Room

Consider a room with two doors
One facing east the other west
Both meeting at the same 

Room where one meets another
Where there is no Other
Where the floor between is

A border that is not---
A space undefined
A place familiar

because a young artist wrote about and i remember you at dusk at sea with dogs

1
Young men leapt over bonfires
while beginning

2
                           artists pass naked for art.
                           There is a difference

3
in the quiet of solace
against empty.

4
I saw a vision of rain forest
green and leaves wet

5
                            falling back from heights
                            spent finally 
                           
6
on the sheets. You on top
head on my chest.

7
Young girls in this country dream snow
as in any other beginning

8
                            except perhaps when told
                            about such cold, such cold.

9
I spent time in quiet
un-counting moments

                            before the leaving. This warm
                            country of people, sun and storm.








                            
               

some form of paradise

there are photos and memories and dreams
to keep close in pocket, in mind, in sleep
when one finally holds oneself 
grown and able, still
with fears no more
and no less than
a child's

photo by S. Kho Nervez

Fate

When you meet a gypsy, on the road you begin to wonder
at your own rootedness, the way you have chosen to 
never stray at the straw path the maps gestured at with the stars.
They sometimes call it destiny.
Although whether it is the meeting her or the crossroad 
you may never know, standing at the foot of some bridge
you have constructed in mind. Fate

has a way of being many things at once strange and familiar
an open face of someone once dreamed about.
She has a tambourine, a ukelele, and a stray dog.
You have a compass, a dream, and a fear.

When you meet a gypsy, you wonder 
at your own rootedness. They sometimes call it
destiny.

If You Hire a Poet to Draw a Map

He will take liberties with the land. He’ll unwind rivers that
offend him. He’ll move mountain ranges that get in his way. He’ll
expand the coastline to make room for more otters and seals. He’ll
slide the equator a dozen degrees north so the winters won’t be
quite so harsh. He’ll rename major cities after the lovers of his
past. On the east coast there’s Penelope, so plump and polluted.
And Melinda in the west, awash in fragrant flowers. He’s likely to
add a few states. Some as small as a cafe. Others span great swaths
of the open sea. He’ll sketch in highways where it pleases him. The
black ones are designed for families and grandmothers traveling
alone. The green and orange roads are not for novices. They twist
and turn. Go underground for miles. Pass right over lakes. Then
the asphalt ends. You get out of your car. A farmer greets you by a
fence. He hands you a carrot. You ask the obvious question. And
he replies, Yes. This is the end of the orange road.

—David Shumate

The ways we go

Two nights ago, I dreamed of pulling a tooth---
two, an incisor and a molar.  There would have been
third, but in the dream it stopped being loose---

and I woke up distraught.  Dreams of teeth

are not good in this country of dreamers, they mean
death.  I spent the rest of the hours watching
for light.  Morning, she tells me, 

death in the family, but it could also mean simply

change

exactly the way I was told the first time
a reader explained the cards before reading.
A transition, she had said, gesturing at a cup.

What do I know?  What do I know?

I called my mother in the dark of morning
she replied, pray.
In the corner I watch the stillness and the quiet

Who knows?  Who knows?

J-- had a stroke of luck right after our meeting, 
and passed away.  A woman with terminal cancer
brought her oxygen tank to listen to a poetry reading.

The Danish neighbour hit the truck at the freeway

the same day my new motorcycle arrived.
His wife and months-old child I had greeted just that morning,
and she had spoken kindly to the dogs.

Who knows?  Who knows?

There is an envelope upstairs waiting for the last paper.
There could be a leaving, but do I dare 
finally go?

on mystic writing

I.

another detail i recall:  her side of the bed is
side-by-side with a patch of leaves of grass.

this is another house.  not the same one
that had appeared in too many dreams, 

like a puzzle.


II. 

roger, the mystic says, do i not keep
a journal of dreams.  no, i say, no.

we are surrounded by dark green walls
in the middle of a steak house. it is noon.

how did the conversation move to dreams?
i tell him of the house that appears

recurring in my dreams, now for years.


III.

this house, stands at the edge of a land, looks
at a body of water. on its feet a lake, bay, or beach.

right of the house, a cliff.  where on one dream, 
i was standing on when i saw the house.

left, pebbly driveway where i manoeuvred 
my motorbike on another dream.

the driveway, next to a boundary wall.  
the driveway aligned to a small bamboo cottage

by the lip of the water.  in one dream, 
i was in a group beach picnic when i looked up

and saw the house is whitewashed wood.
with a large glass window on its forehead.

european design, but the location 
philippine. "two-storey?" roger asks.  

"yes," i say,
"and with a balcony up front."

he laughs.


IV.

it exists, he says.  
after the description in detail.
european house, by a lake in bukidnon.
cliffs, yes, driveway too.
and the short rocky, pebbly slope
to the lip of the water.
right, even the cottage.
an artists' retreat.
housed at one time, a poet.
in another, a painter.
heavy furniture imported 
all the way from germany.
constructed in 2011.
been there.
with g* and p*, he says. 
we took photos.  beautiful place.
even though
the house is hostile.


V.

i began dreaming of the house, 
2009.
in all the dreams, the sky
always in shades of gray.
the last time
i dreaded
seeing it.


VII.

didn't you mention about going on a writing retreat this summer?

consider utopia

Consider utopia and how it exists
only in the mind.  An elaborate system
fallible when set into form.  Governments
that rise and fall, imperfectly perfect
people with souls greater than their selves.

If we all are a reincarnate of previous 
souls or dust flecks from stars, are we all
but mere refuse
from utopia?








shane

if there is no other shore

On Prayer







You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the world is
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice:  I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
They will walk that aerial bridge all the same.








Czeslaw Milosz

Translated by Robert Hass 

the shore

i dreamt again, last night, of coming back to the bay.
the same bay reconstructed several times; each time different
and the same.
i was flying and saw it again from above.
the waters were tumultuous and gray
and there was a big boulder, uneven, jutting out towards sea.

i tried to come as close as i could to the shore.
there was a small patch of sand, a small valley
between the weather-beaten house and the large dark boulders
on the small patch of sand there will always be people
beach happy and unaware 

a few meters before them, a few meters past the line
where their children play on the shore
a cliff begins, where the bay gnaws wide
and there will always be, recurring in every dream,
the unexpected rising tide
the whipping of larger and larger waves.

the children would scramble to the shore.  
parents would collect them in towels and
young friends would laugh.  everyone would 
hide their fears, everyone would hurry
to leave the shore and the bay and head home.

i knew these.  having dreamt the same shore again and again.
changing the scapes of its face: one time it was a pier
so very long and stretching towards another bridge
that crumbled too soon and fell apart 
people fell into the cold 
turbulent seas.  i knew these.  having dreamt the same shore

again and again.  the deeply gray, downcast skies.
last night, i dreamt i could fly. 
and came to the shore as fast as i could
urged the people to leave.  the gray was fast getting dark.
i recognized the people: they were my family.

and they were about to leave when i came
climbing on shared motorcycles to leave 
the remote shore that had suddenly gone narrow.
i was to leave with them, to drive my sister's motorbike
taking the handles and revving the engine.  
my sister climbed behind me on the scooter.  we were leaving

the road had suddenly gone potholed and steep
ninety degrees up of slowly loosening dried mud
again, i revved the engine.  and again.  trying
to keep steady.  the tires trying hard not to swerve.
i became afraid of the inevitable fall from the vertical incline.
all the other motorcycles had sheerly, barely made it.

loose dirt and gravel danced beneath the tires.
the scooter didn't have enough power.  i turned to look
at my sister but she was gone.
her motorbike couldn't make it.  i carried it on my shoulder
instead, the land and the shore was falling apart
there was a balcony of the weather-beaten house again 

i clung on it with my other arm.  and across, into the house
i could see, between
the scooter i was holding on on one shoulder and 
hanging on for dear life on the other, i could see
someone recognizable from the house noticed me.