Unraveling the Magic: Lift, Drag, & Gravity
"There are books that describe all this
and they are useless" ~ Adrienne Rich
1
Do fish dream of safety in numbers,
a synchronized clockwork?
Do they sleep, eyes wide,
moving in a telepathy of group soul?
In their fishy dreams, do they always
elude the shark in his oblivious hunger,
his machine of death, turning
in their shoals and shadows,
a watery chorus line recital of
swim left now, swim right, lift, drag,
repeat, repeat, repeat?
2
And those black swarms of birds
we watched on video, turning over
olive groves in early autumn evenings,
wave upon wave, casting
their dark nets now left, now right,
expanding and contracting, diving into
some place of knowing,
loving one another, their gregarious chatter
loud enough to drive kings mad.
3
We dream of dark matter, of the knowing silence
of fishes. We dream of flight. Then we thank God,
measuring our maneuvers and aerobics against
what there is, and why there is anything,
saying, Imagine that!
Om mani padme hmm
.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Friday, March 09, 2012
The Clock of the Long Now
The Clock of the Long Now
"Time is what clocks measure." ~ A. Einstein
"Time...is what keeps everything from happening at once." ~ Ray Cummings
but there are those who'd have you believe
everything does happen at once,
that time is incarnate and of one substance, Divine Trinity,
Past, Present, and Future, Maker
of all things visible and invisible.
The world grows old by a series of geologic
accretion of facts. Time is a cyclical event
powered by gravity.
The scripture of numbers is large,
the seconds and minutes adding up to years,
to thousands of years, ticking away like
frames in a film strip, and what you must remember
always, is what you have left behind.
What you learn is holy. It is bread and sleep. It will rise like dough
to wonder, as if its words were stored
like names in a mountain vault, kept dry, accessible
for ten thousand years, waiting to be called forth
like Lazarus, each by his own ineffable tag.
And that thing you must remember from dreams
each millenium when the cuckoo (the last great voice)
calls, is this: the little boat you came in on;
the river becoming a sea; the undertow; the taste
of salt on your tongue; the sweet ache
of that apple, the soft fruit that fell
into your still-young throat as knowledge,
it's seeds and skins (what you must leave behind)
discarded with your uninhabited and mostly irreducible
mortal bones. Remember:
Lazarus.
.JED 3-9-12
"Time is what clocks measure." ~ A. Einstein
"Time...is what keeps everything from happening at once." ~ Ray Cummings
but there are those who'd have you believe
everything does happen at once,
that time is incarnate and of one substance, Divine Trinity,
Past, Present, and Future, Maker
of all things visible and invisible.
The world grows old by a series of geologic
accretion of facts. Time is a cyclical event
powered by gravity.
The scripture of numbers is large,
the seconds and minutes adding up to years,
to thousands of years, ticking away like
frames in a film strip, and what you must remember
always, is what you have left behind.
What you learn is holy. It is bread and sleep. It will rise like dough
to wonder, as if its words were stored
like names in a mountain vault, kept dry, accessible
for ten thousand years, waiting to be called forth
like Lazarus, each by his own ineffable tag.
And that thing you must remember from dreams
each millenium when the cuckoo (the last great voice)
calls, is this: the little boat you came in on;
the river becoming a sea; the undertow; the taste
of salt on your tongue; the sweet ache
of that apple, the soft fruit that fell
into your still-young throat as knowledge,
it's seeds and skins (what you must leave behind)
discarded with your uninhabited and mostly irreducible
mortal bones. Remember:
Lazarus.
.JED 3-9-12
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
About Me
- Joyce Ellen Davis
- 1. In dreams I am often young and thin with long blond hair. 2. In real life I am no longer young, or thin, or blonde. 3. My back hurts. 4. I hate to sleep alone. (Fortunately I don't have to!) 5. My great grandfather had 2 wives at once. 6. I wish I had more self-discipline. (I was once fired from a teaching position in a private school because they said I was "too unstructured and undisciplined." --Who, me??? Naaaahhh....) 7. I do not blame my parents for this. Once, at a parent-teacher conference, the teacher told me my little boy was "spacey." We ALL are, I told her. The whole fan damily is spacey. She thought I was kidding. I wasn't. 8. I used to travel with a theater reperatory company. My parents weren't happy about this. 9. My mother was afraid that I would run off and paint flowers on my cheeks and live in a commune, and grow vegetables. I once smoked pot. ONE TIME. 10. I don't drink or smoke. (Or swear, much. Well, I drink milk, and water, and orange juice, and stuff. Cocoa. I love Pepsi.) 11. Most of my friends are invisible. 12. I am a poet and a writer. All of my writing on these pages is copyrighted. Borrowing (without acknowledgment) is a sin.