Category: Poetry

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary’s cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

Keep up your talk—
There is no need for silence now.
I am content to listen, and watch you now.
Your voice stops while you walk.

You move about,
And toss back from your brow
The lock that always falls across your brow.
Your grin is tinged with doubt.

Einstein and art
And ranching—it goes on somehow.
Don’t stop, or it will be too much somehow,
And you will hear my heart.

They say I have attachment disorder
from years in the orphanage—I say
I’m attached to dirt: to the grit 
of stones, pulverized metal from 
the slag heap, I learned touch
from air, I fashioned love from
strangers. Your families
make no sense to me.
My mother’s the 4 barrel of a 409,
my heart’s dragstripped
from the shredded tires
of predators. Go ahead,
think of me—
throw the red flag down.
I’m one you never figured, 
dead engine start on a quarter-mile strip,
my lo-jack is the split/
the pull away—
you back there,
me running the distance. 

Man instinctively regards himself
as a wanderer and wayfarer,
and it is second nature for him
to go on pilgrimage in search
of a privileged and holy place,
a center and source of
indefectible life.

This hope is built into his psychology,
and whether he acts it out or simply
dreams it, his heart seeks to return
to a mythical source, a place
of “origin,” the “home”
where the ancestors came from,
the mountain where the ancient
fathers were in direct communication
with heaven, the place of the
creation of the world, paradise
itself, with its sacred
tree of life.

Woke up this morning with an
agonizing urge
to be an absolute nobody
in a world gone mad
with everybody trying
to be a “somebody.”

To be unknown and unseen
like a distant star in an
undiscovered galaxy, a dandelion
loafing beneath the sun
in some deserted pasture,
to be an anonymous
breeze that rustles the
ferns of an ancient
forest at the edge
of the world.

Ah, yes…

To be far away, adrift and alone,
sauntering in a leafy alcove,
“where Nature moves, and
Rapture warms the Mind.”

To get out there beyond the
perimeter
of this barbed wire civilization,
far removed from worldly
titles and deadlines and the
delusional drudgery and
pandemonium of endless
ambition.

To be barbarically alive, to savor
the pure lifeblood of our primitive
marrow, to cleanse myself
of the filth of steel-and-asphalt
reality, to resuscitate the inner
archaic spirit, to unite the conscious
with the shadow and allow
grace to devour what’s left
of my iridescent heart.

Into the timeless woods I go
where the moonlight illuminates
the infinite peace of things.

I go to the woods to dance barefoot
like a demented shaman in the muck
of the meadows. I go to the woods
as an antidote to modernity,
to wander at ease among
the wild geraniums and thickets,
unearthing the primordial
savage within.

I go to the woods, in the words
of Thoreau, “to live deliberately,
to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what
it had to teach, and not, when
I came to die, discover that
I had not lived.”

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

Snow, and low-swept evergreens;
And soil heavy with rain,
Where grey-pronged orchard trees,
Shivering, bloom again.

Crusted clay and russet leaf,
Loam, and a flowering bush;
And dust, with sturdy weeds
Matted in the underbrush.

As each day zigzags into night,
And life keeps circling by
Overhead, in ageless blue,
Endures the sky.

If a man is crossing a river
And an empty boat collides with his own skiff,
Even though he be a bad-tempered man
He will not become very angry.
But if he sees a man in the boat,
He will shout at him to steer clear.
If the shout is not heard, he will shout again,
And yet again, and begin cursing.
And all because there is somebody in the boat.
Yet if the boat were empty.
He would not be shouting, and not angry.

If you can empty your own boat
Crossing the river of the world,
No one will oppose you,
No one will seek to harm you.

The straight tree is the first to be cut down,
The spring of clear water is the first to be drained dry.
If you wish to improve your wisdom
And shame the ignorant,
To cultivate your character
And outshine others;
A light will shine around you
As if you had swallowed the sun and the moon:
You will not avoid calamity.

A wise man has said:
“He who is content with himself
Has done a worthless work.
Achievement is the beginning of failure.
Fame is beginning of disgrace.”

Who can free himself from achievement
And from fame, descend and be lost
Amid the masses of men?
He will flow like Tao, unseen,
He will go about like Life itself
With no name and no home.
Simple is he, without distinction.
To all appearances he is a fool.
His steps leave no trace. He has no power.
He achieves nothing, has no reputation.
Since he judges no one
No one judges him.
Such is the perfect man:
His boat is empty.

It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and
lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days,
such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even.
Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.

No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self conscious
persona putting on its celebrated imitation
of Christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact
of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you,
sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and
self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.

Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered.