Restless And On The Move

Each new landscape endowed with a quiet unworried satisfaction, fulfilling a vision amid an endless unpublicized space, carrying out its mission as poetry’s profile is raised. Nature, putting it out there amongst a prodigious assemblage of observers. Her intricate layerings queued as memories, intimately entering the eye of who I am this vast distance away from where I’ve come. From mountain summit to shore’s edge, rational portions of her scenery’s intrigue carrying out an easy-going expression that compels one to look always for the sublimated traces of its song. It is for it – because of it I persist, following its time-honoured pulse. Listen how the soul of it miraculously labours at this moment, going on and on as though it might persist forever. Somewhere long after sleep it is born again, fleetingly progressing in this spare but significant portion of time, palpitating powerfully and unperturbed.

The Artist Attempts To Be Removed

Travel is its own book, its own reward. Our experiences are internalized, woven within memory. The spoils of our journey may include a cherished image amid a spread of Kodaks - our amateur travelogue. But absent is the spiritual wash, a searing light, a breathtaking harshness, a certain sense of things that we are powerless to capture or to express.

– Patti Smith 
(an excerpt from 
her preface to monument)

It Is How I Saw It

as if on cue

a burgeoning petal 

fell

coming to rest

on the pavement
in front of me,

i couldn’t be sure

if it was

some kind of clue

pointing the eyes

toward

the hour’s

hidden verse,

toward a poetry

known to reveal

insignificant things –

tiny incidents

whose presence

lay hidden

somewhere between

heaven and earth,

where a silence

other than my own

prevails

and then 

a shift 

in prosody

as the tiny petal

is excitedly swept up

by an unsuspected

gust of wind

that heaves it

without turn

or curve

down the street –

immediately

the petal

and its beautiful form

becomes

but a vanishing

point,

circling

off in the distance,

it was all i

could distinguish –

these eyes

with their tentative

enthusiasm

could not

catch up with it –

its disappearance

generating

an impression

of an ending

until

the daybreak

of yet another hour

shifts toward

that alluring apogee

of light

becoming

all one needs

at that point 

in time

as one’s attention

resonates

with something

genuinely sensed

inside,

something

particular

but hard to name

like a poetry

that pries open

small windows

of unacknowledged 

thought,

and whose voice

stirs one’s curiosity,

registering

its existence

by the

conclusions

the mind,

that moment ago,

laid hands on.

It Was The Rarest Of Days

Lent to me, the general at-oneness

originating in uncomplicated things.

After being away, it returned.

It found me again – a hesitation.

And with it, the eyes walk and walk,

finding passage in-between every second.

And then they turn, and turn until

something resonates within, grazed by new light.

And then, always the desire to write

what is there as the picture patiently develops.

In the comfortable air, what I saw –

a naturalness, for instance, could be its name.

A Moment's Pleasure

As simple

as simple comes.

Everything glorious

holds its light.

Let it sit

for a brief period

of time – ageless

in its stillness.