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1956
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belief
brings grief
doubt
shakes common truths about
determined to stand
on ground
beneath which depths are yet to be found
a no
as deep as it can go
becomes a way to soon address
a yes
1958
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Tick tick tock
the cosmos is a clock
push pull bang clang
to be measured without awe
nothing more
NO!
The brain’s born a blank
An empty tank
to be filled by the world
and whatever is hurled
as truth and rule
In the air or at school
NO! NO!
Voices within
equal meaningless din
emotions devotions notions
what is felt inside
must be denied
as not on the track
from atom to star
and back
NO! NO! NO!
Poetry art music
inspirations that coax
at best a hoax
a game by name
to ease and please
the mad and sad
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
1960’s
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With nothing left to keep
Leap
Confess a guess
For poet and poem
What source if not the universe
Of course
The cosmic norm
Create transform
Thus for us
The mind of humankind
The same as that from which
It came
To feel is real
The voice inside Is guide
And link to all that’s ever been
Begin!
Say beauty’s reach
If rarely barely
Holds a truth to teach
The way and play
That sweeps away what is
And blindly gropes
For new and true
Marks poem and source
The universe—again—of course
Search for the words
Even when words bend with the bending
Of time
Prevail Fail
No choice Rejoice
1970’s Cosmology news
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Rejoice
the clock in the clock is no more
the deafening prayer to the unreal is subsumed
It is all pulse
shimmering hoops bonding into the stuff of concern
wonder negation trial
Through the thing
into the forming of the thing
into the forming of form
into the patterns of forming form
into one’s own pattern of forming form so that the thing
in its wholeness resolved perceived enclosed
known
strengthens and expands the origin of its making
the field of its keeping
the thrust of its being
into the swell of
made making
separate
same
things
plunging
thing into thing
through the thing
into the shining of the thing
1970’s
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LET US assume with the new physicists and cosmologists and the old, traditional mystics that the twirl and whirl of everything small and smaller--down and down to the blanket of beginnings and up and up past the apron of the sky through the veil of the stars to as far as far can go--the all in all--was born in a reservoir of nothingness infused with infinite--immeasurable potential--a vacuum
awakened to structure by a ripple--a teasing void whose virtual foundation for the dynamic of an ongoing creation--the universe--bubbled up--bubbled up---vanished until something stuck--came together in a way that pressed and presses still toward further and further complexity--variety within wholeness--that weaves together from what was what has never been before through a process that may be likened to the making of a poem when the doing involves that rare rare miracle of immediacy--directness--pre-consciousness--a creating that flings out images beyond the poet’s experience or scope of knowledge--that makes reality instead of abstracting from perceptions of reality or memories.
SO THE UNIVERSE as a poem in the making and the poet--at moments labeled
inspiration--catching the threads--never the whole--but even in a miniscule catch of reality--living and setting down the way of creativity at the level of nature to infinity--which is to never know for certain what will be from what is--but to understand that the way of what is must be followed to its dissolution--through understanding of its limits---through reducing its elements into a dance of energy so free it allows for not mere change but what has never been before---concretized by testing and choosing among elements of newness created .
A CYCLE then---what exists ground into purest energy for release of what can be which comes to be through processes finally resting on the hardest needs of reality wed to the imagined…..the found …the gift.
1960’s through 2006
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visions and alarms
pauses for contentment
Parable II
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Is the way always down from the trees?
Or out from the swamp crawling?
Freeze the past to escape the day
The heavens extend their mysteries
Laughter prevails
without cause
Ancients’ chant
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We come not to reclaim our gifts
But to beg forgiveness
How could we not know
That by guarding our Ways
As fiercely as eagles their nests
Or foxes their pups
We would bring our youth
To the last days of their future?
Oarless we set them in waters unmarked
Our children swallowed by rapids
Drowned or thrown broken into forests
Weeping for home
Remember us grieving
You sons and daughters in the mist
Forever closing the circle we bequeathed you
Out of love
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