LOVE

Rocks for Soil
Plants for Water
Air for Wind, Fire for Fuel
And Humans
For Themselves
And Others.

I read Somewhere
That the only way
God could appreciate
The World They created
Was to People it
With Consciousness.

At first blush
Sounds like a Xtian
Notion:
The human-centrism
Of a self-serving
Solipsism.

Then I read (My Life in Books)
It is a matter
Of Empirical fact
That the Cosmos
Keeps company with itself
Through Consciousness.

That the Existential
Condition of the Universe
Is of Loneliness
Of all abiding Desolation:
Pale wash of Moonlight
On Empty Mountains.

Can it be possible
That All that can be Known
Depends on filaments
Of Connection
Colloquially known (On this Planet)
As Love…

Rocks for Soil
Plants for Water
Air for Wind, Fire for Fuel
And Humans
For Themselves
And Others?

STORY

We live in Mutuality:
Embedded in Cycles
Of Creation, Growth
Decay and Death.

Within this widening gyre
Buddhists celebrate a Mind.
Xtians a Body.
Each secure in their Fated Story.

Earthfall:

Jesus, birthed in a barn
Amidst the mire
Of farm animals
In the stench of a stable.

Mindfall:

Siddhatha
A Seeker in the Forest.
Alone. Cerebral.
Seated beneath a Ficus.

We live in Narratives
Of our own making
Entwined in those of others.
Wedded to Story.

Ever Convinced
Of Alternative Iterations
To the Inevitable - Creation
Growth, Decay and Death.

WHITE

Until the last Quarter
Of the 1700’s
Colonial America was
Red, White and Black.

Then the Extirpation
Of the Red Man
Drove the American Revolution
And turned the New Nation White.

The Black Man remained
Under the Whip
The Red Man Dead
Or Driven West.

The Nation Now
Re-enacts
The Supremacy
Of the White Man

In Domestic mass-killings.
In Industrial-scale Incarceration.
In Police shootings
Of innocent Blacks.

In Foreign Wars and
Genocide.
These Acts of Ritual Celebration
An Affirmation of its Triumph. 

HARBOR

To know a place
Is to set aside:
An Intellect
That speaks of History

Geology
Sociology
The Built
And the Botanical;

An eye that inveigles
Thoughts of Beauty
Or of Dross
Of line and mass.

It is to Delve
Deeply into the Spirit
That is the There
There

So that a place
Is understood as ethereal
Neither of surfaces
Nor of the Abyssal;

Not of past Lives
Not of Old things and New
Nor the Lives of the Living
But the Anima of it All.

So that a place
Speaks not of Itself:
It is mute
And Tenebrous

A Fragment
Of Eternity
Harboring our
Fragile Temporality.

FALLEN

And did not We
Once have Wings
And did not We
Observe the Earth
From on High?

For did not We
Once have wings
’Til gambled away
In that Grand Game
Of Evolution?

And did not We
In Ancient times
Fly far above
Our Green
And pleasant land?

And did not Blake
And Mai Der Vang
Write poems of the
Skyward flight
Of Angels?

And do not We
Now struggle to Rise
Until at last Heartstill
We join the Risen
Multitude?

SERAPHIC WISDOM

We Arrive: 
Still Connected
To a stream of Divine Energy
That nurtured us
In the Womb. 

Our Lives are spent
In the attempt
To Reconnect
With that which
Powers All.

The flickering Remembrance
Of a paradise in which
We were enfolded
Until become
Too Worldly and too Wise.

But True Wisdom
Is Seraphic:
Simply Obtained
With an Abjuration
Of the World.  

This is the Pursuit
Of the Aged.
Retired from the World.
Apprenticed
To Paradise. 

BEFORE AND EVER AFTER

Is it possible
To Think
American History
Without America?

America
Is a Toxic Brand
That makes cogent Thought
Impossible.

Can we wake up
From the Nightmare
And resume Living
In the Before Times?

America did not begin
With George Washington
Or Jamestown
Or the Vikings. 

It did not begin
With European Conquest
Slavery, Wars of Empire
Or Henry Ford. 

Our Continent
Was Peopled long, long ago
With Travelers from the East
Not the West.

They are still Here.
Their History
Is Ours:
Before And Ever After. 

CHRISTMAS EVE

Do Jews Believe in Jesus?
No, they Believe in an older God
Who will engender Universal
Peace and Brotherhood
At some Future time.

The lights have dimmed
In Bethlehem.
The Glory of His Birth
Damned in each moment
Of a Barbarous War.

The Messianic Age is not Now.
The Irredentists
Pursue their claim to
Holy Lands
Stained by Martyrs blood. 

The Romans saw the Power
Of the Jesus Myth -
The Conflation of God and Man
And out of it Built the Progenitor
Of all Western Empires.

The West remains Ensorcelled 
By this Presumption
Of Mortal Hegemony.
God’s Kingdom Ours
To Rule. 

Is its Final Act
To be Complicit
In the Deadly Sins
Of a People
Awaiting Their Messiah?

TUNES OF GLORY

The Twentieth Century
Was America’s.
The Twenty First
We can Presume
Belongs to Others.

America came of Age
In the Seventeenth
When its World 
Was New and
Freshly dressed in Blood.

In the Eighteenth
Dragooned from its Isolation
America was Swept
Into the Tide
Of Europe’s History. 

Riven
By Civil War
In the Nineteenth
America then Flexed Sinews
Of Iron and Steam.

The story written
In our Minds
Is of Progress
Through the Ages
Triumphant over All.

It’s Dénouement
Now demands
A Quietude Unbecoming
To Imaginations
Still inflamed by Glory.

BREATH

At every moment
I connect to
Divine Consciousness
Through my Breath.

This little piece
Of Truth is something
That I might tell 
My younger Self.

Across the Quotidien
Breathing
Inspires
Heavenly Confluence.

I will not count 
The unheeded breaths.
My continued Existence
Is their Redemption.

Each inhalation now
Understood as Essential
To Animation, Relationship
And Spirit.

THE HEART'S HOMECOMING

Ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity.

It is a call that emanates
From the inner sanctuary
Of personal being:
In the Fragment that remains
Of Humankind’s
Originating Consciousness.

It is a call to kindle
That Divine Spark
Into a Flame Of Love
And embrace the Depths
Foreshadowed by
The Mystics.
 
It is a call that
Echoes within
Our humble Reveries
Or emerges
From the placid Pools 
Of Contemplation. 

It is a call only Heard
When Deaf
To the prideful demands
Of Ego:
It is a call to
The Heart’s Homecoming.

WU WEI

Chuang Tzu says:

To achieve Happiness

It is necessary to stop

Doing all Things 

Directed at Being Happy.

Contentment and Well-being

Become possible only

When you cease to strive

For their achievement:

Practice wu wei or non-doing.

Easier said than not-done. 

Heaven does Nothing

He tells us,

Its non-doing is its

Serenity. 

Earth does Nothing

He avers,

It’s non-doing is its Rest.

From the Union of this Inaction

All Things are made. 

Including:

Whatever Happiness

Exists in this Perfect World 

Where all Things come

From Nowhere.

THE VEIL OF ISIS

Dionysius divided Angels
Into Seraphs who are aflame
With Perfect Love,
And Cherubs who are filled
With Perfect Knowledge.

Conation is the acting out of Impulse,
Cognition is a passive Knowing.
Both are elements of passion.
A part of Love’s Quest:
To know and to Adore.

‘The intellect by itself,
Moves nothing’, quoth Aristotle.
‘Feeling is the tentacle we stretch out
To the World of Things’.
Quoth Evelyn Underhill.

And,
‘At the touch of passion
Doors fly open
Which Logic has battered
On in vain.’

What little hope have
We poor Cherubs,
Who seek to Know,
But disdain to Feel,
To lift the Veil of Isis?

BLAKE'S GRAMMAR

Sometimes Philosophers
Invent words
Or turn Nouns into Gerunds
Like ‘Worlding’.

A word with which
Heidegger Established
The ongoing Process
Of his Thinging world.

In which Time allows
For a coming to Presence
Of the Thing
Called Being.

With such Things
Resounding in his Brain
William Blake made Art
Of an Absolute Ablative.

In Fiendish line and script
He made a Gerundive Leap
Of  those Things to be Divined
Within his Visionary mind.

Untethered from Place
In the Beneficence of Time
He thus bequeathed
His Worlding to the World.

TRUE BLUE

Aqueous and Azure
A Blue Horizon
Of Ocean and Sky
Limns the World’s Soul.

I’ve spent time
At these fringes
Messing about
Surfing waves.

Enchantment ignored
I demanded energy:
Off-shore Wind
Waves and rising tide.

For thirty years
I practiced my ineptitude.
Now the ineffable Ocean
Offers another Prospect.

My Life lived
For half a century
At the Pacific’s
East or Western Gate -

The Design of All
These many days Apparent.
The Aqueous and Azure
Holds my gaze.

Enthralled in Presence:
I await the parting
Of this cerulean veil
To reveal an Eternity.

FOUR WALLS

As a young man
Thomas Merton climbed
Dante’s seven stories
Of Limbo, Lust, Gluttony
Greed, Anger, Heresy and Violence.

His Birthright of Divine Consciousness
Obscured by Coarse appetites
Ambition
Self-Obsession
And his Will to Power

Called to Christianity
After Cambridge and Columbia
He Awakened to a Vocation
Framed by the Renunciation
Of a Bellicose and Vapid Civilization.

He sought
A Cloistered Life:
To Banish
The Superfluous
In Search of Radiance.

This was not an act
Of supreme selfishness
But a selfless melding
Of his Individual Consciousness
Within the Divine.

Sustained by a Cistercian
Community
Immured for the rest of his days
In ‘The Four Walls of his Freedom’
He wrote, and prayed.

His Life Committed
To the Substantiation
Of the Supreme Truth:
Consumed in Love
We Abide Forever in Radiance.

I LIKE IT HERE

Non-native plants

Erase the indigenous;

They Deny the Good, True 

And Beautiful Spirit Of a Place.

Weeds: Themselves Colonizers 

Are Weaponized

By Human Colonizers 

As Disrupters of Native Soils.

Tourists: Human Weeds.

Ephemeral Colonizers

With Permanent Impacts.

They Inevitably corrupt 

The places they visit.

Cruise Ships and Jet planes

Are the primary Vectors 

Of a Corruption

That Transmits the Pathogen

Of Homogenization. 

Tourism is 

The Irruption of Alien 

Appetites and Values 

Into Foreign Milieux.

These Predations

Vitiate the Intellectual

Moral, Aesthetic

Psychic, Morphological

Botanical, Biological

Geological and Organic

Elements 

That are Intrinsic to Place.

That are Essential

To its Genius Loci. 

Tourism is 

Colonization writ small

The Erasure of the Unique

The Proliferation of the Predatory.

It is the Incipient Invocation

Of Kali

Destroyer of Indigeneity

Destroyer of Worlds.

LONG STORY SHORT

In a disappointed Life
And an unhappy marriage
My father found Fulfillment
In my Tutelage.

Fated
To be a Student
At his feet, I Learnt
Forgotten Rules of Propriety.

In Rebellion
I cast aside his Affection
Determined to deny
His Societal Education.

Yet his Love
And Teaching remain
Etched Deep within
The dapples of my Brain.

But from Head to Heart
That Love is shifting
The lessons fading
My Soul uplifting.

Tales of Worldly Ambition
No longer Resonate
In a life now Revealing
Its Heavenward Fate.

TRACERY

Writing:
Breaking lines
Of Thought.
Shuffling words
To elucidate.

Runes:
Glyphs long devoid
Of precise signification
But embalmed in
A mysterious Essence.

Seven Chakras:
Earth, Water, Fire
And Air.
Ether, Light
And Thought.

Ideas insinuate themselves
Cloaked in Latinate words
Amongst these Pillars
Of Meaning.
Essaying Interpretation.

Between West and East
Civilization and Barbarism
The Exotic and the Indigenous.
In the Tension Of Alternates
A through line Exists.

It is Here:
In the Interstitial
That I attempt Sketches
Of the Tracery
That branches Between.

CA. PRIMEVAL

California’s First Peoples
Arrived From Beringia
In boats of skin, reeds or logs
Along Ocean rivers of Kelp.

Settling, long, long ago
Amidst relict Megafauna
In Desert, Mountain and Meadow
In Forests of Oak and Fir.

Adapting, long, long ago
To their new home:
To the Land as it warmed
To the Sea as it rose.

Over this wide Sea
Europeans first came to Look.
Then they returned Across the Land
To Displace a Settled People.

Establishing, all at once,
Missions, Roads and Fortifications.
Growing irrigated crops
Raising pigs, sheep, cattle and hens.

More Arrived
Damming rivers, cutting forests
Digging in dirt for gold and oil
Ever Building, Ever Forgetting.

Oblivious:
In Ages of Drought and Flood
To the Land as it warmed
To the Sea as it rose.