Things Seen From A Great Height

THINGS SEEN FROM A GREAT HEIGHT


So  I sit at the window of the
tenth floor looking down at a city like a jewel
in the middle of a desert so ordinary in daylight
it might be anywhere in the world. Palm trees,
birds running along the edges of rooftops below,

not afraid of falling because they are birds,
men walking, and taxi's in the streets. I have
a fear of falling from high places. Even if
I had wings I would be afraid. I know the sound
the wind makes, rushing past my ears as I fall

faster every second. But not today. They say
when you fall in a dream you never reach the
bottom,  but simply disappear down the gullet of 
some sucking Black Hole.  Some night, maybe
soon, I will fall in a dream and not wake up.

Sometimes I fly in dreams. Maybe on that night
I will just fly away like a bird, these things seen
from a great height engraved on the inside
of my skull, things past, things present, and
things veiled at the margins, yet to be.


.

Postcard from the Edge

POSTCARD FROM THE EDGE



So I began to write on this thin scrap of narrow paper that said: Love's Texaco #220 Cheyenne, WY Date 07/25-05 Time 05:23 PM, wishing I had a real piece of paper to write on, but glad for this scrap. Much later I sat at the window of the tenth floor looking down at a city like a jewel in the middle of a desert so ordinary it might be anywhere in the world. Palm trees, birds running on the edge of rooftops of buildings below, not afraid of falling because they are birds, men walking, and taxis in the streets. I have a fear of falling from high places. Even if I had wings I would be afraid. I know the sound the wind makes, rushing past my ears as I fall, faster every second. But not today. They say when you fall in a dream you never reach the bottom, because if you do reach the bottom you will die in your sleep. Some night, maybe soon, I will fall in a dream and not wake up. Sometimes I fly in dreams. Maybe on that night I will just fly away, like a bird. I am out of paper. Having a great time! Wish you were here!

Straying From Your Star/ No Return

STRAYING FROM YOUR STAR



This early snow is deep and heavy
It clings to the trees like new sashes and scarves

Last night I heard the F-16's
practicing their 30 Code sorties

It was not like a car going over my house
or hearing any number of cars

There is a lot of stress in these things they say
and I wonder: for whom

If it's not the Afghans it's the Chechens
The children of the Afghans look a lot like

my grandchildren in Oregon, and the children
of the Chechens like my little ones in Jordan

and all their sons, like mine, are Adam
and all their daughters, Eve (which are many)

We lie quietly together, loving one another
and when they are fast asleep in bliss

I lose my fears, looking for a loving touch
I would not burden them with my sadness

which is part of my punishment for being a poet
because, when you are making something beautiful

of words, everyday words that could become hymns
or plans or even prayers or blessings

layer by layer, with consummate care
a mistake could be disastrous

because, if you are not careful and precise
with their structure, the metaphors

running beneath their surface might crack
If you crack them your forgiveness is uncertain

because you know that gravity gets weaker
the farther you stray from your star



NO RETURN


You will feel nothing until
you get to the point of no return

And you know that heavy objects
make the water ripple, and no one's life

is ever safe. Forces attract
and are repelled, and bodies move

and you know what Dante said
at the entrance to Hell

and you go about speaking words
or writing them. It is rumored

that Our Lord Jesus Christ will rise
again. I have given up sweets for Lent

except for chocolate, which is after all
only a bean. Hosanna

Then I think I am Light wading through
a kind of Light I can barely remember

I see my mother is in the kitchen
making hot cross buns

And this Light tastes
like cinnamon and raisins

My brother pours syrup on pancakes
stacked to the moon

his favorite thing. A perfect storm of broken cells
took him, elegant neurons, a billion units

of blown away DNA. I listen
to Mahler's Eighth, the Symphony

of a Thousand, and I wonder
Will I ever sleep again

.

Volta

Sixty miles per hour
along the Pacific Coast Highway
beside you, and you say: I wish that
you would lay your hand upon my thigh,
and so I do. The sea is gray with rain,
and no perceptible horizon reveals
saltwater to sky.

Now that I am old, ad patres as it were,
and you are older still, I regret
that yours was not the first
my hand had touched.

The Doppler Effect

"Uber das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne"

("Concerning the colored light of double stars and other stars of the heavens.")
--Christian Doppler


Centered in the doorway, you stand where a window
Looks two ways: one way the hours swarm into blue,
Colliding like dominoes, piling up like old newspapers
On the porch. The other way the minutes retreat
Like beads on a broken string. Even the seconds
Are strangers speeding ahead, shifting toward red.

As you wait, entire universes are conceived and destroyed.
There, on the blue side, your mother's body
Has swallowed a seed, and shaped you from air.
A girl with freckles on her lips.
There, on the red side, your eight grandchildren
Hustle toward a future you cannot begin to imagine.

And you. You touch with care wherever the pain is worst:
Your eyes, your neck, your heart. You notice only now
That the window has become a mirror, and the doorway
Is a shelter. Shifting now into red,
Your mother walks up behind you, slips you a chocolate
As she passes by. Your grandchildren's soft,
Unfinished baby skeletons tumble faster and farther
Away. And this moment, the Present melting in your mouth,
Is all you need.

.

A Letter to Cecil B. DeMille

Remember me,
Ipana Pearlywhites:
bit moviestar
from the Forties
who might've played
opposite Bogart
and George Raft,
but didn't?
Thirty-two
pillars of ivory
once graceful
now gone to dentures,
whose especially talented
agility of lips
and imaginative tongue
taught men a new language,
whose willing flesh
became a garbage dump
fpr every twobit producer
west of Bakersfield?
To look at me now
who'd ever guess
this chaste rhythm
of breath under breasts
that used to rise
like helium balloons
but sag tonight
like used condoms
once fired little crimson
cherry-sucker syllables of sugar?
No one.
I am become a history book
of refrigerated kisses
preserved on celluloid
between the pages.


Who's Afraid Of ...

I'll remember ya, honey
think of this note as a gift
I was lucky
yer a lucky bastard
yer the one that got away
in an empty and amorphous space
it became confusing
the lighting was different
windows, things like that
it had an almost documentary feel
of new things and old things
because you have new tools
and you always want to explore
everybody couldn't help but notice
it's the kind of journey
you go on by yourself
*laughter*
in those days everything was very exciting
they did everything before my time
unfortunately there was a lot of night
day, night, I learned, so now
I will pray for you
just know that once we began to shoot
everything was dirty for whatever reasons
and done with something you might find in the streets
I just simply
pictured things a different way.


(Joyce Ellen Davis is Ipana Pearlywhites)



8/25/09





THE FORCE

"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower...
--Dylan Thomas


This is how the story goes:


There is a light that only leaves can see,
green cells whose sugar-yellow receptors, like retinas
down the length of their veins, recognize day breaking.

The light is sovereign
as the Father's rituals, as the Son's relics.
The field is white with flowers:
the force is in the flower, and in the field, and in the rain.
The Holy Spirit is light disguised as water.
Will you recognize the glory as it falls before your face,
and on your right hand, and on your left?
Cleanse your feet with water, pure water.

Come on, brother, come on, sister.

Kick off your shoes! For as long as there is light,
the light becomes a cool river in the heat of day;
fill your arms, fill your skirts with flowers growing down
to the water's edge. We are saved

for such a time as this! For verily, thus saith.

What I Should Have Done


I should have cut a hole in the ceiling
to let my prayers out, words
like smoke from incense pots,
unable to rise above that bloody altar.
Look: here is where you should have slept,
your ear only an inch above my heart.
See: this field of stars above the watchtower
that we might have counted, bye and bye.
Now the sky is full of dark matter,
and though I were rich as Herod,
the baby-killer of Bethlehem
(who was richer than Caesar), I can
not get you back, even though
I would rub salt upon your infant body
and powder you with mustard seeds,
and wrap you up with swaddling bands
embroidered with your genealogies.
Here is the singing bird I'd give you,
the pony, here the toy soldiers,
their cannons in flames.
Here angels play, out of sight
lest they terrify us, though we lie
prostrate, trembling on the ground,
we eaters of entrails, we breakers of bones.
The first to bring an offering
and the first to be offered,
like a burning ram, I continue
to follow your lead
like Nahshon followed Moses, loving him
too much, walking out before him into the sea,
walking out until the water was
all the way up to his nose
before the sea finally parted.

.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

THE FORGETTING

"Our birth
is but a sleep
and a forgetting."

--William Wordsworth

I am
before my mother carried me,
tethered me to earth
with a silver cord,
before I flew prayer feathers
at my Father's knee,
there, where a million moons roll
like black-glass marbles
into the curved valleys of space
before I ever dreamed of earth,
or things of earth: fish
or rocks or bread,
before the luminous waters
of my birth washed me clean,
I am
I always am

praise

and even if you haven't asked
the ferocity I see in your eyes is really praise

the left eye overflowing with a compassion of tears
the right eye damned where the Father stands archived and

disguised the promise is that the hand that gives
takes away nor bird nor snake nor fish can stay it

nor ringed fingers nor hard stones nor veils
nor things visible or invisible nor words

nor the blackened silences of things half-formed
nor oaths nor obligations of a thousand years

of clouded windows and passing lovers or strangers
it is there in the etcetera of praise in ruined newsprint

lifted by the wind and blown and dissolved in a sea
of rain water and even if you haven't looked

it is there in both the promise and the praise
it is there in all of these and none of these

it is Alpha and Omega it is the Beginning and the End
thank you thank you thank you oh thank you

ALICE THROUGH THE GLASS


Try

contemplating

these marvels,

today being another

ordinary Wednesday. You study this

group of ordinary objects: seashells, flowers, curling leaves,

until your eyes burn, your heart nailed to these visions like ripe metaphors

rattling to get free. Like Leonardo of Pisa, you have an abacus, that just might move you down the rabbit's hole

with Alice. Lewis Carroll knew the Secret: add the previous two to find the next. The Farey Tree, Goedel, Escher, Bach and Mandelbrot are famous now as Mother Nature, with her eternally born again

chambered nautilus, her dandelions and daisies, chronicled teeth, swarms, cellular automatons, algorithms, fractals, black holes, dark matter to the very ends of observation, seeds growing through your floorboards and out your windows, rearranging chaos into immaculate order, the world rich with order, the Hindu mathematics of it all: Fib's rabbits hopping toward infinity, like Pi.


(The Fibonacci Sequence: 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 ... etc. Syllables or words. Add the previous two numbers to find the next. Like Pi, it could go on forever. Remember that old campfire song that never ends, it just goes on and on, my friends....)
.

EARLY HOURS


So, what did Asaph and Chloe speak of in their early hours, over breakfast, heads together, the eggs and oatmeal congealing in the bowls, coffee cooling, toast growing cold? Did he mention, in passing, how he had discovered this tiny Martian moon, a mere
eighteen or so kilometers across? Did he mark its triaxial shape with his inkpen upon a napkin, and did she respond by calculating how its mere 27 x 22 x 19 kilometers were equal to 17 x 13 x 12 miles, and did she wonder aloud, if one were standing on the surface of such a tiny world, and gave a great leap, would one escape its gravity and simply keep on going to some far planet of one's own? Did he wonder if a woman in society should avoid education, and concur with the great Doctor Clark of Harvard, whose study concluded that the intellectual development of females would proceed only at the sacrifice of their reproductive organs? When Asaph turned away to butter his cold toast, did she spit in his cold coffee, and go upstairs to stand at the window, looking out?

(NOTE: Asaph Hall discovered the two moons of Mars. Chloe Angeline Stickney, a professor of mathematics, gave up her career when she married him. He had been a student of hers, and he and his classmates made a game of devising questions and problems they were convinced she could never solve, yet she never failed to solve them. After their marriage, when he refused to pay her "a man's wage" for assisting him, she refused to continue her work. Three cheers for Chloe!)

.

The moon is a hole
cold wind wears a black slicker
the last bus goes by the board

.

#26 Hallowed Ground


In the temple
of our flesh,
we follow Adam.
We are the earth.
The earth is us:
a Holy Family.

Rescue the Princess

Oh, do not try.
She is bought and sold, and
smells of old cheese.
She has lost her story
and does not want
to be rescued.

She is what she is,
will never arrive, never
depart, be welcomed,
or suffer. She is
what she needs: a bed,
a cigarette, a coffee pot.

She is blue, a sort of mold
grows where it takes
getting used to, but she will.
You cannot give her anything.
She is all on her own.
This is her career.

People go by, and
mention her name, but
save your breath--
this Princess will never
be fixed. Do not
defend her. Do not

resusitate.

The Charmer

The Charmer

You found the story
telling how the Indians
put a fish
under the planted corn
the adventure illustrated
in your third-grade reader

It happens now somewhere
everywhere everyday that this boy
plants rice
while they watch
he bends over
the bewitched rice or corn
the red or white beans
the potatoes and melons
the squash
like the angel
who whispers grow
grow

Maybe he simply charms
the fish to leap out
of the water
into his hands
in the red dawn

Tatay's white umbrella red
under the fairweather red sky
washing them all
with morning light

Nanay and Nanay Gurang
the Very Old hesitate
studying how he bends over
the grains
how the earth and water
closes over them
like a blessing

The fish is for dinner

Thursday, May 22, 2008
What They Said To Him

You can see him there, a boy among the banyan roots, with light falling like coins through the leaves, his book stirring with dragons and spotted leopards. They are taking him where he'll never again, with shoes and suitcases and boarding passes, travel. Turning a page, he finds yellow-eyed wolves and their pups, the bones of rabbits. See how his bare toes curl when the animals talk, turn up when they lift their large, rough paws, their lacquered claws, their roars, off the paper and up into his body, as wild as theirs, and his fingernails and toenails grow long and tough and curved. He roars. He feels the ground shake as they pass out of his body into the jungle, past the snake that winds through the highest branches of the banyan tree, past the fixed white-eyed stare of parrots looking at the August moon. Someday, before the winterfall, before he is old and spread thin, and the book is dust, and the black owl of night overtakes him in his heavy shoes, he will remember what they said to him: Follow our tracks: we are still your people. He will remember all their names, and what they said to him.

Blessed Be

There, high in the tree hangs a paper-wasp nest like an over-ripe fruit.

Beside the wasp's nest, linnets have built a nest of their own: strange neighbors.

Something about those two windblown nests reminds me of lions and lambs.

Unlovely In His Bones

Unlovely In His Bones


I know a woman lovely in her bones
--Theodore Roethke


I know a man unlovely in his bones
by any simple human measures, still

of ill health, with body parts and passions
as rotted as the pistons of an old

Plymouth, yet, sweet in his pure and tender
soul, who would be raised from his sickbed by

angels, sharp-edged but in no great hurry,
spinning on their graceful harpy wings like

falling-down galaxies. He raises his
obscene middle finger toward the coat-rack

in the corner, in the half-light, spinning.
I know how it is, how space flight is a

risky business. I wonder why in a
universe where angels dance with ions

in a hundred visions and revisions,
Prufrock-like, why is this final, deadly

apparition not an angel? Would not
an angel, any angel, even an

unlovely one be better than this per-
verse revolving coat-rack in the corner?

With Love,
Pepek

LEGENDS AND HEROES

There are a hundred paths
through the world that are
easier than loving. But
who wants easier?
-Mary Oliver


Wasn't it good, though? Wasn't it good,
all of us there together, awash
in Mr. Richard's California light, awash
in color from your bold hand, wild
as the Day the Yankees Lost the Pennant?

Alive, and racing Kije's Troika through
a white shower of strings and little bells
toward a sky and an ocean as blue
as a Carolina day?

Now you are a prayer, or what a prayer
should be, knowing you may have
closed your eyes, but this is no dream.
It comforts us. The God you met waits.
God--a figure like the sun, a face
of copper, of gold, with the merciful grace
of the little girl in red stockings who also waits
to take your hand. It comforts us

that whatever it Was,
Is.

LIES IN NOVEMBER

My stone has hands
It sleeps in the cradle

Of my hands,
Drinking my fire

My stone grows hair
In wonderful curls

Down its silky back
It loves the ice

That breaks me
More than it loves me

It sings of boots
Of blackbirds dying

Of the cracking of heaven
My stone knows black and white,

Was there at the hour
Of my birth

Understands cemeteries
Is flexible
.