I see the light

My noon nap halts with a burst
of Sun torching my eyelids.

Jesus      is    that   you?

I wish       If only       then life would    
go on
and on
from
singularity       to
singularity.

But. Well. That was then, I was ten.

I wanted to save Him as much as He
wanted to save me,
maybe more.

Jesus never smiled, still I loved Him
and forgave Him all my doubts
that waited like forsaken Lovers
for a letter       that never comes.

Last week churches burst open,
children shredded into shrapnel.
Things like that exhaust.

But here I wake to the blast
of yellow light
from the only star
I can't deny.

Spiral notebook

Let's open our notebooks and review:

The heart is a muscle.
Muscles have filaments, they produce force
and motion

and in that marvelous force and motion
true things come unearthed
and facts can vanish;

each filament with its own amazing ability
can create or destroy,

flood with joy today
and rage tomorrow--

the possibilities are endless.


The heart's blind and deaf, only

knowing its pulses--ardor and qualm,

dismay, aplomb,
fear

some of which are crimes

and some are cheered on.

Where the Divine waits

I have learned the Divine waits
in the squash growing in the ground,
in the Hawk's blank eye,
in the wild turkeys crossing Chabot Road,
in the deer nibbling acorn beside it,
in the pine cone that just fell,
and in the breeze drugged with lake
water, jasmine, and scat.

It waits inside the deep fog.
In backyard gardens.

Not in wheels and laptops,
not even in our houses,

Nor in he Bishop's ring or
any altar.

It shies away from the man-made,
preferring its own designs:
Spit and surf, deer grass
and the blinks of our eyes.

Erased by snow

To see the moon light up the mountain

of my breast, to feel the stars move

across my thigh, to read my fate in every single

sunset– to feel God in all that red and gold,

to hear seals bark below the pier, to walk

beneath the rim of passing cloud, to hear

the roar of waves at shore, to feel

the awe and sorrow mingle, to think of

winters come and gone, to think

of us alone together in the ground,

to feel that lazy decomposing, to sense

that we and all, then earth, erased

by snow,  to know the stellar streams will drink

the details we so love, to view it all

in twisted figures moving through my room, to know

this truth will not be buried, its roots will grow

more eyes, more ears that always know.

Cold skin

I don't want to think about it.
Stop this thinking
about the chill on my skin
after cold swells on this stinky
beach tonight.

I have touched cold skin four times.
There is nothing like it. Nothing
like the touch of windless death
against your warm finger.

A trick, you think.
Something flows below
that cold skin.
There's movement
and where there's movement,
there is      an engine.
And what is the soul,
if not an engine?

Mad dog barking

My dog barks...then again.
Then crazy barking and again.
She barks with the pops, the bodies
rolling onto streets.

It drives my dog mad, those shots
repeating on TV,
the pop, pop, and pop,
it just doesn't stop.

A man voice warns, viewers
will feel unsettled and then
more pops and more short, sharp
mad dog cries.

The TV neutral in all its telling
of biology, of flesh bursting from
the bones above the dog's sharp
short mad cries.

And overhead crows swarm nonstop,
and dog barks, barks, and barks
and I climb up the olive tree,
to the very top and flap my arms
like small, white flags
to the enemy.

Not like this

I don’t want to go like this.

When I see my loved ones' fluids leak

like the garden's rotting fruit.

What misery in that slow retreat.

I pray for speed, for quick.

My mass, my final moment

freed freed freed

in a single sudden trick