poetry
Saturday Mornings
Saturday mornings
It's newspapers and coffee
Toast and jam and tea
We sit on the back porch
And a song constantly plays
In my mind
The words silently forming their shape
On my lips
It is a love song
And while I'm not fully aware of it
It shapes my sense of completeness
Ashes
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
Atoms to atoms
Rust to rust
I believe that I touch
I believe that I see
I observe and I trust
All is all - as should be
Confined to a present
Determined by past
Juggernaut to a future
In paradox cast
Emotions qua objects
Perceptions qua truth
Metaphysics qua physics
Moribus qua ruth
Tags:
An Instance of the Everyday
An autumn leaf
Falls
The metaphysical clock
Marks the point
Preset as an awakening alarm
Signalling the appointed time
When this small miracle is to occur
The confluence of this mighty clock's gears and cogs
Dictate that I am to be present
When this leaf and branch
Repeat the annual expectation
Of their deciduous inheritance
(Or maybe I just happened to be there
When a gust of wind
And quiver of the branch
Caused the leaf
To fall -
I mean, it had to happen sometime)
Never-the-less,
I watch
The path the leaf takes
As it descends -
Breeze, thermal and atmosphere -
All in accord
With its own unique leafy aerodynamics -
Play keepings off
With its gravity bound
Inevitability.
Suddenly
A brilliant shaft of light -
A ray of sunlight
That has found a clear path
Through the dappling
Overhead canopy -
Intercepts the leaf's
Vacillating trace.
The impact is foudroyant
And I am outside the scene.
In less time than a thought
I am whipped through a complete
360o multi-camera sequence
Separated and orbiting,
I am witness to myself and the leaf,
The leaf and myself.
Unknowingly, I have joined the chorus
Of every magnificat
Spontaneously drawn to the lips
Of all those before me
And all those to come
Who have been encompassed
And transported
By an instance of the everyday.
Subsequent to this moment of infinity
The leaf continues its wavering flight
Until it settles on the moist and cushioned collection
Of those that have gone before
And are now adding themselves
In self-decompositional sacrifice
To the humus of the future.
A blackbird -
Yellow beak at the ready -
Hops and pecks, hops and pecks
Through the mulchy dregs
Seeking some unwitting worm
Who, unbidden and unknowing
Will be transformed from
Composting assistant
To blackbird dinner
In the coincidence of location and beak.
Trying To Recall (The Events at the end of Another Perfect Day)
Blood
Constant and ever present,
Unacknowledged in its gravid potential
To contain hope for a life
Long and fruitful
To offer insecurity and fear
When vitiated,
To bring conclusion
At the ceasing of the pattern -
Systole... diastole... systole... diastole...
The internal lifelong beating
Of the rhythm
We have danced to
All these years
Sanguine
Is the colour
I perceive
When I close my eyes
And stare at the sun
Now setting
I am trying to recall
(The events at the end
Of another perfect day)
But they are fractured
And incomplete
Broad brushstrokes
Of significant happenings
Meld
With the minutiae
Of the banal
I hope for a detailed memoir
Giving rise to a transcendent contentment
As the list of the day
Is checked off one event at a time
(Where musings
Of this little history
Would give rise
To a divine and satiated pleasure
Replete in the perfection
Of each action that has
Lead to this singular point)
But instead
There is a flooding of colours -
The blinding core of the sun
White
The clouds paying homage to its western passage
Yellow... orange... pink...
The oceans and the sky
Blue
The trees and the fields
Green
The approaching night
Black
And though
It might not seem so
To any casual observer,
There is a
Beautiful congruence here
Red Flag
My eye
Keeps on gravitating
Back to the red flag
But there is so much
Else to see -
So much movement
And vitality
In this point of view -
Overt and covert,
Revealed and held secret,
Declared and whispered
I try to force my eye
To wander
And rest -
Wander and rest -
The ocean
(Each wave)
The sky
(Each cloud)
The sand
(Each grain)
The wind
(Each breath)
But that damned
Red flag
Holds
Distracts
Demands
There is everything else to be seen here
But I can't get past the red flag...
