Before and After Meeting the Beloved

Before and After Meeting The Beloved

I.                Surrendering another knife to the TSA

I seek the Beloved in every face.

Where does the Beloved live?

Maybe in this heart, or that one.

She gazes through these eyes, or those.

If I see her in yours, what then?

My cheeks, so soft now from shaving,

Long for her touch.

Whose is the hand that now

Reaches out to caress my face?

II.              Just As Easily It Could All Disappear

When I looked up from loading the car

You were gone.

The shadow of the mountain

Falling across the pasture,

Empty now of all the festival vehicles,

Drove the evening chill deep inside.

Driving back north in the darkness

I remembered your face as a

Place my hand could still touch,

The same hand that then reached for

The phone with your message on it

And held the tiny slab to my cheek.

Where to Look for the Beloved

Where to Look for the Beloved

She’s the one out on the edge where the ice fails;

I live on the bluff down where the river stays safe.

I go to find the man who lives by the river, still

Alive after the hard rains, chowing on my turkey.

He wants a ride down south, my car is still in the

Shop, I only bring him pie. She’s out wandering

In the Dhaka traffic, the district where the sewers

Work, I’m back as the hotel with the NGOs that

Plan distribution of aid to the victims. Her arm

Is bent the wrong way, the other arm holds her

Child, the light is taking too long, but changes

Before I push the wad of Taka out the window.

She is meditating before the sun, ten days from

Solstice to new year, I make a ceremony on the

Mat, move off to grind coffee, touch black keys

All day cozy with words, she is still on the edge.

Twelve Lines Undone

Twelve Lines Undone

I.

It took years but he got it right, burning candles far into the night,

Crushing blackberries for the ink, shaving reeds to help him think

What to put down in the letter, his one chance to put back together

His dignity stolen by smoother men, a naïve man that he was then,

Found a white man he could trust, scratched his story in the dust,

Smuggled the paper to his wife, won his freedom, seized his life.

II.

Cursor, shift cursor, highlight the whole twelve years in two strokes,

No time at all, time worth nothing, control A control X, all undone,

Undo, redo, undo, coming back at you, this is just lazy man’s game,

No skin in this game, no one gets whipped on if you are discovered,

No price to be paid for changing your mind and saying well, maybe

Slavery ain’t so bad, maybe I wouldn’t get lynched, who can say?

Triptych of Salvation

Triptych of Salvation

I.                 Think about the Wind

After the storm and floor turtle went missing, coyote

Howled from higher in the hills. Hooved ones moved

Safely to higher ground instinctively and were saved,

But finned ones had no choice but swimming. Winged

Ones miraculously found thickets or hummocks here

Or there, burrowing as if they are lighter than air itself.

The two-leggeds walked about in clusters, they being

The ones who never listened but thought about it a lot.

II.               Find the Dream

Rejoice; despair is the natural void at the end of your

Imagined journey, but if you go back to the place you

Thought it began and start to read the new words on that

Page, a meteor shower tears through, upper right to lower

Left, floaters or whatever but some celestial beings have

Come and we must take notice. Even in the desert some

Things tumble through, some wind or some sun will rise.

Toward the end of night a memory of deep time crawls in.

III.             Feed the World

Chill continent’s width of cirrostratus cloud in winter wind;

Shape into fresh halibut filets with cold fronts as rolling pins.

Rack up at the top of the sky on square sheets of generosity;

Roll slowly under the broiler of the sun for half an afternoon.

Invite the nearest child to fill a balloon with cherubic wishes;

Do not fail to find a grandparent that remembers how to bless.

Stop thinking about the emptiness than you can’t fill; take on

The ferocity of any rickshaw puller in Dhaka, serve with pride.

Thirty

Thirty

Trinity and infinity walking off the page together

Unified field and the void finding each other home

Not prime but a perfectly adequate number binding

Together the many and the one, the diaspora and

The singularity, third time is the charm but the day

Always comes back down to zero dark thirty, why

Is not a word that leads anywhere in this dialogue

Of self and no self, received theology, existential

Evidence of nothingness, how we all start and we

Start again from the same place, rediscovering the

Same truth that only becomes true when each one

Reveals it fresh, pulsing in this created place, we

Watch and wait and then forget, believing it will

Keep on ticking, and now the sun has gone and

What was true rejoins the caravan of vanishing,

So in the morning if the light returns we will be

Faced with the choice again, do we put together

Three and nothing, or nothing and one, or do we

Make words of nothing and lift them to the sun?

How Is It That a Heart Still Opens

How Is it That a Heart Still Awakens

When every admonition of the tiny mind screams out

Bar the doors, when the possibilities of addiction and

Its misdirected quietudes are no farther away than the

Remote buttons or the convenient screw tops on wine

Bottles or the smaller and smaller slabs and boxes that

Lash us to the taskmaster we secretly worship before

Any other god, when the Goddess has appeared to us

In so many forms only to discover the shadow that she

Pulls along right behind her holds so many horrible

Errors of other childhoods that we wish we had not

Been born, when the rains fail and the neighboring

Tribes thunder in, when fire comes out of the sky at

Night without warning because someone in the house

Was marked on a secret list, when the illnesses borne

Of dopamine in its excesses or in its shortfalls or of a

Rogue virus no one heard of, or another toxic entity

We did not see coming wake us in the night pushing

Against the weight of the pharmaceutical industry for

The one thing that will permit both child and parents

To find sleep so long denied, when secret contracts we

Signed long before birth have bound us to patterns that

Others made, learning suddenly we were following the

Wrong god home, and all the gates swing shut in one

Last groping for survival, when even the one we were

Awaiting all this time finds no one home when they

Finally knock at the door, when by some grace the

Winds die down and a peace enters in, how then a

Heart so brutalized can still awaken, each must ask. 

Soapstone

Soapstone

I wipe the soapstone counter wet

Until the darkness reveals its deep

Veins, impurities and other stories.

Tales of the epochs spent far under

Ground, the ages of silent formation

Where everything about it was stone,

Then later, sliced into smooth wafers

To serve in my kitchen, pouring out

Its dark materials in the awaited light.

I wipe the soapstone counter wet

If only to find again that place where

Everything is smooth, nobody afraid,

No screaming or slamming of doors,

But the stone has its own memories

Does not use the practiced words to

Invoke deity, memory, the beloved,

Will not agree to prepare someone

Else’s meals on its back before me.

I wipe the soapstone counter wet

Every day, sometimes more, not sure

Why but every sponge, every paper

Towel becomes a call to purification,

A cleaning of the slate, much as my

Father’s cough in the morning never

Killed him but seemed to be hacking

Up the leavings of dreams he did not

Want to remember, could not forget.

I wipe the soapstone counter wet

But never clean, the round marks of

Glasses, the crumbs of the desires of

Others for whom purity is not the goal,

And ever more darkness is coiled and

Ready to come forth, as if this quarried

Face is only a portal for everything we

Keep underground, in the dark, muffle

In silence until someone stops to listen.