Eighth Circumference
“Everything that stays,
once meaning has cleared out,
is True”
Rae Armantrout
*
stunning. the tremendous resemblance of fact that remains in the exquisite.
night tumble of stars reveals axis. still air prior to dawn. still as in the moments of air that resound amongst early spring leaves.
unexpected departures. old souls. young hearts
ignorance is a facsimile of what the real in Truth can sing. lost that a translation was made and garbled.
she stood and held each round word and choked on a moist trace that developed at the corner of her mouth. each word damp with mis-use emerged in a catchy tune that clung to heart and mind until even the air grew stale
so easy is ignorance that only the corner of the mouth will hesitate at its retelling− which will linger like the memory of a strange kiss.
generation of dried seed blowing or carried by imperceptible breath of wind scattering across the dry dugs of a field still tended by would-be farmers still hoping for the return of what in Histories gets described as rain.
generously the past presents itself to the present. a quick turn at the mirror turns up a new face− hesitant itself looking back.
so the vault of the years is no true arch but arcs across our present in quick illumination twisting to long branching color then colors until the sky− now specific returns us to the covenant of our own moment in Time.
life dreams. merrily merrily reflecting in small degrees this liquid bridge that carries us ever further upon the sea of days we so ungainly cross until as light as sound we are drawn up in a release that we regard or regret or recoil from and yet in Truth can not imagine. no Traveler borne and so it rains or begins to.
mindful as an overborne ship at sea ever in danger of foundering. only the Stars remain fixt riding upon the illusion of a circling sky.
so Night brings a certain rest or respite as well as fear. thus with certainty or continuity a predictable darkness remains a constant.
a moth otherwise free to roam the sunless sky blindly obedient to a transient light.
life
half-way between thought and paradise
dreams
Time glances off the shoulder of a year and collects as shadows at our feet. leaves us in turn turning for a brief glimpse of ourselves passing. ceaseless little seen repetition. each small stone meandering bee or mossy green with single flower− white and alarming jutting solely toward morning sky on slight stalk– are equals among the renegade life that ripples beneath what appears still. sight moves across such scenes like a shadow and finds only what it will see. the design either endlessly repeated in unthinking narration or governed. its minutia moving toward a truth once meaning has fallen away or better been cast aside so that it can be found again. each event a random alley as I walk. I am not lost nor gathered nor delivered. every time the wind gusts I hear an answer to every question about Time that I can imagine.
insects are not demons nor furies in the night sky. time can and will pearl like a small quick stream over a shallow filled to the brim with well worn rocks. I search then amongst flat black and random stones at my own insistence. any given night can oppress. any morning will illuminate. both matters of Light’s insistence.
I strive toward respect.
and so I will in fact carry you across. the loss of a shoe a little damp can indeed be a fulfillment.
[etude chorus] for Fanny Howe
so then let Grace come in. bubble up and like the water that it is clean us of the distractions that carry us away from ourselves even when we know we should like the poem says kneel and drink
each one of us the cup we alone can fill as we open ourselves like cracked dirt and let it seep up from the depth of being that it is to quench our lips and release our dry voice again.
Quiet Angel whose message this is a gift you know that is the life you have in stretching out−no klieg lights nor drama other than living −a gift then− delivered like the shade of a single cork tree standing atop a hill Cézanne-green running high up-slope across grass with snatches of wild-flowers to dark quick cool− will fulfill all that surround you who will be taken-in.
errant birds we are. flitting twig to limb to alight on the branching drift of days. pastoral bubble bursting to release to flight melody and harmony although slight but luminous as we are all the air upon which this old song is played.
our time. no more nor less. and here your thought no plow or machine just a hand firm and gentle pushes the gist of these days into the waiting ground that surrounds us.
graceful let us at your lived insistence begin and even as thought clouds our steps know that there remains another way to traverse
reluctant evidence
recalcitrant observation
song
black mirror of Legacy
when all the forbidden subjects are let loose then Time too turns toward what got pushed aside as formal or familiar.
Grace notes. wry and abandoned like a flower whose sweet air we note and drink and pass with out need of plucking.
passage too is an art
which like hospitality goes too often un-practiced
I am speaking here of god as I believe you are although we are not supposed to as our friends gathered and present or in my heart alone and reading the small thick papered pages of a book will become uncomfortable. wondering if it is a late life reversion or conversion. as if a caterpillar shedding a cocoon to blossom and bloom into trembling orange merchants in Spring’s flowering garden should bring such alarm or sadness
all transits inform
but it is another monarch before whom you would alight
my own flutters in the light of a fading day toward the possible
of another.
an alternate life
in Time and Heart. Mind and Dream. and your path as clear as air slight fetch and hint of turbulence guides me. calls me to be. more than I am.
or myself.
a little grace full as I go.