AT THE CENTER

AT THE CENTER

Living is easy

here at the center

where there are no sides

and sounds melt into music,

colors collide

without losing their edge,

greed is long gone,

hate is on permanent holiday,

gratitude blooms in April air,

and beauty abounds

as Keats is king

and children dance

a stately pavane

guided by the light

of the evening star.

   May 8, 2010

LA LUNA

      LA LUNA

Flower Moon of May

does not disappoint,

lets the sun finish its fandango

before she appears,

pale fire of persimmon,

then cools to butterscotch,

lemon, champagne,

and finally settling in

to hang the night in silver.

Oh, the shine of it,

the sheen of it,

eons unseen,

alone, unknown, unnamed

until an elegant creature

came along, saw and said,

luna, lune, moon,

then skipped the skies

to touch it, tell it

vows of always,

to have and to hold,

to orbit ever together,

one in fullness

and in beauty

as long as sun

allows them light.

   May 20, 2008

SUN AND SEA

SUN AND SEA

Give me a sun

at dusk or dawn

rimming the horizon

in reds and roses,

but not at noon

until it softens

on dirty green

breaking clean,

spewing, spilling

in a show of alabaster beauty

as dune fence shadows

go geometric in zebra stripes.

Gulls come close now,

those masters of mendicity,

the silver sea at last

a shimmer of rippled glass

 Late February 2008.

RENAISSANCE

     RENAISSANCE

After the rain we wander

through fields of nascent green,

then lift our eyes to skies

too new for blue. 

Birds audition

for a backyard symphony.

 

Nature knows no yesterday;

renaissance is its middle name.

      June 28, 2011

RECIPE FOR TODAY

         RECIPE FOR TODAY

Forget yesterday and morrow- day,

do the day, this day, all the way,

out of bed as soon as night lifts

and first blue is born,

aware of your next-to-nothingness

in the vast sweep of countless beings

but at the same time your total importance

to you in yourself

and in your relationship

to everything that isn’t you,

such as the different shades of blue the sky wears

(count them but don‘t try to name them)

before the sun sets and the evening star appears,

remembering Kierkegaard’s insight

that people complain about not having freedom of speech

when they have freedom of thought

but seldom use it,

and don’t forget Emily Dickinson’s,

“Beauty crowds me till I die,

Beauty, mercy have on me!

But if I expire today,

Let it be in sight of thee.”

Not an order

not a command,

just a recipe

for today.           

         March 25, 2010    

A THANK YOU NOTE

          A THANK YOU NOTE

To Beethoven and Brahms and all their brothers,

to Shakespeare and Keats and all their kin,

including the Belle of Amherst,

if it’s not too late to write to her,

to Rembrandt and Renoir and all their fellow artists

who created a thing of beauty,

a joy so far forever,

enriching our brief hour upon this stage

with their unique piece of Divine Mind.

Heirs of their rejuvenating legacy,

with grateful voice we sing Miranda’s song:

“How beauteous mankind is,

oh brave new world that has such people in it.”

             January 15, 2010

SIRIUS

                  SIRIUS

First star, last star, brightest star,

guides me, rides me through the night,

tells me of his favorite planet

where “love thy neighbor”

is not a commandment, but a way of life,

and there is no word for war.

“Where did we go wrong,” I inquire.

“From the very first, you,

speck of a minor star

at the tail end of one of billions of galaxies,

saw yourself as  center of the universe,

and you, not center but splinter,

punished those who tried to set you straight,

despite the life and light your Sun supplies,

painting your world in an infinity of colors,

limited only by a shortage of  names.

And when a lovely lad, who died so young,

exclaimed, ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever,’

we sang hallelujah; one of them has got it right.”

 “What can we do to be like you?”

“It’s too late for humanity;

the disease is far too deep to undo. 

But perhaps it’s not too late, my child,

for you, or for any human being

who really wants to make the change.”

         

Congratulations, you turned the page,

but let me give you some serious caveats

from the mouth of Cormac’s Judge:

            “Before man was, war was waiting for him….

              War endures because young men love it and old men love it in them……

              All children know that play is more honorable than work…..

              and the ultimate game is war.”

You see, war is in you too,

and to eradicate it

will require severe uprooting. 

You will have to put on hold

all beliefs and convictions,

abandoning the philosophy

that you are right

and they are wrong

as you begin again

from the nadir of nothingness,

from the ground zero of your soul.

                                  November/December 2009

Quotations from Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.

THE LONG JOURNEY

   THE LONG JOURNEY

Ultimate beauty lies beneath the layers,

palimpsest and patina.

 

You may penetrate, but do not peal. 

Just follow the yellow brick road

with Dorothy and Toto too

until one day you come to the core,

the kingdom of  endless bliss,

which you may enter

only if you take off all of your words

and leave them outside the golden gate.

         July 20, 2006

NATIVITY

                                                                            

    NATIVITY

A hue of magenta rims the horizon,

I stay in bed—“niente” makes no demands. 

And then a dirty pink, another day of

lagniappe is on its way, this one belongs

to seaside goldenrod, whose slow gestation 

I’ve watched for weeks from weedy green until

this now of yellow inflorescence, incandescence

of  fields aflame in copper-colored glory.

And I am the benefactor of all this beauty.

Beauty, the only thing that brings one’s

forces into balance; beauty, the only thing

that wounds and heals in one majestic stroke.

            

                          October 21, 2003

BEAUTY

               BEAUTY

The name of the game is beauty,

and it’s played in honor of John Keats,

whose brief life was dedicated to this

principle; and yet he lives, as Shelley

prophesied, an echo and light unto eternity. 

It seems that those who best perceive it,

Li Po, Tu Fu, Shelley, and Dickinson too,

best pass it on, not to the past, but to the ages.

Beauty is a balm that eases the way

of all who tread the centuries’ paths.

               May 8, 2003

APRIL GOLDENROD

                          APRIL GOLDENROD

Late April’s goldenrod,

not golden but a vibrant green

in preparation for October scene.

Background now of silver sand,

dune fences in ecru, then waters

light and darker shades of blue

until horizon’s lilac kiss ascending

into  azure of the firmament

bedecked with luminescent clouds. 

Breathtaking beauty, it never

 is the same, but always it is here. 

How dare one mouth

impoverishment’s complaint,

enriched by  all this sunset splendor.

                              April 28, 2003

AUBADE

                                    AUBADE

The sea at dawn is striped in  slate blue and aquamarine.

Deep drum of waves beats the shore in morning monotone.

Shifting shapes of cirrocumulus rearrange the blue behind them.

            The scene is  streaked by songless birds: gulls flap,

            pelicans glide, a fat, black grackle crosses the deck

in focused strut as though he’s on his way to work.

Light, tones ,intensity  change too fast for  painter

to mix his colors, for poet to thumb his thesaurus

in time to  find the right word.

It’s  too fugitive  for   artist to be faithful

to detail. He doesn’t have to. What he wants

to achieve is the transfer of all this harmony

so that the synapses of your soul will flow

with new energy ,  fusion of forces in which 

your authentic  powers coalesce ,and it is your

inner canvas, clean, bright, and colorful, that becomes

the thing of beauty, you become the  true work of art.

                            March 23, 2003

AMUSING

       AMUSING    

Let us go then, you and I,

amusing amidst the muses

of the universe, unnamed,

unknown, unacknowledged,

except in that quintessential

culture of  the Greeks, who

had names for the nine, but

those ladies have been retired

for centuries, even  though still

commemorated by mispronounced

streets in the city of New Orleans.

No human creation of any value

begins with us but with the spirit

that breathes into our minds, souls,

psyches, the insipience of energy,

the spark of light: sonatas and symphonies,

sonnets and odes, epics and novels,

the theatre of  Shakespeare,

the statues of  Michelangelo,

the paintings of  the Impressionists.

And this spirit is a muse

who blows a higher breath

into a lower being, who then, in

turn,  illuminates with eternal beauty

the mean streets of a dark and dirty world.

             February 14, 2003

PRE-DAWN MESSAGE

PRE-DAWN MESSAGE

Scintillant Venus

in morning-star silver

and to her right

a waning crescent moon

in oxymoronic gold

topped by Spica and Saturn,

Eiffel tower of stars

peeping in to bedroom windows

as they sing:

 “Ain’t no sin,

no mo, no mo,

ain’t no sin no mo. 

Gotcha licence,

gotcha blessing,

ain’t no sin, no mo.”

No oxymoron this,

just the rules we play by

in this world

that man’s made up.

      December 3, 2010

THE WORLD WE LIVE IN

THE WORLD WE LIVE IN

The world we live in,

or rather the worlds we live in,

not one but four :

the four worlds we live in. 

One, the world within,

two, the world that nature has made,

three, the world than man has made,

four, the world that man has made up. 

Study them,

get to know them:

man makes balls

but makes up games;

man makes words

but makes up meanings and interpretations

See the differences,

grasp the relationships,

then live

in the ease and energy

of the balance.

    September 25, 2009

SPRING AGAIN

      SPRING AGAIN

Late April afternoon

red birds feed their young

in  cherry orchard freshness,

landscape brightened

by zinnias and azaleas in bloom

without the aid of Impressionists.

It’s nature’s eternal return. 

At sunset thousands of photos

of the moon’s eclipse appear online,

when one or two would do. 

Next night Venus and the crescent moon

dance a stately pavane,

unnoticed by the masses

too busy taking pictures of themselves.

    April 25, 2012

AVE ATQUE VALE

AVE  ATQUE  VALE

Flotsam and jetsam

of a shipwrecked life

come together

in belated harmony

to sing a first and final

farewell of gratitude

for being’s beauty

and nature’s majesty,

for light and laughter, 

the moon’s fidelity

and all the music

of mankind.

  August 2, 2011

GREET THE DAY

              GREET THE DAY

            Greet the day

            with a hey, hey, hey. 

            Face it

            with the face you had

            before you were born,

            scotching the worm at the heart of being,

            skirting the galaxy's black hole. 

            Integer of Infinity,

            Divine Mind is in you. 

            Turn down the static

            and hear it say:

            "You want more

            when what you have a

            is everything."

               September 2010

A DIALOGUE OF STARS

            A DIALOGUE OF STARS

Night of clouds, of moonlight, and a single star. 

You can’t be Sirius,” I said,

and star replied, “Who else, so bright, so blue?” 

And thus began a dialogue of stars.

You see, I too am a star,

oh not a whole one,

just a tiny but important part,

a seeing-eye dog

with a mind that can communicate,

just like my old friend, Sirius.

Where else did these thought come from?

                 The road to “I-lessness”

                  is paved

                  with many “I’s,”

                  progressively getting smaller. 

                  If pain is the enemy,

                  pleasure is the ally;

                  only one thing greater:

                  the comfort of controlling pleasure

                  and not letting it control you. 

Star gone, amen to dialogue.

Day again , full  moon a wafer in the west. 

First pedestrians stroll the beach,

some bending to retrieve

the sea’s overnight gift of shells.

               November 4, 2009

A SPRINKLING OF STARS

A        A SPRINKLING OF STARS

November night,

a sprinkling of stars

tossed by a hand unseen. 

They’ve shifted south,

and I have shifted with them,

following them

to the shore’s edge,

where sleeping on the floor

next to a sliding glass door,

I am awakened to see

brightly covered wagons

slowly moving west

in search of California gold,

dragging Canopus behind them

along the sea/sky line

of demarcation.

    November 2009

ON THE BEAM

       ON THE BEAM

           Everything

                 is

               both

           important

                and

         unimportant

                 at

                 the

                same  

                time.

      Balance is on the beam.

Must avoid

each extreme. 

But, since

so much

depends upon

the quarks

that came

with the

original package;

be good

to yourself

and take

it easy.

          May 5, 2012

CHANGE

             CHANGE

Revisiting the people and places of your past,

you learn they’re not the same,

and  neither are you. 

Change is such a subtle thing

like the seeming stillness of the Earth

that’s speeding through the universe,

or the mind that began these lines

and grows anew with each sweet turn of verse.

             April 28, 2012