Poetry

STARS…

Stars…there aren’t enough to contain them,
The tiny flashes, moves of thought
Racing time to come into real being,
Into bony life, visceral expression.
No curved line, no one color, no one work
Can release me from Beauty’s ache,
There when I was born,
As if in the passage I pulled a muscle,
A soulful tear that let in light,
And never healed, never let go.
Perhaps the key is to tear it open, new,
Cry like rain and waterfalls every day,
Inviting what light does, to burn and brighten.

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DO ALL THE ANGELS KNOW EACH OTHER?

Do all the angels know each other?
Or do they pass on Heaven’s ground
As strangers to angels from lands
In galactic regions they’ll see
On vacation next century?
Do they nod at one another,
Polite in greeting as they pass
In blurring flight, speeding toward
A first miracle delivery
On Planet Earth, where God’s children
Are barely bearing up under
Rainstorms and wild tsunamis.
Wretching out foul infection’s waste,
The children pray their prayers for help,
And angels wonder who that was,
The nitid one who just flew by
The blue-eyed, mountain-tall creature
With the wings that bent at the tip,
The unforgettable hue of
Feathers revealing heritage
Of rare and privileged origin.
Sweeping across infection’s homes
They touch the child in nano time
And sweep on to other worlds,
Haunted by memory of those
Whose names and hearts they can’t recall.
Do angelic days begin with
Desperate prayer, begging God’s help,
Occasionally wondering
If the day can be lived at all?
Are there no days where angels live,
No hours or passing centuries,
But only nows endlessly parading,
They cheering the coming of each one,
Embracing their embracing hearts,
Shouting their “Thank Gods” as they
Drink down Time and wrap space ’round them,
Clothing themselves in today’s forever task?

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I AM THE OLD WAVE TOSSED BY WIND

I am the old wave tossed by wind,
A stranger in a world well-known.
Stuck on a border, confusing
Roads, forking, leading to vistas
All promising promised lands.
Maps abound, some published at large,
Others private, shared by poets
In beds of rich, sweeter touching,
Decisions laced in honeyed talk,
Stars pulled from night orbits by love,
Carefully draped over eyes, breasts
And wrapped around waists, all for bliss.
Who would not take roads of starlight,
Lampposts lit with orbs against velvet black,
Pathways soft, galatial webs thick
With sheaves of angel songs
And joy’s best titans for company?
The wider road bears shuffling best,
Heads down, eyes weary, half shuttered,
Careful strides down the dusty lane,
Holding tightly to fear’s hands,
Survival the best hope, the dream.
Masses drift this direction,
The stiff force of movement alone
Enough to lull, to strip resolve,
And it seems a horror, this path,
But rumor rises like an odor,
Rumor of safety, of missing hell,
And the stink of life’s slow decay
Becomes a perfume to woo fools.
Few notice the waking poets
Swimming upstream, back to the forks,
Gagging, desperate to reroute the train,
At least for the children playing.
Is there a road loved by God
Where poets can walk unafraid?
Where hell is impossibly far,
Human being being God’s delight
In all it’s complication?
A road on which sin falls away,
No old revelation secure,
None to finally stamp a truth
Irrevocable, but instead
To invite to the collective
Wayfinding, God as lost as we,
Or at least as curiously
Invested, watchful over us,
Creation’s presence a wonder
He never tires of.  Moved always
By the unending dance along
Love lanes entered by narrow doors,
He welcomes all the humble,
All the lost, all those who would bow
As the courteous first move.

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