Enigma

It. It? What is it at the source?

We can’t know it by stealth or force

Or guess at its speed or course.

Like one word buried in a book

(Moving like a trout in a brook

That will not rise to the eye,

That will not rise to the fly),

Read once and lost between covers,

It stymies the question — hovers

Just beyond comprehension,

Beyond time and dimension.

It depends on what you know

Less than water needs wind for snow

Or an arrow a broken bow.

Lies

If I said the moon is blue

And that no lie is ever true,

Should I believe myself or you,

You who once knew the truth?

A ticket bought at a liar’s booth

Is worth a hundred billion dollars,

The blind, deaf, dumb man hollers,

As the crowd stampedes to buy its

Own, so quickly torn to little bits

And ticker-taped into the streets,

Soon grown to enormous sheets

Of gray that once was black and white.

It is a petty insane sight.

There is the found and what one seeks —

Both become an idee fixe,

One thing and one alone

That morphs, like the game telephone,

The moon into a blaring tone.

May

Such trouble in the one word “may.”

An uncertainty, yet wishful; we pray

That tomorrow may be the day.

It is only vaguely referential

To the undone and potential.

It is, like a dangling piece of rope

To be climbed with fearless hope.

It is, behind a shapeless curtain,

The hidden seeker of the uncertain.

It is, the unanswerer of whys

And the unopener of the eyes.

May is only a suggestion,

A marker for the unknown question

We seldom pay attention to.

There may be so much else to do,

You hardly know that you are you.

The Flammarion Engraving

 

The Milky Way is stone and silent fire,

Flying ice and dust, and expanding gas,

But what we find within the heliosphere

Suggests a whilom laboratory

Where the essential elements were cast

And the residues made preparatory

For the distillation that's planet Earth:

Europa's water, Io's sulfur,

Gases from Saturn and Jupiter,

Engineered for the terrestrial birth.

The traveler sees, beyond a starry veil,

Cosmic clockwork, eternal music.

Kneeling, he lifts a hand as if to hail

His Maker, the tinkering mechanic.

Rock

Even the soft are hard,

The boulder or the shard;

The pebble or stone, all scarred

With the stylus and the cloth

And the wings of the moth.

Still up the mountains thrust

Into skies of water and dust,

Then crumble at last to sand,

Until the flatness of the land

Betrays no fleck of bone,

Nor relic of brick or stone,

And no one left to be alone.

Orchestra

Musicians are made of music,

As though there exists a music gene.

For accomplished artists, it's no trick,

But benefit of exquisite training.

You feel the presence of votive force.

The notes, even the shaping of line,

Are pleasing, like a poem's off-rhyme,

But talent, not music, is their source.

The players make of air a force

That governs the fluidity of time.

They understand that beauty is fleeting,

That this song, now, is their only chance,

That perfection seldom knows repeating,

And thrust at our hearts like a lance.

Melody

The orchestra is silent,

No vibrating instrument,

Nor air, sweet or dissonant.

The players left the stage

Striking one note — of rage.

An object of odium,

The conductor sits the podium.

The composer’s score,

Scattered on the floor,

Will not be heard anymore.