If your world is very small

you seem very large

but if the universe

in its expansiveness

calls

small is

a star

so far away

 that's all

 

so much more

than before

 

But I guess

less

will return

I found it today

the Febros

running dark 

through bottom land 

a dirt trail beside it

roads of calçadas

and houses perched like herons along it

I walked 

got lost

to my surprise

my eyes

remembered how to 

return to solitude

that house streaming light

as you open its door

sleeplessness

fierce winds

endless winds

and rain

ainda

she says 

as razões para viver continuam a ressurgir

 

In Um Rakuba, a third within are children

In Kutapalong,

some drown in monsoon rains

 

There are more.

Say the names - Kakuma, Dadaad, Za' ateri. 

 

 

He'd guessed as much,

that she was south.

Was it Rafah? Khan Younis?

 

He had to let her go.

 

When the shelling resumes,

a gifted translator

jobless now

reaches

for her children,

memorising their misery

in four languages.

 Morning.

I shoo seagulls into the air

into the warm bright sunlight.

I am grateful.

The lengthening days

the long quiet hours ahead

are enough.

Is this peace?

 

 

 

Yemanjá comes in with the rain 

in from the sea, blesses

my body, 

thick with water and salt.

 

 

1

(more than anything)

I believe

that I am real.

 

2

My joy doesn't

need me.

 

3

I delight in old remnants

that are ridiculed as rags

 

4

I am hurt by the hubris

that kills children

 

P e a c e

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the cold rain

the bumbles are again

creeping in and out of the rotten stump, 

visiting low lying heather.

Brood and death

are their daily lives.

They're a community

often tested by stress -

internal power struggles,

bee hungry hornets,

humans that see only empty lots 

where they've had family plots 

for generations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 small poems

 

 1

c left

clef t

2

itidatemashita

onegaishimasu

kudasai

3

gallinas

gallinas

vinte quatro ovos

e

um galo castanho

sozinho

each

and

every

 

We're not lost 

in leisure

nor John Clares

worked to the bone -

I'd call us

river stone,

clearly worn

but still here

reading 

Flannery and Eudora

storied

lives

sliced

once

or twice

with sound

the particular

unknown

then again

lost in  it

_______________________

umbilicus   mundo 

________________________

the appearance of

the walk 2

the walk
a caminhada

steps are lines of sight
one foot down 

two feet forward
stop
or pause
to see
to remember
memorize
and then continue

________________________

os passos são linhas de visão
um pé para baixo 

dois pés para a frente
parar
ou fazer uma pausa
para ver
para recordar
memorizar
e depois continuar

Nunca estou sozinho
Estou sempre sozinho

 Last

hours of sun -

greeted by a lizard

a podengo

the meow of a peacock.

 

Última

horas de sol -

saudado por um lagarto

um podengo

o miado de um pavão.

the walk 1

the walk

began

downhill

still on a sidewalk

veered under

an overpass and then again

up,

cobbled, asphalt.

Old shoulders.

Cinders pocked

with rubbish.

Without a destination

other than to surprise the eye

I pass plants

called wayward

or weed.

 

Calla palustris

Wild tobacco

growing

without gardens, 

unbound.

In neighborhoods around them, 

caverned stumps

clotted with bumble bees

knees white with pollen.

 

Persian ivy

bristled bare where rusted fence intersects pole and stone -

these all wrapping land that began cultivation centuries ago.

 

 

I know each earthen plot on earth has a story.

 

Common milk thistle

Knapweed

and thistle again

wherever a home once was.

 

Groundsel swallowing lawns and pasture.

Woad and weld,

close by, dyers plants,

forgotten.

 

Swedish ivy

strangling pear,

past fruiting.

Scrambling gromwell

blue motes

navel wort,

old stones.

 

plangent too

you

returning home

uttering

"everything".

 

 

uprooted limão

and sorrowful marmelo

too late

too early 

to fruit

More the physicality of 

moving through

where you are are

blank and back

So many pages left, events remembered, left unwritten, due to what? I want to say the cold, but that's an old excuse, cave-borne, and doesn't quite say it, relay the extent of the mind blankness, the creeping self-doubt and overwhelming course of personal  events, bomb ticks, I've felt .  Vanish'd sight.

But you do go on, until you don't.

Afterthoughts ought to come in, and begin you again.

All losses are restor'd, and sorrow's end.

 

 

 

 

 

30

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,

And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight;

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end.