Winds blow and leaves

A document arrived this morning.
I was on my way out, I decided to leave 
the large envelope in the living room.
I was supposed to have a daylight-day:
somewhere off the desk, 
a table outdoors finally. With a book
to mean nothing else but joy.
Shoes without socks, ripped jeans, an apple.
But something else always happens, the way
things, unexpected, do.
I returned the book unread,
the apple without a bite. I returned
hungry and angry

receiving another unhappy news.
When will things go away? I want to go away.
But the winds blow and leaves 
stay on the branches.

i started a joke

I should be a little too old for this.
But

in the mornings I still have my tea,
the toast, slices of a piece or two
of fruit

as though nothing has changed.
The weather 
has been kind of late, two days now.

It tells me to come for a run or what
may resemble like it.
I try not to think of a woman 

filling my recent days, with whom
words are exchanged
like gifts.

To each other as though we are young
again, somehow. In a way.
I am a little too old and she is 

a little older than I am; but also, 
married. Isn't it quite an old joke?

the silk road

Names are always beautiful. As beautiful 
as we can imagine them to be. Framing 
them with the lines of our wants, the unsaid 
and unanswered needs. We tell and we do not
tell; the yearnings are always difficult,

no words come, they balk at the touch.
If I may be direct, how will you respond?
If I tell you I wonder how it will be
to be right across you, the table meant
for two? It is possible.

All these exchanges happening while sharing
a metaphysical table. So it is this, we
have no bodies, no faces, no names; but
how the words flow. Moving and always
in a state of unsettled be-coming.

The silk road can be seen from outside
our window; a candle flickers, you unfold
a table napkin; I search for a word trying
to find an excuse to look at you.
Someone comes close, asks what we'll have
for dinner. 

the unsame world

How can we live in a same world?
I made the mistake of looking out 
the clear glass of the front door 

and smiled (did I really?)
           
that the man who saw it took it
as sign he could shovel.
My shovel was leaning on the porch

so there was no need of him.

But it was early in the morning
and I was just coming down to tea
and the man was cold, explaining

his deal for something to eat.

The things we could, need to do.
The real things beyond our real.
I didn't carry

cash, what is also called the thin
line between warmth and cold, 
the places where people stood. 

27 things

1. I must tell you I met someone.
2. Named Gold.
3. Fire burning tight in a small frame.
4. Birdcage, voice box, body.
5. Skin supple, subtle to the eye.
6. I want to, but do not.
7. So much age, so much youth.
8. She laughs and she says.
9. I step back and hold myself back.
10. Half a hundred smiles.
11. Three hundred times of waiting.
12. I search for something else instead.
13. Try again patience, the kind that sees through the last of the ripples so the liquid surface calms again into a mirror of sky.
14. Morning, afternoon, night, the chairs and tables by the streets are with people, warm temperature in the middle of winter.
15. Spark, spark, spark.
16. I dream of the outline of her.
17. Search for something else instead.
18. Is it possible to call it mirror? 
19. Translated into permutations: woman, night, flower, gold.
20. No one remains innocent, not after the wars folded in the years.
21. Are you spring cleaning?
22. I have two rugs and two wooden, folding chairs.
23. There is a list made into existence everyday and made to disappear everyday.
24. Am I waiting? Yes.
25. It is always the same woman.
26. In different translations.
27. The same.

archive

Three nights ago, exactly, I dreamed 
the woman from five years ago 
whom I've lost to Germany, married 

to a man my jealousy--
    how it shames me to myself 
    that one word over which anger 
    appears more dignified or honorable--

could easily stain undesirable,
something I nonetheless do not do.
Knowing it is my own ego

at fault and not the man himself 
who, on an even keel, I hope would
love her more than she does herself,

which is really another way of saying
more than I had, could.
Three nights ago, exactly, I dreamed

her, with a face I have never ever seen
before but still easily recognized
in the way of those eyes, those cheekbones,

those lips, and arms, and the very is-ness
of her. In the dream, she has grown
more toned, stronger in the way I have

no knowing whether it is out of brokenness
or something finally better. Knowing only
how it was so long ago since 

her dancing was a way to
punish her own body, wring out and into it 
the pain of her psyche:

The weight of words, she called it.
One day, she said, you'll never 
see me again... Three nights ago, exactly,

I saw her again in the dream:
the toned muscles, the scent of her,
"air ballet" I thought,

all that cloth, and all that wringing,
lifting as though made light
the weight of being.

Was she happy? I could not ask
in the dream, our faces were so close.
We could kiss, were about to, would

kiss I do not remember upon waking.
Only the recurring sense, as always,
that I had a chance and I chose

to lose it.

The snowflakes that wait by the road

Dear Friend,

Are the leaves falling where you are? The view of the mountains where I am are beautiful in a quiet and almost sad way whenever it is autumn. Mountains in autumn remind me of both hope and bruise, and that space in between them without a name. Also of Native Americans and the colored people, black, brown, yellow. The weight of history is heavy and long, and though we may want to refuse it, the times remember for us. The length of its memory, the memory of an elephant. Have you ever placed your open palm on a grown elephant? Gentler than the dog's, the dog who loves you and sleeps by your side as though there is nothing else in the world to ask for.

The tree right across my window is black and bare. It is sleeping now that winter has begun. Since my arrival, I have noticed two stray cats called by their names at night by a woman's voice. The cats are not hers. I have seen her on an occasion feeding them in a corner. Sometimes the cats are by porch steps when I arrive; they look at me and I try to put a name to what I feel. I am wary. Though I can count by years the length of stay, moving is always inevitable and necessary. Someone, many years ago, engaged against it: she said there are things that cannot be changed. I let her have her way, though I did not agree and still don't; although admitting, I must say a part of me wants to believe it.

I think about the birds, and the squirrels, and the stray animals at times these days, their lives no more lesser or greater than the lives of those in the Third and war-torn worlds, in conditions where gentleness remains to exist.

On the last days of this semester, students tell of long and heavy histories of themselves; art, again, as always, a catharsis, although...you must have sensed by now I remain grappling: to old to believe and un-believe. Hope. Is Always An Expensive Thing. We buy in exchange of spirit.

There is plenty of sadness and pessimism to share. And yet there remains joy in things so little, like the snowflakes who lives ever so momentarily only to fall and wait by the wayside, to lose itself and rise again.


Signed, P

crossings

 

Comes the bird
touching water
shore of another 
same world.

should i tell you there are two lemons on the table

Should I tell you there are two lemons on the table, the kind
grown in these regions. Taut and green and sour just enough
sweet to be forgiven. Not that they ask for any, being only
what they are. Unlike other things that need telling

For instance, the green ramekin with an apostle spoon 
beside a custom-made glass half filled with water the way
things should be. The mobile phone beside it, black
is quiet and the pen beside it, black, is still.

Other things need reminding. The clock to keep on running.
The ring around a finger, hers, to mean. The roads are long
and web-like and many. And this, a brief brush of wind.
She is passing and is leaving.

Miracle Fair

Commonplace miracle:
that so many commonplace miracles happen.

An ordinary miracle:
in the dead of night
the barking of invisible dogs.

One miracle out of many:
a small, airy cloud
yet it can block a large and heavy moon.

Several miracles in one:
an alder tree reflected in the water,
and that it’s backwards left to right
and that it grows there, crown down
and never reaches the bottom,
even though the water is shallow.

An everyday miracle:
winds weak to moderate
turning gusty in storms.

First among equal miracles:
cows are cows.

Second to none:
just this orchard
from just that seed.

A miracle without a cape and top hat:
scattering white doves.

A miracle, for what else could you call it:
today the sun rose at three-fourteen
and will set at eight-o-one.

A miracle, less surprising than it should be:
even though the hand has fewer than six fingers,
it still has more than four.

A miracle, just take a look around:
the world is everywhere.

An additional miracle, as everything is additional:
the unthinkable
is thinkable.

[by Wislawa Szymborska; translated by Joanna Trzeciak]

palm on air

How long is a year? Not long, not long 
enough for a prayer and a piece of
fear to vibrate in waves ever so quiet
morning clear sunshines would appear
not to know, except it is there

in the quiet near certainty of things.
Every time now we hold hands it is with
knowledge of distance, impending, coming; 
every single waking a movement towards
the leaving. It is just over there.

And what lies beyond? What lies we
do not know except blind courage
that belief of returning to love.

the things we do to roll the stone of the world

1
To roll the stone up the mountaintop, only
having it roll back, to start again. Do you
sometimes feel this old? Bones, body
weathered as stone, faith broken like a horse

learned of certain gain, loss. No longer having
child's eyes even if you cling on to wonder.

2
Yesterday, sitting at the back during a vision-
presentation; and later, in a conference 
by activists: the things done to roll the stone
of the world. To where we hope a better place. 
(Sometimes it takes twice as much to keep on

believing). We do anyway; like the stranger
who introduced himself and shook my hand.

3
And courageous, asked "Will you take a look
at my poems, tell me your thoughts. 
I've shown them to no one else." Such trust.
Such honor to be given it. No matter the poems

were bad; there is always enough gentleness.
Aren't attempts half the success itself?

4
I wrote T a very long letter last night while
I was high, with an explicit apology: "Let me
say these before my short sentences surface."
I meant sober where sober meant quiet.
This morning, I dare not open the sent emails.

Because T is afraid of permanence (and I
never asked why) and I give thoughts bodies

5
of perceivable, tangible form. No plant in pot;
all of them on ground. Rhodora, fierce

woman, I met her again a week ago, gone
the sharpness into gentleness of the weary.
Retired after warring ideologies for sixty years.

6
All these slow march of protests towards that.
Even though we might carry no banner.
The things we do to roll the stone of the world.

I kissed her last night after making love.
The soft lights showing gentleness--

that which makes us keep on 
rolling stone of the world.

Roethke

She says to hurry to hurry to hurry I say to pause "I take my waking slow"
The things to do will never run out They are a legion that never slows
She chides and she smiles and sometimes understands the need to slow
In praise of slowness we kiss She half walks and I half run
To take our waking slow

when i will meet you

When finally I will meet you, 
I imagine there will be 
nothing to utter and many
distances to cross. 
Each of us a world
too long alone on its own,
making and conversing
with bird shadows on walls.
We will be right across
each other on the table,
wondering how it all
has come to this, singular
moment of meeting.
To begin the real knowing
is to begin the crossing 
from whichever previously
we know as real or unreal.
How will I say the first word.
How will we begin

the number of lives

How many lives do we need
to be (come) what

we always wanted to
be 
with whom we dreamed 

Do cats have
what
they will have eventually?
                    photo by S. Kho Nervez

on mothers on Mothers' Day

Because I will never be a mother, 
I can never bear
the true weight of the world. 

Friday Rain

...and I came home midnight 
after a long meeting and a few
rounds of drinks, in an attempt to
salvage the remains of Friday night.
The both of us laughed over rocks

in glasses, over cigarettes, a band
played in the background and we
watched the lead singer. Young
woman cooing in a husky voice,
wearing elbow length sleeves.

Nice voice, but a virgin. We laughed
swapping stories how we knew
early on it is something to rid of.
To become.
                   I arrived home,

dogs, lamp lights, shower. Three 
things: collage of photos she printed 
from our recent out-of-town trips together; 
a handmade bookmark between 
Szymborska by my bed; she, asleep...

Rain arrived at two in the morning,
seeping through my sleep. I awake
to let in the new dog at the front yard. 
It yelped and raced to shelter itself in.

do you have time for the movies?

the way we used to do when so much younger
the movies and always something else before and after
an entire saturday, an entire whole altogether
we park the car farthest in the lot, take time to
walk as slow as we could, turning twice and thrice
around the same block for conversations
that had much to do about nothing
touching voice than anything else.  as if we could
touch the other's soul with it.  snippets of stories
and faraway dreams about leaving and becoming

the shy kiss on the doorstep

do you still have time for the movies
the way we used to do when so much younger

from Flying Home

from Flying Home 

by Galway Kinnel


As this plane dragged
its track of used ozone half the world long
thrusts some four hundred of us
toward places where actual known people
live and may wait,
we diminish down in our seats,
disappeared into novels of lives clearer than ours,
and yet we do not forget for a moment
the life down there, the doorway each will soon enter:
where I will meet her again
and know her again,
dark radiance with, and then mostly without, the stars.

Very likely she has always understood
what I have slowly learned,
and which only now, after being away, almost as far away
as one can get on this globe, almost
as far as thoughts can carry - yet still in her presence,
still surrounded not so much by reminders of her
as by things she had already reminded me of,
shadows of her
cast forward and waiting - can I try to express:

that love is hard,
that while many good things are easy, true love is not,
because love is first of all a power,
its own power,
which continually must make its way forward, from night
into day, from transcending union always forward into difficult day.

And as the plane descends, it comes to me
in the space
where tears stream down across the stars,
tears fallen on the actual earth
where their shining is what we call spirit,
that once the lover
recognizes the other, knows for the first time
what is most to be valued in another,
from then on, love is very much like courage,
perhaps it is courage, and even
perhaps
only courage. Squashed
out of old selves, smearing the darkness
of expectation across experience, all of us little
thinkers it brings home having similar thoughts
of landing to the imponderable world,
the transoceanic airliner,
resting its huge weight down, comes in almost lightly,
to where
with sudden, tiny, white puffs and long, black, rubberish smears
all its tires know the home ground.

origins

In discourse analysis, some things understood are no longer gestured at aloud.

This morning I talked about patterns.  Residing in the conscious, subconscious, unconscious.  The cosmos itself, a pattern.  Little wonder there in the world of ideas.

When, at today's end of day, l lost my temper over crew inefficiency, there must have been a pattern.  What did I say?  That age did not matter.

I come home and one of the dogs let out before closing the day, I hit.  Where did it come from?  This ugly hand, this very ugly head when I become taut as guitar string.  

I know:  in hiding is a very angry young man.  Where did he come from?  Why?
Tonight in bed, she heard my thoughts, as I walked around them, echo on the walls.  

Was I not harsh enough?  Some colleagues remarked, too considerate.  Lash someone if need to. What do I know, what do I know?  When the waters are calm and the guitar strings 

are loose are beautiful, I close my eyes.  The end of day.