I think about meeting you

I think about meeting you 
in spring when the forsythias are in bloom
and on the twigs of trees are flowers
and the days are lovely,
the nights are cool.
It would be like we are young again
believing there may be worries 
but nothing could stop us from loving.
And then we would extend the hours
into a one long inexhaustible conversation
as though a movie.
As though a movie.

(ants in this world) a long goodbye 9

I can count now on one hand
The number of days left on this little island
Of sweets. Days the colour of turmeric.
(It rains just now, wet monsoon has come)

This is a place of hope, no matter
What its people say. More than half its year
The bamboo chimes hanging on my front door
Sounds of water. The shore half hour away.

When the breeze blows on your beloved's hair
And when you see grown men and women
Come out at downpour, play with their children,
You will know why 

Tired white men find their way here
To rest at last from the world at large.
But I leave. By the cosmos' grace, I leave.
(An ant's work what we do. So little
         
To add to so much more.)
And two days before I leave, I shall ferry
Visit a spider woman in these islands, 
Who wrote poetry of memory, being, becoming

It shall be a moment in her herbs garden
Where there will be no promise
Only a doing by understanding
This so much work, this so much work

More than an entire ant's life can do. 

(ants in this world) a long goodbye 9

I can count now on one hand
The number of days left on this little island
Of sweets. Days the colour of turmeric.
(It rains just now, wet monsoon has come)

This is a place of hope, no matter
What its people say. More than half its year
The bamboo chimes hanging on my front door
Sounds of water. The shore half hour away.

When the breeze blows on your beloved's hair
And when you see grown men and women
Come out at downpour, play with their children,
You will know why 

Tired white men find their way here
To rest at last from the world at large.
But I leave. With the cosmos' grace, I leave.
(An ant's work what we do. So little
         
To add to so much more.)
And two days before I leave, I shall ferry
Visit a spider woman in these islands, 
Who wrote poetry of memory, being, becoming

It shall be a moment in her herbs garden
Where there will be no promise
Only a doing by understanding
This so much work, this so much work

More than an entire ant's life can do. 

This sunshine

It will be shy of three months time. 
The day set, traveling the wires
Paper to paper, what fate.

I thought it will be like floating.
While away time on placid waters.
She wakes up in time for office 

Plants a quick kiss, I get up later 
At sunup to walk the dogs, running
To leave what behind, moving towards

What waits ahead in time, in space.

               * 

The world too large, we have only
Such life. The dog who survived
Inner city to become part of home

Offered a rat she wrestled this morning.
Dead on its back at the front door.
What is not allowed to pass.

We picked up a snail making its way
Crossing the road and let it 
At the side by the grass and puddle.

               *

Over here, a butterfly comes to visit
The lemon on the sapling 
We bought at the market three Sundays ago.

Three Sundays from now, a despedida.
What must be, must be done in celebration.
Bring in the wine and the photos

Posterity. No one gets left behind.

                *

She and I recently painted the front door 
Yellow and called the place Sunshine,
What is constant in this country. 

a clearing in the woods

Let me tell you a secret. This

          is my clearing in the woods

                       shared only by you.
          
                               Three years now.


I have grown a little too old for public 
announcements, the way younger ones have made 
out of the internet: a potted plant, a garden, 
a landscape, a directed trail to the woodshed 
by the lake right after the painted sign 
on reclaimed wood: Welcome Crowd 
tail as they hunt in search of themselves.

Consider the woods at the back of my house
through the screened door opened by keypad.
A password uttered in silent type.
The woods, metaphors of the real: the steel gate
needs fixing; the few garden herbs that survived
the yard onslaught of a playful young dog; 
list of things to do including translations

of poems for anthology, necessary visit
to the bank, call from the secretary, 
a last stretch of familiarity. I walk through
the woods throughout the day 

with some moments of clarity as when 
being in transit between actual places,
as when I hold my oldest dog 
who (I am afraid) I might not see again.
As when I allow myself to be fragile 

to a woman's love. As when I sit, seemingly 
alone in this private clearing in the woods 
in quiet company with a fellow soul.

Rodovia

Portia passed away yesterday. Word reached me late, 
translating itself from Portuguese to English, 
from the last photo I saw of her (Atlanta, smiling 
beside another colleague on sabbatical leave)
to the photo found after having made my way across

morning coffee, rain (another storm is coming
to these islands), and jazz.
On the news, only a broken motorcycle on highway
only a trace, previous presence. No Portia.

Had I been at the office yesterday I would have had
company to share loss with: this kind 
of irreplaceable space occupied by her joy.
Her youthfulness at 67.

She would have had a temper for mentioning the number--
the only way to cause her age. But such a life! 
Of indefatigable joy.

life as lived

Posted a photo of the wild ones in the water--the loved dogs
in their eternal summer. The photo is all 
bright and light and shore and water
and too easy laughter,
it does not tell all.

world moving

1
When we lie down seeing the sky, 
we may as well be standing 
from another angle; the sky is sea foam.
Such ways the world can be

seen, different eyes: punto de vista.

2
The call, sooner than expected, arrived
yesterday; half the request granted.
What it meant we knew from the beginning.
In the beginning, we knew 

different and the same: punto de vista.

dear friend

What of the American dream? Now that we all have achieved it.
We find a nomadic part remains. To take so less with us except
What matters in the long journey: feet to carry, body of joy.
Everything else, it seems, merely trappings we have come to
Be accustomed and could not let go. These we have now 
We only dreamed about half a lifetime ago. Something to learn
From the animals we keep: To have nothing else but love

Only so very difficult for us: bearing our simple joys.

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

taking a world on the shoulder

What we had was time and an excess of courage.
Immortals dreaming of endlessness
What to do with the beyond imaginable: True
Love and sunsets of halfway around the world.
Was it as clear as your toes underwater
Crystal sea on a blue tropical Sunday? What
To be.  How.
A little child squeals, the mother surprises with
Delights: look an ant on sand carrying a world on its shoulder
Look the endless tireless march to the beyond
All of them certain of tomorrow and afraid.
What happened between the dreaming and the coming
True?  Incremental losses
Of time and faith and courage: all necessary
All inevitable.
So that the mother looks at the child now and remembers
feeling the known unnameable.
     

What I found

between pages of a book, a torn piece of newspaper
showing a foot on tip toe, perhaps dancing, and
nothing more; the two pages facing each other,
one telling What you need more of in your life, I think,
are some elephants, the other about finding brave.

Be favorable to bold beginnings, said Virgil
Easier said than done.  I'm still wary
from the last beginning.  Nevertheless, I've begun
a vigil: wait for the ally who believes
endings make beginnings necessary,
and who's plenty bold.  Enough not to worry

about how much to give, how much to withhold.
I held my breath and closed the book.




(after Centolella)

And, lovely, learn by going where to go

Bright early morning drizzle, a brown mug of freshly brewed local coffee, papers on desk by an open window.  Somewhere in the corner of the front yard, the planted tomatoes are sprouting.  Until the time to go to the still bustling city that tries to keep itself still, to take the morning slow...

The Waking

by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?   

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?   

God bless the Ground!   I shall walk softly there,   

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?   

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do   

To you and me; so take the lively air,   

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.   

What falls away is always. And is near.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

at the end of the year

All is quiet tonight, when the day that had begun gentle in its tenderness of sun is finally over, ending quietly the year that has been another brief, beautiful in its momentariness.

It is a slow walk to what is seen, in the heart's fearful, faithful eye, an inevitable end.  But how beautiful this slow walk is, that had begun as a run to the sun.  And now all is quiet tonight.  For another year of slow, beautiful walk to the seen unseen.

the burden of light

summer here hits 38 to 40 degrees celsius.
the asphalt roads make mirages.
dogs not meant for the climate, suffer. and
people make homages where the ACs are.

still, everyone is warm
even though most dream less. 
many retire to their fate.

and while all TVs here show melodrama
and people easily laugh, cry and curse
the sunny weather does not 

tolerate stories of a particular kind.
if you were here, sitting across me
we will break open a bright conversation.

and will have to wait for brightness to somber
before telling stories of a dark, quiet kind.

beginning at forty

This terrarium is called Night Walk with Mishima.  It has come to this.  Working earth in smaller quantities.  Taking things, perhaps, one pair of morning and night at a time.  The day she turned forty, she had a photo of herself among her terraria.  Face hidden by shadow, dancer's feet poised ready to dance in sunlight.  I am happy she is beginning to be happy.  How it was not so long ago when we met outside the hundreds-year-old wall and she was all in white.  Then, there was nothing else to offer for comfort--not even words--except the blunt presence of a listening warm body for which she could beat her grief on.  The words fled her, the writing, the poetry.  And yet, the art soul survived: in her home-made, hand-beaten memories-in-ice creams that she poured herself into.  This lady is cold, she said.  It has been awhile before it has come to this.  Finally growing gardens in smaller quantities as new beginnings.

April 7th

At a certain angle, one can see the hours
stretching in an attempt at eternity.
The breeze prods, so does the sunshine.
The sound of water always never too far.
So, too, the sounds of conversations
between strangers attempting kindness.
Only the dogs are not disturbed.
And perhaps, too, the little children 
sitting on toy carts, the wheels rolling.
They are as aware of eternity, 
lounging contentedly at the front yard, 
as the weeds themselves who, seeing 
the gardener, keeps on growing anyway.

white

the mornings are white.  and i try to shake off the remains from last night.  difficult when even sleep cannot make the forgetting.  when the waking is by a dream where i was calling in a makeshift

bedroom in a makeshift house.  the entire scene breezy noon, blaring bright.  the bare walls, raw plywood.  and plastered, bond paper size cut-out pictures of newspaper comic strip cartoons. the likes of peanuts. also a 1980s rock and roll star with a large nose. the pictures appeared random.  but 

possibly not, they all have clearly drawn noses.  in the dream i was showing someone the room.  and disturbed by the sight of the pictures, i called for her, i called aloud and i wake up in 

a morning white.  the curtains drawn, the room light with tempered sunlight.  i find myself in bed alone.

On working for making a better world

at the end of the day, dark after work, i lay my self exhausted and burned from working on love.  wondering if knowing that passion burns is any help at all.  in the morning, the questions flee from the bright light.  and i burn for love again.