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.