A Fable

I set a pebble on a table by a spoon

And tried to tell the difference between

My mind and the surface of the table.

 

Evening stole the light and soon

The rest of the rest of the room seemed

As far as the spoon was from the pebble.

 

It was not the pebble or the spoon

That took the center of the scene

But the impulse to discover this fable.

 

There is no finer thought than this:

All that might be is not what is.

Of a Blackbird Looking at Thin Trees Sway (with apologies to Wallace Stevens)

 1. 

The trees move and I am
Not moving.

2.
My eye is not the only eye.
There is one other.

3.
I fly between the branches
But do not find a perch--too many leaves falling.

4.
I am alone as a blind eye. I was once
Not alone. I have forgotten why.

5. 
The wind whistles in the branches
And I whistle--the sounds exactly the same.

6.
Ice on the grass this morning. Soon the snow
Will catch my shadow as I pass from tree to tree.
I know exactly why I am here.

7.
I watch for the one with talons.
I cannot chase him like the little ones.
I think of him, at night, huddled on the opposite
Side of the black bole. 

8.
I know all the inflections of birds and of branches.
They know
That I can sing louder than the moon.

9.
From above, the trees look like black suns
Against the dying grass. There is no
Perch at the center of a sun.

10.
My fellows cry out as they pass.
They see these trees with my eye
And do not want them for their own.

11.
I do not fear anything
And nothing fears me
Except the trees.

12. 
I must be going soon--
Once the river and the trees
Stop moving.

13.
The dark grows long as day
And there are no more leaves.
The snow stings my eye.
I have already left 
Before I fly.

On Buson’s Portrait of Basho

Old grinner,
what's under your sky blue cap?
Not haiku!

Waking

Is it only dullness,

   the courage the eye

requires to watch itself,

   white circling hue

circling black?  Perhaps

   a life of seeing

greens infinitely shaded

   teaches us to take

the shock of the red

   without equanimity

or as a joke.  Morning

   headache, the renewed

blur of sense, release

   of energy, all that

awakening can make

   of itself, explains,

“You’ve come this far.”

   To take responsibility

for the rainbow beneath

   the water glass, or

the dogs we’ve run with

   all night long, we

must make a choice:

   watch the light blister,

or close our eyes tight.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, March 25, 1911

 

Since the ninth floor doors were locked,

did the women know the building

was on fire before they felt the heat

radiating through the floorboards?

In no time the smoke drove them all

to the windows, which opened easily.

More than a hundred women jumped

(a few preferred to endure the flames).

Imagine what they must have thought,

what mockery of hope quickly

turned bottomless terror; except, perhaps,

for those who focused, who fixed their

minds on the last chance, tensing each

muscle for all it was worth, determined.

Bathers By A River (Henri Matisse), Sonnet #626

 

Can only the human think abstractly?

We do not perceive things exactly

As they are, but as we want them to be,

And often render the senses free

Of a connection with the universe,

As if meaning’s impossibly perverse.

A bather steps in an inky river

Where no light shimmers and snakes slither.

These movements set like Toltec stone

Without muscle, sinew, skin, blood, or bone,

Exist nowhere but on canvas, gesso

(Not even in the artist’s mind, but mine

And those willing to look inside a sign),

With no relationship to what is so.

The Park (Gustav Klimt)

 

The first leaves to turn lighten

From dark green to warm pale

Before a single one drops.

The gardens beyond brighten

Even as the flowers fail.

The nothing in the world stops.