father's eyes

tonight the dark sky murmurs thunder.
sometimes there is a brief light.
my brother-in-law asked 
me this afternoon, was i not coming 
to family dinner.  i said no
while helping load his truck
some things i was sending away.
i have been away too often too long
lately, i need quiet alone in the garden.
hours later, staying in with the dogs
and watching massacre in a game
of thrones, i remember the day.

and maybe it is good i did not come
for dinner.  some things are better
unresolved.  best unremembered, 
even though not forgotten.  these days,
in spite of trying, i am becoming
in a number of ways like the man.

where is what the moon says

photo by Alvin Pang

At the time before letters, what the moon says 
to the lovers is whispered to the breeze.

When the letters came, the poets wrote.
And the lovers read what the moon says.

The phones lines stretched and what the moon 
says the lovers hear on each other's voices.

Now the moon looks at its virtual self on the Net
and what it says 

is whispered long and quiet on email.

two skies

east, daylight is rising.  dew and drops glisten from this dawn's heavy rain.  but west, on the other window--my writing seat is in the middle---gray.  in half an hour i will call the secretary, i will keep away half the day.  i have been gone too long from many places: how we can only exist once at a time.  sun spills on the floor.  the sound of an airplane leaving or arriving: perhaps both.


















 

A Wednesday Morning

From the window I could see the hairlines of soft rain.  Slanted by breeze.  This morning, when it was still dark and the dogs were let out, the chill was December.  That end of the year with a kind of brightness people mostly call cheer.  

It is sunup now and I still attempt to write that which I lost last night.  I do not look at the clock but it does not leave my mind.  Only the dogs are patient.  They have long, short days for dreaming.  Perhaps, of running around with their humans.  Their tails wagging with glee.















 

a piece of thought in motion

in the middle of writing a post on the concept of line as ****, IT dawned: the ground concept on which to build the reading on ***.  for some months now, the enthusiasm to write about this series has been hibernating; but, until now, there was no particular seed with which to germinate the entire articulation.  also, there were, and still are, too many things on the calendar.  too many projects and legwork necessary.  the near-unbelievable paperwork and the meetings and post-conferences, including the working-dinners over which the more important and sensitive matters are discussed while couched in the trivial act of eating.  i want to mention this concept of the line right now (such is my excitement), but one must not get ahead of things.  i am looking at the clock---as i have the habit of removing my wristwatch, like keeping the phone away, when i intend to have a "breather"---and it says two hours before the need to leave for work.  today, as wednesdays should've been, would have been a writing day; except, for weeks now there has been no writing days.  for instance, two meetings are scheduled this afternoon...i wish to write again through hours that seem to stretch the day and the sunlight; but it is difficult to sit down and keep still to call the thoughts into form, into a piece of infinity entry, in the middle of a deluge.  
 

pilot lights

we write letters to the universe.  thoughts into the flesh of words.  no matter the words, too, no longer assume a physical mold the way they used to do when books and their pages were tangible.  still, we write the words and flung them out into space, into the vast expanse of the Net like a wide lake, like an ocean, often folded, keeping in its bosom both the shipwrecked and the sails.  we look up the stars, who live longer than our lives, and who have been pilot lights to the many more others before us.

day before strawberries

black saturday...




again, a plane ride away.  back in the city that is not half as strange except.  every one is away.  in places far and calling.  but every thing else.  they remain the same.  the streets and the rain trees' flowers.  the shops, no matter only half awake.  and this strange lolling of this another tongue.  a language reminding me of cottonwood bursting forth cottons.

The Diary of the World's Sadness

Yesterday, I spent a good part of the day going through the net, the endless breathing labyrinth.  Blogs about worlds trying to not fall apart.  I read some introductions, some poetry, a lot of ramblings.  Some blogs were like doors inviting to another blog or another site or another kind of another something.  One blog too many was about coping with unhappiness one day at a time; another about instructions on how to be happy.  I closed the laptop wondering if it was at all a time well spent; otherwise, there's something to be had working with one's hands.  Where there'd be less conversation, less words, but there: a piece.

Not much was said when the floor to ceiling bookshelves were made; all the wood put together.  But it was there: love.

My dogs don't have words to say.  But they're always close; and their company, unconditional.

And while all my life I think I have always loved words, I think too much too many of them makes them hollow, and empty.  

No surprise there that my best thoughts of you are our times together wordless, soundless in memory.