DEDICATIONS, PLEDGES, COMMITMENTS. For the past. For my own path. For surprises. For mistakes that worked so well. For tomorrow if I'm there. For the next real thing. Then for carrying it all through whatever is necessary. For following the little god who speaks only to me. --William Stafford

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

The Next Day


The Next Day

For Herbert George Wells, Time Lord 


Everything that you think is here, is out there.  You live
surrounded by The Past., waiting for The Future,
for the events stored as holograms on the edges
of the universe to flow from your lives
on a continuous beam of light,

waiting endlessly for Forever, for Godot,
for the Right Man, for Superman, for the signs  
that will keep the Terrible Silence at bay, for the
Right Moment, for Jesus to return, for the bus,
for the elastic wormhole that will  tear down the walls
and take you from Now to Then,

you wait, knowing you are,  and are not part of it.
It is in no rush, although you think it is.  It passes
or it does not pass, slowly, or quickly.  You wear it
on your wrist or in your pocket, and in the lines
and wrinkles on your face.  It beats in your heart
like a drumline.

They tell you everything happens at once.
You know that Tomorrow is relative
to where you are Now and to how fast
you are moving.  You step across a threshold
and marvel at the way it all holds together.

So.  What will you make of it, if after the rain
the curtain is never drawn, and like a Time Lord,
you find you have endless expectations?


Wednesday, March 06, 2013

Happy Birthday Mikolaj Kopernik



Happy Birthday Mikolaj Kopernik
19 February 1473


"To know that we know what we know,
and to know that we do not know what we do not know,
that is true knowledge."  ~ Nicolaus Copernicus  


Since your birth the earth has orbited the sun
five hundred thirty-seven times.  I am sorry
Mikolaj Kopernik, that I still cannot understand
the heliocentric calculations of the cosmos.
Arcseconds.  Stellar parallax motion.

But the real story here begins with dreams,
your dreams and mine.  In mine,
the Arcade burns again.  And again.  Night after night,
it sends up sparks smaller than pinpricks,
the smoke of penny postcards flying like pages
of an animated flip book.  An optical illusion
into the movement of celestial bodies.
Charred walls cave in upon the pinball machines.
The photo booth.  The autographed pictures
of fabulous Sally Rand and Clark Gable.  Nudes
and Midgets.  Bagatelles and Peep Shows.

I am five.  It is night and the Milky Way is hung
like an illustrated map.  Every blooming star is a marker.
An affirmation.  In this dream I stand and watch it burn,
holding my breath.  The child in me returns.  And returns.
Forever dreaming of these visible and invisible delights
and mysteries blazing upward in the sky.  A holocaust
with no survivors.  The earth, racing around the sun,
the fires of earth so like the fires of space.  A tapestry.
A brocade of soot and cinders.

If I could bring you back, I would. I would bring back
Sally Rand and Clark Gable.  Cain and Mable.
I would resurrect the Nudes and Midgets,
untie their ashes from Orion and Saggitarius.
Bring them back on blu-ray, believing in themselves

I was five.  They thought a child would not remember,
Mikolaj Kopernik.  Now that I am seventy-five
my dreams are filled.  Still.  With starscapes
outside of this world.  I remember.  I remember everything.
And it is not like anything I have ever seen before.           

About Me

My photo
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.