filled with the broken syntax of perception

A tree

of wind tossed sunlight and shade

A poet

in a squirrel's nest hiding, tail cocked in readiness

A poem

knitting light and leaf on spider-web strand unseen

Two vultures

in a pine tree,
preening,
in the dawn,
waiting
for the day's
warming
to start the air
boiling
for them to go
flying
like vagrant kites.

Once, there was no corner of Merida where
A windmill wasn't churning steadily
In the wind pumped from the sea by the sun--
The hot, dry wind from the Gulf
Or the gentler one from the Carribean.
Small and many-bladed they were thrust up,
A little ways, into a sky which seemed,
To me, larger than other skies,
Where layered clouds glided and vultures turned
High up to the brink of unseeable.
Though they've doubtless been replaced
By motors, the windmills turn still within me
and draw from below sweet water
which dry wind and dry earth cannot steal.

When falling apart at the seams and in between

When smooth facings fail
 and words wear away
  to chinks and cracks
 and all you tell is vain,
perhaps a poem
  (sufficiently chewed
   and stuffed in to the holes)
may help.
 For words too
tend to fall apart
    and poems rejoin them.
  Unmortared like an Inca wall
every part fits the others
   held by nothing
     but their own appropriateness.

so substance and form meet
not in sameness
but at a joint
 with no spaces
  and no adhesives

poems are walls--walls poems
and people both
  with seams to pry apart
  and ways to put them together

Blue Haiku

What sigil cleaner
than aloof blue beyond
clouds separated?

Crow

darker than the pine needles' green,
darker than the tree's shadow
darker than itself
when there is no snow
to be dark against.

J.S. Bach: Aria mit 30 Veranderungen:
"Goldberg-Variationen" BWV 988

It is one--

more than it is thirty,
it is one.

and between, it rounds through
a universe of its twisted forms.
(twisted in beauty)

Not obligated to space, time or consequence

it moves in patterns
related to our own--

but
inevitably.
(twisted in beauty)

From joy to sadness, then ecstasy (twisting!)

and finally back to simplicity and calm
to begin again--

of all things
on the scale of the infinite.
(all, twisted in beauty)

We are its reflection,

we are
its context.

our own selves
twisting in beauty.

Stone Flowers

My grandfather
made a table,
or its top,
to be exact,
of mosaic.
Each piece
of marble
ground carefully
to fit tightly.
I don't know why
he made it. Not
for money
nor to use
as a table.
Maybe for the
closely gathered
roses he shaped from
marble chips
red
pink
and white.

Four and a half

Today, my son
told me the clouds
looked like a river.
They did, too,
and I spent some time
embroidering complex
fancies around
his simple one--
expanding his metaphor
ethically,
economically,
ecologically.
He, meanwhile,
watched for planes.
Some went in back
of the clouds, and some,
he observed,
went in front--
and that the river
looked like the sea.
And it did, too.

Winter

Days pass
like water dripped from
frozen eaves.

Days of ennui, crammed with
sunlight and laguor.
Empty days of empty wants
and empty dreams.

Days of snow kings
and icicles that melt
drop one...drop two...

and--Etymology: OE, two forms (1) and, "fronting, against" (2) end, "end, boundary, vicinity"

Branches number more on the
tree than in the painting
and leaves
and clouds
and...
that empty space is the sea
that line a mountain.
So we build by excision,
edit reality to art,
starting after the beginning
stopping where there is no end,
hinting that our endings resemble
the End
as the line does the mountain
as the void does the sea.

Oedipus died but then
so did Eteocles
and Antigone
and Haemon
and...
and so will we
to be followed by another
and...

In the painting
the sea wraps beyond
the horizon to a shore
where it laps
unheard, endlessly.

Geode

Near the edge each line of color
maps the exact contour
of the stone,
copying with bump and hollow
as it circles
every imperfection.
The shape of each inner line
grows less exact, less dark,
until, at the center,
the white oval is pure and smooth.
Each layer has softened
the vagaries
of pressure and circumstance
until only
what is essential
is left.

Not a perfect circle
or an exact elipse
but a rhythmically curving shape
cleansed of chance.

Crow dawn

More graceful than their cry,
crows delineate the morning breeze
with circumscriptive wings.

From the El

Garbage on sidewalks delineate a pattern,
broken windows describe a geometry,
burned out cars become sculptures,
mattresses, papers, and refuse
build collages in alleys and
art galleries accumulate in empty lots.

Beauty, once learned, is inescapable--

desperate, desperate beauty

On making a bowl from a cherry wood log

in choosing a form to shape to--
a simple but elegant line
of no significance--
to follow
and become
with patience and slow thought
and slower hand
the trace of form
that in its own despite
will contain---
the trifling hand must not annoy
the congruence
between tree, tool and thought
sun, circle and moon

Love Poem

Illustrate illustrious illusions
from the mind pen
to the...whatever.

Red clouds are not
the sun setting
nor are words the
things they name.

We live, I tell you,
amid reflections.
We see and
say the world by carom.

So unleash a word and
let it bounce where it will
and I will try to trace it
back to you.

Hsia Kueh

With a brushstroke
the horizon is washed in darkness
and night in soft cadences enters the sky.
The invisible sea dangles a small boat
and on the shore a brief building.
Mountains of shadow recede to the sunset
in rhythms reflected in the riming clouds.