A Vision on Waking

A Vision on Waking

We stroll through clearings of firm glowing green,

     not lawn not quite wild.

Deer come out and circle us, with damp noses

     and quietly lifting feet.

They slip from dark bushes and some slip back in,

     never more than three or four around us.

The light rises from beneath us, shimmering sod

     floating an umbrella of dusk.

Slowly we move through the park-like spaces

as the deer move with us, bending long necks

     to browse green-gold buds.

detail; Hong Kong, Morning by Segbingway; original 122 cm x 71 cm; ink, paper, lightbox

We Are Here

We Are Here

Are you there, Richard—

painting the appalled tints

of your drenched father’s blood,

unseen by anyone

until the master stroke falls?

            From Broadmoor, faintly:

            I am here.

Are you there, William—

singing your brother’s soul to heaven

three days straight

as angels in the frosty hawthorn

applaud your feat?

            The Devil’s Deny

            is His greatest Lie:    

            Yes, I am Here!

Are you there, Yayoi—

wise chooser of asylum,

elective permanent retreat

where the feverish swarming dots

surge undefiled in fiber?            

            From a rice paper plane:

            I am here

            I am here.

Are you there, Xu Wei,

Vincent, are you there—

airless marauders of pearl               

from shells of glutinous striving  

for ocean’s moment?                       

            From a bower of grapes

            and unlaced boots:

            Yes, we are here.             

Are you there, Judy—

daubing holy rape

upon tissues of nightgown  

by bedsides in the undark ward     

where your smashed face shines?

            In murmur tinier than a fly’s:

            I am...here.

Are you there—

my years and heroes,

avatars of shatter and rebar,     

shard reconveners,

my undead selves your peers?

            Firmly, through the collapsed

            masonry, rubble’s echo climbs:    

            We are here. We are here.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

Today I must not go and cannot stay.

Strenuous transformation has not made solid

things or the joins between solid things. Not

rock, not rooted trees, not the river or the

trickle fusing dust motes on the windowpane.

Rather, part has moved steadily away

from part, showed centre scatter, flinger of 
                                                disconnect, 

hypothesized dot in which vacuums bloom.

Dispersal. It has made me old and kept

me from being born. Arthritic fetus,

I limp toward the pension of beginning.

Love and duty fill my hands, purpose

granting pause, while I myself slip through them

scenelessly. Gratitude for improved

resolution of a dismal picture

is strange gratitude—though all thanks are due.

Perceptions flutter, sway, down to the sun-chalked

sidewalk in kryptonite stutter: “Is it

a bird? A butterfly? No, just a leaf.”

The prickly pentagram commits no shadow,

events becoming smaller and more eerie

as we spiral toward what can’t and must be waiting.

Give me your hand. Your hand. Forget this next.

The cloud touches everything as it dissolves

in a sky absolving everything save windlessness.

Rough

Rough      

Tearing yourself loose

from a lifelong

pack of lies

—is hard enough.

But at least

you’ve got those

ice-gray eyes,

snapping, pink-foamed

jaws and that

high articulate howling

right behind you—

Each vivid reminder

of lethality helps

legs and lungs,

forcing them on

when you can’t.

It’s the other

side of savagery

that’s more troublesome.

When a whimpering

makes you turn

and in the

grovel of soft

gray fur you

discern nothing more

drastic than yips

and licks, upturned

bare bellies and

squirmy abashed grins,

just a muddle

of big dumb

puppies craving the

rubs you’ve withheld.

That’s when running

suddenly becomes much

more human, more

familiar—and, yes,

much more rough.

“Let’s clear the air”

“Let’s clear the air”

Since my views on the matter

didn’t matter when they mattered,

when suffering was acute and might be spared—

Why would I rehearse them

with those absent till the hearse came?

A vacuum means there’s no air to be cleared. 

Counsellors

Counsellors   

“Try,” said the sun

to the autumn tree,

and draped harvest warmth

on its withering.

     And nothing was changed

     in the tree’s sinking.

“Try,” said a brown-backed      

bee in spring,                              

scrabbling to sip

from a threadbare bloom.

     And nothing was changed

     in the tree’s slow ruin.

“Try,” said the summertime

child who played,

climbing crooked limbs,

dreaming dappled shade.

     And nothing was changed

     and the child grew away.     

“Don’t try,” said a star

a thousand years burst.

“My afterlife’s gleam         

ignites the frost.” 

     And nothing was changed  

     by duration’s boast.

“Don’t try,” said a root

in the secret soil.

“When green, you split rock.  

Now lean with the gale.”

     And nothing was changed

     and the tree toppled whole.

Western Union

Western Union

At a certain level of stress

and constant beleagueredness                

only telegrams arrive from the self.

Just telegrams, which you have never

seen except in movies—not

letters, emails, texts or phone calls.       

It is the form need needs to take

when it is urgent and oracular,

dauntingly declared but not                         

easily or adequately answerable.

Brevity is constricted to a code

and delivery is by a series of discrete

stages, rapid and laborious

as disaster in the Golden Age: 

lips in a lamplit circle 

in an otherwise darkened room

speak haltingly into a mouthpiece,

down a wire to an ear

and fingers striking keys, again

in that aura of soft glow claimed from shadow,

and so on, down more wires, pulses of

meaning pass, changed but preserved,

until they become the slip of dire

handed to you at your own door         

by a uniform without a face.

Standing at the kitchen sink, you read

in your hands under soapy water

what flashed up from your hands in the hall.

Ten typed words ending in STOP.

STOP is what holds you, what you keep

coming back to. The rest

is a cipher whose solution is STOP.

But stop what? Stop this? Stop that?

Stop everything? Answers but not

the answer rise up as the water

turns tepid and the bubbles pop and flatten.

This message, you decide, means mainly

that another message will arrive. STOP,

you recall or contrive, with relief

or the start of dread, comes

in the middle, not at the end.

Soon, you hope. Wish. Fear. Wait,   

since you cannot pray. What

is the point of such a telegram?

you think, then say in an indignant mutter,

trying if confusion and dismay can

grope their way to a hard shoal

of bitterness, someplace to stand.

You know that you are informed

only of certain stark essentials

and by this that you are only a little

informed, and only from great distances.