Naked In The Blast

                         CRACKED OPEN


this poem isn't about the looming extinction
of African elephants     now being slaughtered
at an even faster rate than they can reproduce
what can I do?    I've never set a foot in Africa

my cringing brain just won't stretch around it
anymore than I can save that newborn baby
thrown away in the dumpster    or get there
before the suicide slices deeper into her vein

yet ever since my heart cracked open I can't
not hear    not see    not know the enormity
of suffering in the world    I can't block it out
stop it    or twitch my horrified self to stone

I try "Be Here Now" and "Follow Your Bliss"
but here and now is each instant everywhere
my soul's bound together with all that's alive
I'm the elephant I kill    I'm this grieving man


                                     *** 

      Keat's wrote of the poet's "negative capability", by which he meant a kind of creative empathy that can identify with, even imaginatively become, everyone and everything the poet encounters. This is a blessing, and a curse. As the last line of "Cracked Open" shows, it means I can identify both with the slaughtered elephant, and with the poacher who kills it. Once our heart is cracked open, the whole world pours through.

                     ALMOST NOTHING

no matter how I slice it    I don't want to die

what comes after    if anything    I don't know

life itself is so wild    funny    horrid    strange

I stare into the mirror    but who stares back?

sometimes I'm exhausted    it hurts to breathe

where's the point in my blabbing on like this?

among infinite multiverses   an almost nothing

sits at a computer   pecks doggedly at the keys

I do what I do because I do it   that's all   "why"

is a lost glove in a blizzard    it can't find home

too many directions won't explain themselves

too many walls won't shatter or sprout wings

once a Light--piercing! unimagined!--capsized

my soul    my inner world shuddered on its axis

I'm still chopping wood    lugging pails of water

but awake now:  awestruck    clueless    blessed

                                       *** 

     While at my most hopeful I believe the soul transcends death; that death is a portal into another dimension of consciousness, I'm not always at my most hopeful. At these times, I resonate more with Shakespeare's description of death: "That undiscovered country, from who's bourne no traveler returns..." Yet my soul has also been "capsized" by a piercing, unimaginable mystic Light! So I'm spiritually awake now, which doesn't mean all doubt disappears. Rather, such doubt becomes the crucible for a more stringently tempered belief.

WAYS OF LOVING

        
                SOLIDARITY


they were gathered around her
the old women    converging on
the eldest one    she looked lost
frail    shrunk in her wheelchair

they were gathered around her
worried by her sudden faltering
spinning a warm cocoon of love
hands    eyes    voices    presence

they were gathered around her
the guardians    all ministering
their solidarity primal as night
each heart a stay against death


                        ***

   I observed this scene in a senior living community, where I work part-time as a security officer. On one level, it was commonplace, everyday. In a deeper, more universal way, however, it seemed almost mythic, an archetype embodying how the Old Wise Women of all times and places draw together in a protective circle of love to care for one of their own. 

                                CARPE DIEM

juicy blackberries and banana slices over granola

soaking in a bath of milk and cream    along with

half an "everything" bagel    a glass of apple juice

morning slants in stripes through the mini-blinds

capping a good night's sleep and a luminous dream

about a sacred child and a father with cobalt eyes

an old man can feel like a flea under death's armpit

yet alive and still kicking on this sun-drenched day

what else can I do but slingshot my voice in praise!

outside my window a cold wind racks the branches

inside raggedy slippers all ten toes curl and uncurl

heartbeat by heartbeat I kiss each second as it flies!

                                          ***

     Just being in the moment, here and now, truly, deeply experiencing through all our capacities, fully awake--the heart overflows with praise! As long as we can still revel in such simple, humble pleasures, the only response must be an unequivocal Attitude of Gratitude!

TRUTH AND BEAUTY

                           THE MUSE

                                 "Are you the one who came

                To Dante, who dictated the pages of Hell

                To him?" I ask her. She replies, "I am."

                                                                       -- Anna Akhmatova 

across ninety years    half a world away    I'm

there    that singular room with Akhmatova

we wait beneath the towering Russian night 

until    tossing aside her shadow-riddled veil

the "beloved guest" overwhelmingly arrives

Akhmatova receives the stringent messenger

she can't know    although she already knows

The Muse will dictate to her the harsh pages

of another hell    keening the cruelest agony 

a mother who cannot save her doomed child

when the austere Invisibles command a life

the soul ignites    ravished by that reckoning

we remain small    fractured and incomplete

but some Power--vast   unafraid   imperious!

possesses us    cascading through the cracks

                                     ***  

                             The Muse

     Browsing in the poetry section of a book store, my hand happened to pull from the shelf a selection of poems by the great 20th Century Russian lyric poet Anna Akhmatova; and the book "happened" to fall open to her 1924 poem "The Muse." The poem stunned me, especially the lines I quote at the beginning of my own poem "The Muse", which I wrote in response to hers. A few days later I drew my vision of Akhmatova's Muse, and in the process had another revelation: Dante's Muse, and Akhmatova's, and my own Muse, are one and the same. 

                       Night Comes On

one bright star glitters low in the west--

     caught at the fringe of a long dark cloud

         the sky deepens from blue to indigo

two dark clouds sprawl low in the west

     a vee of geese wings toward the horizon

         the sky deepens as night comes on

the sky deepens    night comes on as Earth

     peers like a watery eye through the void

        one bright star glitters low in the west

seven wild geese arrow toward the horizon

     over the streetlights and crouched houses

        the sky deepens from indigo to black

a last faint glimmer of dusk drains away

     cold wind splinters into a thousand stars!

        the roofless sky deepens    night comes on

                                      ***  

                   Night Comes On

         One night, as I left work, I looked up as a vee of geese winged across the evening sky. That vision stayed with me, until it found expression in the poem "Night Comes On." Then, about a week later, both vision and poem inspired my drawing. Too often, we look, but we don't see. This time I did both, and so was reminded how astonishingly beautiful our world can be.

                            

SO NEAR / SO FAR

                                 HIDEOUT


clinging to the underside of a leaf    fragile wings
folded    as raindrops strike its surface    my soul
lies low in the magical darkness     far removed
from timetables   deadlines   checklists   agendas

if there's some secret passage to another world
it's this    where time dissolves into timelessness
here every splash of rain is rare    strange    new
listen    our sentient planet's murmuring to itself

have you a safe refuge for the absconding soul
a holy place beyond the clutch of life or death?
without one we drown in obsession and illusion
go now    take flight    your hideout's in Eternity!


                                        ***

     Any moment we can Wake Up and tune in to the Divine and Miraculous which is always here, all around us, hidden in plain sight. But most of the time we're asleep--too caught up in brooding over the past; too distracted by the present, or too anxious about the future. A couple of Wake-Up catalysts for me have always been trees and rain. In this poem they come together, and the epiphany is magic!

                 TOUGH LOVE

intimate    elemental    a cold wind

stalks outside    agitating branches

just beyond my flimsy windowpane

winter's coming it warns    and one

will break you    will be your last

of those close companions I trust

it's the wind that pulls no punches

unsentimental    straight to the bone

tough love    taking my breath away!

but hugs and kisses don't always work

strange    to feel comforted by chaos--

the sky's slap!  emptiness with attitude!

a rough bodyguard named The Universe

some night I'll plunge into its gusty void

and keep going--star after star after star...

                              ***

     This poem can be considered the macrocosmic Yang to the previous poems microcosmic Yin--with wind the elemental agent, rather than rain. As "Hideout" expresses how the Eternal is secretly present in the smallest discoveries all around us ("To see a world in a grain of sand..." -- William Blake), so "Tough Love" evokes the Awful Sublime of the Infinite, that undiscovered country on the other side of death.  

GLEAMS OF DIVINITY

THE PHIAL OF GALADRIEL

"May it be a light to you in dark places,

when all other lights go out."

we see merely a fleeting refraction of that Light

glowing sometimes in the eyes of lover or friend

or glistening briefly at dawn just before the sun

edges its fiery rim slowly above the horizon

or lacing the deepening shadows of dusk

as those brightest first stars begin to shine

I've heard rumors of that Light now and then

a refrain sung so piercingly sweet   so aching pure

my heart could no longer fit inside my chest

but broke free   opening out like a radiant blossom

expanding till it encompassed both earth and sky!

yet no such image can possibly contain it

my mind strains mightily but can't find words

for this Reality reaching forever beyond words

a Beacon that's guided me through living hell

inspiring hope when every hope was blasted away

infusing courage though I stood paralyzed with fear

a dazzling shaft of Eternity bursting into time!

found and lost   found and lost   found again!

the greatest wisdom isn't gleaned from any teacher

it's only learned through being--all other knowing

trumped by our soul's transcendent revelation!

everyone's a sacred vessel--a Phial of Galadriel

the Light that saves us    is the Light we are

***

     "The Phial of Galadriel" is, of course, from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings. It's the sacred gift Galadriel, Queen of the Elves, gives to Frodo when he and the other eight members of the Fellowship journey through Lothlorien on their way to Mordor. Frodo later fends of Shelob, the horrible giant spider (for a time) with The Phial. It seemed to me Galadriel's Phial could be used as a symbol for the Divine Light of our own souls, and that's how I deployed it in this poem.

          SWEET CLOVER

I'm back inside the fold today

munching sweet clover again

grass of blissful coming home

yesterday I thrashed about

oozing self-pity and bitterness

turning away   blaming God

Divine Light won't gutter out

Grace cascades unquenchable

yet I felt splintery   bereft

how could it go otherwise?

how could I be safe or whole

estranged from my inmost Self?

today though I scoured my soul

tearing down its rigid walls

flinging wide the brittle gates

my stubborn ego caved to One

Who envelops like atmosphere!

I breathed in   opened   bowed

now I munch the sweetest grass

holy sustenance grown for me

clover of blissful coming Home

                        ***

     The gleam of Divinity is always there, at the core of my being. But I have a thousand ways of blinding myself, alienating myself from my Eternal Source--self-pity, bitterness, fear, rage, etc. That's what I know about hell. Yet I'm never "damned" unless I choose to be. And when I finally choose not to be "estranged from my inmost Self", then I find I'm back inside the fold again, munching that sweetest grass--"clover of blissful coming Home."