Letter to my body

Body, body, my beloved

from the moment, from that very instant one

invisible fish out-swam a hundred million 

others into that beautiful moon in the mother 

sea and in a dazzling burst made you, 

these coveted days of sleep and wakefulness

are being counted precisely in a secret clock 

and from the moment I knew it was I 

in the cradle I tried to crawl away from the clock, 

I have cried and begged for a world without time,

but you dear body are a ticking time bomb, 

because of you I will not sleep for a hundred years, 

I will not be restored by the kiss of a handsome prince.

You are moving me on a conveyor belt back

into that miracle of nothing-something. 

There is nothing because you are made from it,

you are the puppet of time-space-magic

but so are the stars, so is all matter--

time will ooze from all of it and then 

who knows? Another world remade

from your teeth and hair?

Every single atom rekindled?

Into other miracles I commend you, 

my body, myself.

Chill

I couldn’t take my eyes off her face

in the bed, that silent pre-death repose.

She looks more floral than human, 

her face white as the chill before the bloom,

the skin folding scion-like around her skull, 

protecting the still living root below.

Beside her in a hard chair I watch for hours, 

day after day, my own self now shrinking 

from my dread, from my shock that this force 

(my mother was a lion) can be so undone--

the same dazed astonishment when I saw the scaffold

of a great doomed whale belly up on the sand

of Santa Cruz--a skyscraper of white bones, 

picked clean by who knows what and yet 

still mighty in grace and history.

Flakes

Look, here shines the leaf

dropped from its mother’s arms

into the soft living muck to dry 

in gorgeous shades of death

--corn and saffron, ochre and brass--

and at my touch the crisp veins flake

into a mist of umber snow 

and I watch her demise with longing, 

seeking a bit of solace in it, 

seeking to make peace with it

before the night erases all trace of it.

Bright red

The light deep inside flashes red and you

begin to stop.

You want to keep going but the light is bright 

and your body obeys and begins

to wind down and life begins to let go 

of its foothold in you, 

(it was tenuous anyway)

and there you are, ailing and fatigued

but aware of what’s happening to you-- 

(if only you didn’t have to watch) 

the spiral outward into your final ordeal--

out into that stark bloodless desert, 

into that unwanted escape from self, 

from your pleasing intimacy with matter, 

out into that shower of sparkling eyes, 

into that bleakly beautiful blackness.

Solitary

A painter would pause this late afternoon 

on Alameda beach, glimpsing paradise, 

would be seized by insight and pull out 

the brushes and palette

and begin to work quickly 

because look how the clouds 

are fattening up, gulping the light 

right out of the sky, 

existing only in tones and lines 

but still there is a kind of diamond dazzle, 

at times unblended in how it falls 

on the buckwheat, the sticky monkey flowers. 

A painter would have to dab short 

quick strokes to show how this quickening 

breeze wraps around 

my shoulders, makes my hair fly up 

with the kites and the water skiers’ parachutes. 

I too sense a big moment, though my mind is blank,

fit only for hushed gazing 

yet I feel a sumptuous intimacy 

with gulls and wind and bay and buckwheat 

that is quite solitary, 

indeed can only be noticed

unattended.

Crowded

This room feels crowded 

even though there are just two of us.

His head on the pillow, mine in my hands.

I stand by his bed 

as if he were learning to lie in it, 

as if I were his teacher, the one

who walks alongside the bike 

the child is learning to ride.

All our feelings mull around us 

like munching cows, 

sometimes touching as they wait 

to be milked 

but the hours pass and nothing is spoken, 

everything abided.

Deep down

Deep down in the stem itself, 

in my body’s engine 

where energy becomes breath, pulse, 

where pores are forced to sweat 

and salt to move through me--

there, down there,

lies my terror. 

In the zenith of that day to come 

my eyes will close half way

and Ill be alone again 

as in that jiffy before my creation.

I'll be tossed into a cold
of no stars, 

melting 

as I fly, 

a wavering glow, 

my pieces 

bright points of light

that come and then go

like glitter from a lake 

and deep down 

I know 

no ghost 

will step out 

from that beautiful 

debris.