First Communion Three bells rung thrice boys kneeling, a candle at the altar burning, god’s portrait on the ceiling, priest lifts a holy wafer, do mythic circles make us safer? Priest bowing priest turning, golden chalice drunk dry, should I laugh or should I cry, once more, with feeling: a greenhorn skater on the ice,…

“lacrimae rerum, “ (the tears of things) …………………………………….. —Virgil Everything Cries Steel’s tears are rust, trees weep tears of falling leaves, clouds weep and mourn their loss sacrificing their billows to the earth as rain, the earth weeps its carbon into sky, the sun weeps its energy into earth and will die someday of the loss,…

A Matter of Love The question, “Can you tell me a certain thing that is a moral fact?” is specious, because the fact of the “certain thing” exists as a thing essential to the survival of homo sapiens in creating civilization. But civilization is not always up to the task of protecting its essential, instead,…

Fire in the Brain God is a fire in the brain Nijinsky saidwhich is as close to the truth asanything a dancer might dancewith a bonfire burning in his head God may put you in a trance with the fluttering of cardinal wings or with the way the moon looks mounting the mountain’s back on…

Crystal-Bison out of coolblue a bison out of bitter cold out of stratospheric skyblue a crystal bison from stillness, sheer, mute as speech in utter space from deadstill blueice steps a crystal, a bison apparition a bison frozen in veneer of chilled time cloven hooves to heaped hump its mere eyes, its cryo-olfactory nose smelldeaf due…

The Music of What Happens The music of what happens begins with the bottom line of drums —percussion, the thumps of bass in sync with a wind of horns, baritone, bassoon, and in the whispers of brushed snares, in the round tones of tympany, and, in the rests; the spaces between, those silent shifts that…

If you talk about it, it’s not Tao If you name it, it’s something else What can’t be named is eternal Naming splits the eternal to smithereens ………………… —per Lao Tzu, poet, 6th Century BC _____________________________________ Lao Tzu’s Lament At first I think, I’ve got it! Then I think, oh no, that’s not it. I…

“This is conclusive, and if men are capable of any truth, this is it.” …………………………………………………. —Blaise Pascal, on his wager  Blaise’s Place Blaise’s place is on a sunset strip paved razor-straight through desert air many cul de sacs veer from its hot black path squeezed in a pass between mountains there, west, where the day goes down…

Fun In Space Call me nomad. Rootlessness is my routine. From where I stand space seems to beg for exploration not occupation. Occupation of space requires a military state of mind, armies train for it. But individuals grow dull and lethargic just occupying space ~~ There’s no substitute for dynamism when facing space. When I…

Purse Strings My mind’s a purse in which I keep my stash if its purse strings are loose I might add to its load when new coin comes to town but if I tighten down the purse strings of my mind they’ll garrote its capaciousness and all that God might have me be may be…

Damocles In perilous times we join the otherworld, the one that’s outside our bubble who’s driving this bus? who’s at the helm? who jiggles the joystick? we man our posts we soothe ourselves but one day must come to terms: I saw a cormorant, wings spread drying herself in the wind after lunch oblivious to the…

Rattling My Cage Are you looking at me? I say to the mountain which moves as I run the tiller down the row. But it may not be the mountain I engage. Are you talking to me? I say to the pale moon which sits upon the mountain like a ghost ball. But maybe the moon is…

Song Behind a Rear-Tined Tiller They believed consciousness resided in the heart, Aristotle believed this, and the Egyptians who scooped out dead pharaoh’s brain through his nose with a spoon and stuffed his skull with rags assuring that he would not be thinking in the other world to which he’d travel by long boat being…

Whatchamacallit She’s dead, he said. So’s he, said she. Kicked the bucket, he said. Bought the farm, said she. Under the clover, he said. Crossed over, said she. Iced with a heater, he said. Sleeps with the fishes, said she. Taken for a little ride, he said. Gone to the other side, said she. Flat-lined, he said. Out…

“Alone” imagine the atomic affinities of the world these clinging particles of stuff that look like chairs or moons, that look like things that laugh and love, this vast, maybe infinite web of motions, these packets of energy that mutter and reflect upon their own protons spinning electrons off in breaths and sweat distributing themselves…

I saw myself a ring of bone I saw myself in the clear stream of all of it   and vowed, always to be open to it that all of it might flow through   and then heard “ring of bone” where ring is what a bell does —Lew Welch Down to the Bone If I…

99% Identical “All humans are genetically 99.9 per cent identical.” —Roger Highfield, Science Editor . “something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” a poet said imagining friendly neighbors working their way along that which stood between resetting fallen gneiss and granite loaves and balls fallen to each to keep their wall intact while one…

Death of Star HD 62166 & It’s Nebula Although you are distant ………….. distant                  distant                      distant I can see by your past aura against a black further distance, the most distant distance I can see by your billowing…

‘Tis The Little Things ‘tis the little things, y’ know. the way we came to inhabit a sphere ninety-three million miles from a blazing star —a few million closer, we’d be toast ‘tis the little things, for sure‘tis a little thing the way I wake in the morning dreaming a new day, such a miniscule…

Celtic Knot maybe you think I do not know maybe you think I could not be surely I am not where I go surely I am here with thee but maybe moon is nothing old maybe sun is never new perhaps all stories have been one maybe there’s no such thing as through could be everything is…