Approximation of It

The fabric of consciousness holds this together,

Like stone, dirt, crushed pebbles and coarse ground leaves, twigs, bones, pieces of bubble gum, plastic, feathers, hair, sand, clay, rotting animals, dry grass, sapphires, broken bits of pottery, ancient tombs, meteorites, moon dust and many, many, many other things (my mother's first pair of dentures, for example, or dust from an HP calculator that fell from the seventy-eighth floor of the North Tower, a toenail spat from the window of a Corvette speeding down the Pennyrile Parkway, a shaving of coconut meat sunk at the bottom of the North Atlantic in the belly of a waiter of the Titanic, who snuck a taste of cream pie from the plate of a soon-to-die millionaire, taking his first trip across the ocean, though deathly fearful of great white sharks).

There is much in the soil.
Starting from there.
Returning to there.
Trees growing from it.
Cotton.
Oil.
Return in ashes.
Return in dust.
Grow from this consciousness, idea.
Bloom here for a moment.
Consumed, digested.
Many trees continue to grow in Brooklyn.
(Though I never read the book).

Here's what in trying to say:

Good job.
Feel good that you understand the vibration of atoms.
Be proud that you can fathom the multiverse.
Fathom it.
Watch comets stream through the solar wind of a galaxy far, far away
Through telescopes made of melted sand,
With the assistance of electrons captured by some ancient leaf and stored in a coal mine beneath the stomping hooves of trail riding quarter horses that bear their human burdens up the steep slopes of the  Appalachian hills of Eastern Kentucky.

And be so wise to know that you, too,
Will be coal to power machines of knowing,
Black holes of consciousness
In which Jehovah dwells.

Act.
Yah!
Do.
Whoopie!
Make mud pies.
Climb a flag pole and tear town a people's nylon rag.

Our struggle is just.

Water spills over Niagara.
A seventeen ounce steelhead survives the fall,
Stone will not, forever.

The snowflake does not shake its fist at gods it will not comprehend.

There is no struggle.

The Word.
Alpha and Omega.
Beginning and End.

We grow from this good soil,
Ground into dust.
The Lord wears our skin
Like rustling leaves
In garden winds.

Oh, Lord: A Conversation

What have I done to bear this consciousness
That You have set within this living flesh?
What choice have I to think upon, but this:
The thoughts that pass through me, awake, at rest,
Asleep, in dreams, aware, oblivious
To anything that is not on my mind
At the particular moment I confess
These ideas to myself? How can I find
A way out of this: a drug, a lover,
Perhaps a bolt of electricity,
Or fifteen years of psychotherapy
To locate what there is that's left of me
That's not defined by present company
(By which I mean these thoughts)? Speak, another.

Nel Mezzo Del Cammin

I stood upon the edge of the mown grass
That crept up to a forest, dark and deep.
There pondered I upon life's fleeting pass
That borders death as waking borders sleep.

Each blade I stood upon, cut short and clean,
No bramble, stick, or leaf to trip my feet.
A step into the wilderness would mean
That my dominion end where Nature meet.

Ten vultures low above my head did fly,
Who smelled the death that I had conjured up,
The circling birds did patiently wait that I
Would fall down to the ground, and on me sup.

Fear kept me on the safety of the grass:
The dark wood I did not dare to trespass.

Yoga

Open. Shut.
A red-tailed hawk yelps atop the green canopy,
Painted in sunrise.

Somewhere above,
Through cracks of leaf and branch,
Blue sky remains

As drops of rain
From last nights' storms
Filter in piddle and plod,

Falling from limb to limb
Onto the broad backs of
Walnut leaves,

A gentle shower in each breeze.
The bone white branches
Of Romeo's heart-sick tree

Stretch up from soft soil
To softer sky.
There is no end to this naming:

There is no space
Within infinitesimal moments
To declare all that is,

To release the floodgates,
Empty the reservoir
Of this pendulating consciousness,

Into sacred vessel,
Holy container:
This living word,

This flesh and blood
From which love and fear
Emerges,

Like a white shoot from a wet acorn
That perceives no distance
Between its self and sun

That cannot be conquered.
Light falls from heaven
Across the lichened bark off the oak trees,

Blue and green and brown.
Let there be,
In the beginning

And end.

Footsteps

You said you painted that one for your mom,
Who carried you upon her back for years.
But a mom who carries on her back a son
Can't see upon his face his heavy tears.

She feels them in her spine. They weigh her down.
But still she trudges on, not giving up.
Stand up, my son, and wipe away that frown,
Put down your fear, and let new love erupt.

Oh mother, I am tired and cannot stand
To take another step upon this earth.
My only strength: to hold onto the hand
Of she who's carried me from death to birth.

My son, do not give up, his mother cried.
He clung onto her back, and then he died.

The Humped Backs of Sages

Last night Venus stayed high up in the sky,
Past ten o'clock,
A bright, white beacon of light
With Jupiter trailing close behind
In a cloudless sky
In the last weeks of spring.

I saw her as I was driving home
From a long, hard day's work,
And I thought to myself,
There's not much time
To get done what needs to get done,
To find an end to my labors.

A thought crossed my mind:
This tired old jalopy I'm driving in
Could get pulverized by an asteroid,
Or the brakes could go out, and I could smash into an oak tree.
I'd be wrapped up in a pile of twisted metal,
I'd be bleeding into the oil pan

If that happened, I thought to myself,
I'd be surprised,
And a little bit desperate to realize
That I really had made it to the end,
Slipping out of consciousness before I had time to think,
Slipping down over the western horizon,

Chasing Venus and Jupiter into the darkness,
Where morning and evening don't happen,
Just space, and something like time,
But without a merry-go-round
To keep me oriented to the cycle,
To calibrate the rhythms of this beating heart.

And I pictured an old, Chinese philosopher,
Nipping on Ng-Ka-Py,
Toking rich, thick clouds of opium,
Floating over his own horizon,
Like a morning star star at midnight,
Like full moon at noon.

Make way for the old, wise sages, I'm coming in.
Let me put down my hammers and nails.
Let me drop my hoe upon the ground
Outside the gates of Eden,
To write shorter poems, unwritten.
To breathe deeper breaths, unbreathed.