Summer's here! And I adore its stillness. Which we all need in this world steeped in incessant action, and inane distraction. Two poems:
summer still
look
here. black butter
blue dragon
flies.
look
here. wet green
drips. swift summer storm.
gray still
squirrel.
look where?
no white cotton
tails; heat beats. hearts beat slow
ly.
rain strains; restrained.
so dry. yet all life
is liquid.
**
look here
here
there.
flying
fire.
**
look up. the sun
eight minutes
ago.
nothing speeds as fast
as stillness.
Light from the sun takes eight minutes to reach the earth
Here is another poem, quite recent. I've been reading Roberto Calasso's Ardor, hence the reference to Vedic thought...
Plenitude
My temple tonight
is crafted of chattering
crickets; their guttural night hum the invocatory Vedic verse hearkening the arrival of---
I open the sky, ring the bell
of the moon; its vibrations
of light fall upon the driveway as I fall
in prayer. I kneel upon the driveway,
my sanctum sanctorum—(not a soul is outside in our lane)—
the Sanskrit of crickets permeates nocturnal being
with meaning. I light night-incense---
a firefly flame erupts. Shining here
there.
I circle it in front of the dead idol
of my oak.
I offer
to this enchanted chapel
my nocturnal truth
my sensuously sacred lunar secret--
and I ask:
Why isn’t this, enough?