, baths

spilling oil.

Culls crow,

those

slippages.

 

2

How relieved trees are

that we

live

short lives.


3

July morning -

dew on my ankle, 

waxwings coupling in the elm.


4

An aspect of cardinal calls -

stone seconds,

the presence of closed.

 

5

 

 

 

things to remember


1

Stones

chinked with clumps of string -

walls reminded remember.

 

2

Birds singing

in spring bring

soulful overflow.

 

3

Father's land

isn't what you're thinking.

Ho!

Know swamp and field,

are America's gardens, 

yield

last hickories

and snakes

 

4

Mother's

pies were

shale crusted

thick creeks,

with apple shores.

 

 



Friday, October 22, 2021

arvores ( digoweli )


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

there are more to trees than leaves

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

dee go way lee


 

um ou mais/ one or more



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cannot think of a park, a lark, a person,

as a single cell

or a book

as insular bacterium.

What is one,

or 

more?




 


meeting dogs

 

her, brindled pup, and he, night's Labrador

we three speechless

like the sun midday

above the orange trees



Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Saturday, October 16, 2021

 

Common and folk

are atavistic words 

bloated with hurt  

I never wanted them to have.

That might be a lie.

Once very drunk, 

I mimicked a working class accent,

stung three of the nicest people I'd ever met. 

They forgave me, 

and shunned me,

the desperate, rejected lover,

jealous,

bullied, 

and miserable.

 

To master the chaos of oneself. (Nietzsche)


 

 

I haven't the youse of my mother, or her knife and fork dinner duet. I lack the soft "ya" of my sisters, their mother hen togetherness, their Mom-spooned vowel melodies, and their fork and knife right-handedness. I wanted to be like them, safe in their language, united, fearless - quick thinking, fast talking, voweled together, deft of hand.

I've been led instead to use the word "you" like a desert bird, standing on one utensil, unbalanced.

Lift a fork, lower the knife. 

I think slowly, with the deliberation I need to follow through sounds, not drop silverware.

When I open my mouth, the oh sound doesn't ah, remains round.

I believe mother felt disappointment in my vowels. She knew I knew I'd move words away from her someday. 

Her forethought.

Mother knew what lay below the sounds I'd choose, words I'd lose.

What, she wondered, will she keep?

Didn't weep, mother, for me, but set a table place, in case my singular, my alone, drove me home.


This morning 

calls to India

and Spain -

a filmmaker, a writer,

two friends weighting worlds,

speaking in other tongues, and

we three in English.

I am amazed at the Portuguese

slipping through cracks -

oivir

os netos do meu vizinho 

um gato 

um pega -

atenção, por favor!

 


 


 

 



Thursday, October 14, 2021

Darkness.
An old wall
has captured an orange tree,
but not the oranges - they belong to the owls and streets.




































































































































Trevas.
É véspera ou noite?

um poste de luz,
um bom carro.
Uma velha parede
capturou uma laranjeira,
mas não as laranjas - elas pertencem às corujas e às ruas.
    

porto flowers


 

Tuesday, October 12, 2021


aranha

barata 

centopéia

Noites quando você caça

iludindo as estrelas.

Eu

a
grande corpa
cheio de água
flutuando ao sol
com olhos fracos
incapaz de entender
seu medo da luz.

Eu sou
 
aquela noite cega
animal
quem
liberta mariposas
cria abelhaschora,
chora por borboletas.

 ____________________

spider

cockroach

house centipede

Nights when you hunt,

eluding the stars.

I am

a
big body
full of water
floating in the sun
with weak eyes
unable to understand
your fear of light.

I am
 
that night-blind
animal
who
frees moths
raises bees,
weeps for butterflies.

 


 nothing so much as

the sun

in the tenth month,

a red admiral's

ascent,

a

morning's glory



Saturday, October 9, 2021

Friday, October 8, 2021

if a place can't be found

close to lagoon, river, sound

she will mark her route

out

of,

over bridge,

understanding

that

this time

there will be

no

going

back.

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

Tuesday, October 5, 2021

first

First,

the 

color,

after black,

and

an estuary.

Then too many people,

too few wildflowers,

broken tiles.

She, steeply ascending

after dark,

looks up.

Planets there

where 

invisible

cat's eyes

azulejo glow green under lamplight.

Second,

color after morning,

and tidal.

Emptied streets.

Fresh blood splats

and camomile.

 

Wealth isn't measured by old stones,

but in morning glories

and ripening  apples.

 

 

Third,

the color 

midday over

a garden,

and falling.

Steps.

 

I keep count.

the colors of.

the colors of.

 

 


Sunday, September 19, 2021

 hawk call this morning

night

will come again

 basswood

beech

teach constancy

 

gentian's

attention

deficit

 

asters

chamomile

teasel-styled

 

 

Saturday, September 11, 2021

 naked bicyclists ride past


with


shouts


and horns.

the mouse

 we have no agreement to meet

but we do

as

some nights

wandering into lit rooms

she pauses staring,

starting when I'm startled but


she never runs. Turning and walking away

she's resigned to my presence.

I've become part of her

search for food.

I like this mouse

and cannot fault her for

her bravery

or desperation.

 

She arrived just in time

for my final days in this home,

around the time my anxiety was highest,

waiting for a visa.

 

I think of her as a companion,

searching  

as we both are 

for something

to sustain us.


Friday, September 10, 2021

Thursday, September 9, 2021

herbarium

 boneset

comfrey

dead nettle

 

crysanthemums seeping through the baseboard

 

don't let the dogs near tansy, foxglove

 

 

 

Wednesday, September 8, 2021

For the last season of its life

a sumac glen

makes 

rabbits again

while nearby, 

young plums,

some removed for future fruit,

now wonder how

they'll survive.

 

 

september garden

common valerian's

pure white,

as the goat's beard,

now skeletal,

rises

aloft

far from

soft

wild phlox, 

still

sweet.

 

At phlox feet,

creeping bellwort,

returning.

 

Learning that the

New England aster,

purple haloes

bursting through,

mark the

pin cherry's brutal death 

earlier this year.


Clearly, 

hedge bindweed 

has its

heart set on

calico aster.

 

Slowing

bees

lay stunned

under

goldenrod

rigida and canadensis


as an autumnal

spiderwort of

bluest blue

cursively

creeps

into

the cooling night






 


singing

 lined out hymnody

Gaelic Back singing

Isle of Lewis Free Church

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S3XDunMj2Y


 

schadenfreude  

epicaricacy 

loitering envy

precarious

antonyms

for

Mitgefühl

compassion

sudden German

 grommet

(grumbles)

 

__________________

reisenmeer

(clear skies)


______________________

Gestaltblatt

(leaf seas)

______________________



 

 

 

Fl

Flow

Floe 

Flue

Flew

Monday, September 6, 2021

 Locust tree

Frigate bid

Conic planthopper

 

another reel


ハチドリ (hachidori, hummingbird)

or

Oosukashiba

hummingbird hawk moth

 

then drawn

 

red lozenged on stone

crosshatch on bone

 

kept

and counted

though 

little-known

 

Friday, August 27, 2021

Sunday, August 22, 2021

 the vehicle 

a mouse

in the house

removing obstacles

Saturday, August 21, 2021

If approval doesn't come

one must

consider

nomadic 90 days

stays in Portugal

and UK

or

more importantly 

back to Asia


There is no ease

no please

that will open doors on what

or

with what

luck

 Neptune southeast

on the horizon

a blue room

between solstice and equinox

moonlit


Friday, August 13, 2021

2 dreams summer 1993

1

I passed a dilapidated Victorian, grime-smeared, sprayed with graffiti.

The street level shop windows were boarded, the upper windows broken. I approached the building and touched it lightly. The entire building crumbled into a fine and beautiful dust. 

Trees, growing in dirt squares surrounded by sidewalk, began to snicker. 

2

Mozart's Ah Tutti Contenti

from the Marriage of Figaro,

finely spun!

A pond appeared

where turtles sung.


Maria Robusti (1993)

Maria Robusti

What would you have thought

of a still damp drawing of a pregnant mare?

Lifting your eyes, as I did,

would you have felt

a shiver of recognition, a sudden nearness

to that long-dead artist?

Would you have left Rouffignac

with that graceful image

embedded in your bones?

1993

 This is for you, my dear

who in that year

could have filled your

umeployment forms out

in ancient greek

or very poetic French.

It was frustrating to watch you

write letter after letter

seeking work

when you had enough work

(filled the rest of your days).

What really were you after

but a little money to get by on?

 

You told me then, and I hear you now, say the future has no hold on us,

we're too close to the present, and we gain nothing from desire,

however enticing, without this god damn struggle just to stay alive,

to create.

dreams

 1

of chicory, and a vision

snow blown from a tree

fruit blossoms falling

it's a cherry tree, too

2

near a dark lake

deer have eaten

all the hyacinth -

their spring asparagus

 3

pileated woodpeckers

over a foot high

are eating suet

an arm's length away

4

I am able to see tiny creatures 

feeding on my skin

molting exoskeletons 

or

5

a cornfield

lit by thousands

of tiny abdomens


 

 

 

 

 

 

1997

january 21st

Dad had his operation last night. The doctors found tumors in his colon, lesions in his

large and small intestines, skin tumors, bone cancer. His body's crumbling. The cancers will reach a large organ, the brain, in months not years. 

We send flowers with sweet smelling lilies. Mary and Maureen cry a lot. Paula thank god she's so damn efficient and fair, clear thinking.

Dad did it. He lived long enough to take care of mother.

Hope Dad lives to see spring, Paula says.

 

march 4th

Dad's in very recent chemo

may give him unhoped-for months

Mare and maureen there

and Mom comes home

lots of busy

wears mom and dad out

a good thing

a long straight sleep rare for them these days

the guilt

have we done enough?

as many answers as family

but I suspect

always in the negative

cannot be otherwise

living through dying is full of surprises

love. separation.

bittersweet ordinary.

 

 

 

april 17

 warm spring smell

trees prickly with roundthorned buds

 

we've overwintered another year here

today we walk to the river

 

downy woodpecker, nuthatches, geese 

and lovesick gulls

holding hands

I know we

are formed first by love -

his patience, suffering

shuts me up

a lucky woman

to have such a  graceful partner

savor joy

it is not forever



 

 


 a flexible form

a vocabulary of "wave"

as

non-specific meditative signifier

for example

a buffalo cow

seen through

human height Silphium 

or

an old trout

in a water glen

of aspen

Thursday, August 12, 2021

morning

 the heat

will come 

this street

wide and open

a crooked cross


Tuesday, August 10, 2021

there 

is n't 

enough

time

for 

too

much


august birds

1

goldfinch

flew through

strewn tansy 

 

2

august heat

completes

swallow-altering

air

 

3

female finch's

lament

hawk-quickened 

spent


 


 

the beds



Women held you 

as you passed 

from one world to another

on pale iron beds

white as moons

in rooms of skin 

and tulips.

You, purpling between sheets, 

breathing first

a cry

or

at the end

a sigh

of transcendence.

 


 


 

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

walks

ought to, every day,

walk.

A walk

that ought

but wasn't

doesn't mean

you'll

never ever

have

another.

Friday, June 11, 2021

Sunday, June 6, 2021

cussed

 Then

again

swear

where

we,

prose or poemed,

regenerate,

composted

into

love.

God's names.

Mother's.

Sacrifice.

Lust.

Cussed into and out of us -

because

we weren't

we are never

enough.

 

Friday, May 21, 2021

 

I have regained 

my love of

sleeping,

and my head is oh so clear.

But, my dear,

ataraxia

has its limits.


prescience

 (undated 2017)

pour  place  pathos  pursuit  plague

 

plague.

 die ewige Wiederkehr (des Gleichen) [Nietzsche]

the endless return of the same

ataraxia - a state of serene (inner) calmness [Epictitus]

 
καταστηματικός - (katastēmatikós)

The term 'ataraxia' is used in Epicurean philosophy to refer to a type of katastematic pleasure that is engendered by a complete freedom from mental disturbances and worries.

the pleasure of equilibrium and balance

_______________________________

ancient thought on conservation or matter [Epicurus. Lucretius]

"seeds" generate things, things are composed of invisibly small particles which

seemed to argue against Zeno's paradox that "you cannot deconstruct anything

beyond a certain point"

modus tollens

the rule of logic stating that if a conditional statement (“if p then q ”) is accepted, and the consequent does not hold ( not-q ), then the negation of the antecedent ( not-p ) can be inferred. 

if P, then Q, But not -Q,  therefore not -P 

are the number of atomic shapes infinite?

review Epicurean 

 

 




Wednesday, May 19, 2021

numbers poem (undated winter 2013- 2014)

12  26

There is no reason to fear what isn't

or what is going to happen

13  25

is there?

14  24

light is so many darks

is

infinite

is, is

15  23

there is no formula for happiness

16  22

carving out a niche

a channel

a cove

17  21

illum...

an unintellig...

wor...

is

18  20

light came from the horizon I knew

19  19

the direction was up

20  18

eyes dim as the illness progresses

21  17 

death is not an illness

22  16

terminus

that mysterious illuminata that

23  15

survivor of myth

24  14

my daughter my son

and their children's children

have eyes

25  13

what will they see?

26  12

thirty-four generations ago

you placed a mirror

27  11

in my grave

and it's still there

28  10

shooting stars showers and 

twenty-eight

29  9

even the first lens was lit here

30  8

distance?

forward

backward

an illusion 

31  7

evolving around a fiery star

32  6

in the distance?

surely you see

33  5

lights don't clock

but age

34  4

age ago

and again

and afterward

often all at once

35  3 you

too

you too!

36  2

read

forward backward

up and down

37  1 

direct your gaze to the stars

 


observation poems and prose 1986 - 2014

12.4.86

     to remember: the idea of place:

the twilight landscape w/ dreams/ experiences

I think my heart is in the art of painting "lies',

in mingling myths and real events with

the sky and the land.

     Stars as moving spirits in the sky,

Ingrid Washinawatoc's red sign

in the sky, twins the fog over

the wall, the white blurred sun in the sky.

     You must keep the painting fresh, 

learn the way to stow and return, start fresh

each thing. many moments paintings 

seem to have lives of their own. 


12.9.86

sometimes you need the cool greenness of this land

as surely as you need bread and water. you need to

hear the land, no matter the muffling it takes in a city park.

sometimes I want to cry out loud, curse my foggy brain.

I've tried too hard to fit in, not take life seriously,

but life is a beautiful, serious to me. I want to

live awake, not in this dulled state where true things slip

slowly and quietly away. There is a fencing feeling.a pent up sorrow 

for lost things too early,  far too early in life. What good is health

if your heart is not in living?

Have to pray a long, long way to hear my voice clear again.

 

4.30. 87

THE FIRES OF BELTANE - green, purple, red in the night sky

BADLANDS - S. Dak. fossils of 3-toed horses, saber-toothed cats, a type of camel no larger than a dog

in a land now sparsely populated by rock wrens and coyotes.

MYTH

To the Yuki  (N. Cal tribe), the creator was Taikómol, the solitude walker

The Plains   view of the buffalo reminds me of Aaron and Moses and the Mt. of God.

 

5.5.87

I feel as if  was caught up in a tangled net, the sum of my mixed emotions for those I loved.

(childhood)

green things making food by eating the sun 

Seek a philosophy that grows out of the lives of......


8.29.87

things to remember:

 the small orange butterfly in the green, green grass 

sound of raking leaves

the trees

3:00 and fog is coming in, greying (above).

The lower things still very bright and clear.

-fog-

- yellow light, clear blue sky, earlier 2 kinds of cloud

- saw a striped cat in the middle of Laguna Honda lawn

pounce on s/t unseen.

- remembrance and the eye - vision w/ spirit

 

8.31.87

3   -  a sphere  the wind  a wave

Q: Does this recurrent preoccupation w/ a 

spiritual significance in nos. bespeak

my Catholic background? Or is it

s/t found in most religions, a basic desire

to join 2 disparate mental processes?

9.14.87

the trees remember

Bonaventure  

1 LUX: "light in itself"

motion and inner earth energy =

"minerals" (genes) + "seeds" of life

2 LUMEN: "light that travels through

space, borne by a transparent medium"

3 COLOR + 4 SPLENDOR: c = "light

of terrestial bodies", s = "luminous bodies"

both reflective light

idea of "deeper significance in ordinary things...AN

INDEFINITE FEELING WHICH MAY BE CALLED UP
AT ANY MOMENT."

Saint Paul

VIDEMUS NUNC PER SPECULUM IN AENIGMATE, TUNC AUTEM FACIE
AD FACIEM. 

We see through a glass darkly, but then face to the face.
theophany - a visible manifestation to humankind of God or a god 
hylomorphism - the doctrine that physical objects result from the combination of matter and form.
 
undated 1987, 1988
 
My dad, he wanted to sing beautiful songs for a living, he wanted to dream.
Instead he helped Grandpa, a mean man, and often groaned in his sleep. 
Why so hard to follow your calling and still love your family?
 
My friend Julie used to drive out to meadows and run naked, alone, through them.
I used to think it mad but now no more mad than seeking special hills 
or seeing a bird in a man, as other friends do. We each need to plant our peace
in a part of the land, a reassurance of our mutual wonder and respect.
 
There is a kind of resistance, a wrestling that thanklessly conspires 
to create you in a different way. 
   

1.21.88

Last night (beach)

early eve - 121.88 (1.22.88)

exceptional mils weather,

warm, lite wind.    (sand bar)

 

Twilight. clds [clouds], rooftop

reflected in dark pool, trees

 

8.8.89

light coming out of the darkeness - an idea of "touch"

(please touch) of an art that reaches yet remains at rest 

(solitude) quietly accessible, truthful.

Language of the interior (the eye) is moved by thought,

thought is the form of thing removed from sight

and remembered.

This is a way to cull s/t essential in painting.

This is a partial path. Always the sense of the nature

of the object remains, reminding the painter of her role. 

 

10.8.92

On rocks:

in them, traces of exhilaration,

movements betraying their glacial origin. 

Standing stones, human-laid, are also

marked by arrested movement.

The "stillness" of stone:

a kind of necessary touch,

we humans need to place things w/in 

the impermanence that surrounds us. 

November 17 1996

what she wishes for is a prayer 

that hasn not lost its power to

consume the spiritin god's fire-

she longs for the separation to end

but realizes the futility of her dream. 

 

I had a dream last night.

Looking down and across a white-capped sea, I saw a pod of whales 

ALL OF A DIFFERENCE

belugas, great blue, barnacled, humpback, 

breaching, spouting, singing.

 

Today I saw a stuccoed wall that appeared to show the worn

labor of a thousand handprints.

 

compassion for all living things

suffering is real and ever-present

life is

(whether or not we are aware of it)

following a course through life that is full and right...

How small I seem when I read the poets and naturalists, 

and yet as vital to all as the smallest creature....

 

2004

Die Prinzen

Hamlet

Medina Azahara

Einstürzende Neubauten

Collapsing new buildings

 

we are inundated

you call out but the waters have stilled your voice

you are between flood and sky, and your world sinks around you

you climb to the highest place,

but nothing will save you from the rising waters

 

1 Dec 2007

entanglements

In my darker moments, there is no Holy Family of humanity,

only isolation, injury, insensitivity .

A lover's word, a husband's kiss, does not unite but accents

the loneliness of the soul. It's worse to anticipate,

then one excites one-sided expectations. better to

return to the slow painful practice of disallusion,

better to make the supreme effort to love all but not one better others.

Will detachment surrender to joy?   

 

21 March 2011

 

bright day, dry

when is being remembered, as dark and light...

it's so many things...

i n t e r f e r e n c e

ghosts  dirt  memory  the body

h o r i z o n          s h o r e (s e a)

                            s h i f t  to

                            b a n k (r i v e r)

                            g r a s s  l e d g e (c u l v e r t) 

l i n e s                w a v e

                            d i r e c t i o n  o f   f l o w

                            t i l l e d  e a r t h

what is this, stilled?

liquid  solid  air

an exercise in breath

breath: let go, distill

______________

enten glements (arrangements)

d i a m o n d   s u t r a

 

7. 24. 2017

as a child

afraid of the dark

 

Rikyu black

 

perhaps even blackness

or an extract of blackness

can survive the walls of our rooms

 

To witness blackness

my be the closest we can come to the preent,

that is

"to a pure limit between the past and the present"

 

わび -

"depth" of the object

the material it is made from becomes secondary

to the image the completed object presents to the eye"

(Lafayette DeMente)

tanka

poetry writing contributes to self-discipline...appreciation

of the beauty of nature and life... finally tranquility."

(ibid.)

 

Bear Butte 

cloth string tobacco prayer -

american windhorses

 

Deganahwida

the great white pine

a canoe of white stone

 

Gernika

lumo, oak

 

these trees  - oak  ash  pine  fig

5 pure lights


Yggdrasil

green ash tree - 9 worlds

the fates (Norns) place a rooster each morning atop Yggrasil.

It's bragging wakes humans and gods.

The Norns water Yggrasil daily.

An eagle and a dragon have their emnity enflamed by a

gossiping squirrel (sladder egern)

Lif a man and Liftraser a woman

will hide in the branches of Yggdrasil during Ragnarock.

emerging after to repopulate the world. 

Huginn and Munin - will they survive Ragnarock?

AHIMSA
SATYAGRAHA
ADUMBRATIVE

 


 

 


 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

what

 what is sun, sky

but the present I sublimated?

Between us and them 

a light apparent

(non-binding, not blinding).

Life lived in gratitude isn't absolution.

Warm sun, wind - my graces.

Once wandress (wondrous),

the cypress, the funeral tree's

among the

first unfound.

Altered lives grounded in pilgrimage.

seis stemmed,

are that char, that chair outside, laid earth, dirt.

Of all dictions, the done one wins,

Bogged in, begin

by loving all who they were.

Sing among western mesas

among dry places.

Shout, we are here

to raze museums!

to praise libraries!

The libraries

That is where the there is, the theys are also,

the we, youse

and me.


 sit

mind unflitting

sits outside

as

heart

rests within

short poems for others

 1

I thought of your wax feet

while eating turmeric and cauliflower.

These hollow feet speak

as books, looking earthward,

then when placed upon a wall,

their golden hollows

whisper in mother tongues.

 

2

A legacy arrives -

you at 63,

and me, now 63 too.

It's taken 7 years

to draw this circle 

and close it, love. 



 

Monday, April 26, 2021

It is not possible to plum words.

This poem

is for those told

to "come down a peg",

stay silent, or leave.

Snakes eat strawberries,

shed skin, leave marks.

Departure.

Abandoned seeds can still grow trees.

Needs?

Reduced by age and light?

In flight 

somehow, yet,

manage to speak.

 

 


Sunday, April 25, 2021


This stone shell knows me well.

One, not two.

You or me,

unaccompanied.


Saturday, April 17, 2021

thrown

 today all the boughs

and sticks

pitched overboard

unstored, unstoried.

Believe in Bamboo,

sharpened, burnt,

hurt.

I couldn't understand,

yet I persisted.

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

blue sky

white cumuli and grey

white building 

green things

robin

cardinal 

white gull

white car

wide street

meets

another

at the bottom of

at the bottom

of

Saturday, April 10, 2021

 "While minds create things, things also create minds..." 136

what they left became buried in talcum fine loess., crushed rock dust blown from 

advancing glaciers hundreds of kilometers away  146

Kindred, Sykes

In 1970, a Japanese robotics researcher named Masahiro Mori posited a complex phenomenon known as the uncanny valley. His basic theory was that we respond positively to a robot as it becomes more human in look but only up to a certain point. And then suddenly, we are strongly repelled by it.

What does it mean to create, become part of, a functional multi-cultural me?

My world is small, with big silences. My world is noisy, a city-dwelling diaspora of people, plants, and animals.

I am not rich. In America, I am poor, more so in money than spirit. 

The color of my skin sometimes staves me. There's plenty of pre-judging to go around. "They should have killed you all in the war." Which one? " You're not...." Fill in the blank. " Go home!" Pull apart a genetic history. Where is the singular root place I should return to?

Living together with you, me, are the pieces of us. Just look around. We're fractured, crystallized, beautifully dark, resplendent.

Notes, stanzas, loosed music.

I take up space for better and worse, a source of emissions. Am I soluable? I don't want to be.

Silences. Then the witness sounds of red winged black birds, the robin's reaching into first light, the ever present calls of cardinals, the beating of hearts, the breathing of trees.

How to distinguish a muskrat from a beaver kit swimming in the river - two tales, two bodies in water.

When I was young, I was altered, left my body to survive. I've lived a lifetime of putting my soul back into this aging flesh. Failure is a part of love. Above, below, around me, ghosts remain, unreconciled. 

How many tales does it take to make us whole again?

I cannot swim well. The love of my life sunk, couldn't float. We flunked a life lesson, needed a boat.

In Wisconsin, the ark is a canoe, I wrote. The boat of both the best and the worst, of those first, and remainders like me, who put to sea, found themselves here,  alive, but wounded and wound into others.

I'd like to be on friendlier terms with the sea, that transported multi-cultural me, which extends still, to the horizon, and into families.

Silences can be navigational, hold a boat afloat.  

Between quiet, I write notes from the voyage. Record songs.