The Infinite Being Wanting To Be

Here it is, up from underneath
The shoulders of the rocks
Resisting and supporting
The forest that roots into them.

The secret hangs as mirrored fruit,
Rolling slowly, shining inside
Out from under the unique drop of dew
That drips from every tip

As the whole world incompletes a reflection
In the eye of a swift, caught diving
Through the reconstructed sunlight
That causes it to shine within itself

As though it were coming from outside
Itself, as though it were itself,
As though there were no outside about
It, as though it had been once.

The Paradox

We remember the passages we savor.
Our fullest attention alone makes
The merest moments momentous,

The lazy hours, the drifted afternoons
That otherwise slip into the sun
And vanish, remain glowing only

When we forget all the rest
Beckoning to be recalled likewise
And dig down into the incoming.

Gatha Parasomnia

"Reassuringly, the texts people send when asleep often make no sense."

The small cry
Of the dark
Of the night

Rimmed with light
Keeps me up.
In this state,

Neither poem
Nor a prayer,
The long dream

Of a fall
From the small
Reflection

Of not quite
A planet,
Dim grey ice

In distant
Orbit lost
To the fire,

Forever
Returning
Home as light.

Pando

"a giant has lived quietly for the past 80,000 years"

I live in the roots of me.
I die each fall from my leaves,
Sporadically branch by branch,
And am reborn out of fires
That send me back underground
To consider why I am
Not one, not many, not gone.

Fantastic monsters scrape horns
Against my skin and flay me
With their short-lived teeth. Holes cut
The heart of me where trolls squat
In their huts made from my bones,
Wanting to be close to me,
Not one but many, soon gone.

I tremble as I perish,
And I tremble as I thrive.
All the smaller lives within
The smaller lives within them
Hum one dream of profusion,
Almost individual,
Mostly many, mostly gone.

Front

Here goes nothing
Looking like leaves
Pushing like wind

Scattering clouds
Driving fast cars
Up scenic routes

Picking up pace
Idly twirling
Contrails around

Its long fingers
Like cool tendrils
Of now you see

It as being
Perfectly clear
As the blue sky

Over here right
In front of you
Now no you don't

Liar

Lost in the forest somewhere,
Just lost enough to be glimpsed
Now and then at a distance, wanders

A flawlessly mythical creature,
The last perfectly normal life,
Horn growing out of its head.

It's annoying really. A beast
Should have the decency to go
Into proper hiding if it doesn't exist.

All the nasty, stained, wasting,
Rutting, confused, and ravenous
Trunks and backbones of the woods,

Mottled with chancres
Veiled in the leaves, must
Pretend we had a choice

To be these undignified, bitten
Fruits dropped to the ground.
Finger the serpent, the woman,

The man, the maker of the man,
The tree that sprouted us out
To manipulate the bees, whatever.

It's still got to be that satin-sided
Gold-chokered ungulate of genius
Prancing in the shadowy tapestry

That haunts all our living and dying
Mistakes with its snowy sinews,
The ideally real and therefore not.

An Exorcism for the Dispossessed

Experience, my dear, is the most
You will ever own of anything,
Including yourself, the experience of memory.

Disown everything else about everything, including
Yourself, including your memories. You can't
Have them. You can't keep them,

And you may not much savor
The experience of always trying hard
To grab what's too precious to hold.