All Things Invisible

In wide open spaces
I confess my love
for all things missing.

I have no secrets,
no wounds, no burning
destiny, no sacred tablets
to deliver me

from invisible.

There is a story
about a boy
who swallowed light

and it ate him
from the inside

until he became

light.

On the subway,
a woman cried out

"Jesus!"

and burst
into flames.

No one noticed
the fire
of her skin.

Without a Glimpse

What I have given you
I have entrusted to
the winds, the seas,
the unaffected hills;
being grateful for love
I have given love. I have
set you free.

In times of need,
a needle and thread
will mend the separated
seams; a gentle word,
and poetry, may lift
the lowered head. Yet,

a million eyes without
a glimpse of beauty;
how are we to live?

Inside the Small

An original event: a star
blazed up inside

the quiet, nerve-less
dark; the strange instance

"touch" amazed the skin.

The startled, pleasured
bird: air's blood

in its nostril; a sapling
shivering slightly in freezing

winter winds.

I am here, lifting "heart"
from its body's dust;

a light blazed up
inside the small, dark

organ.

Praying for Alex

You could hear grief
in her voice as if sorrows
were the gritty stones
that collect in the tiny
sacs of lung.

Of Joy

We cannot know of
the importance
of joy

when

shadow"s clever tricks
bring forward visions

of the past.

The unthinkable difference
of an immortal heart
from a dying one:

it's refusal to be
filled completely

with sorrow.

The Cookbook

Life: garlic, baby basil leaves,
finely grated pecorino cheese,
1/2 cup of heavy cream, flour
for dusting. Boil the salt water
for about 3 minutes: if necessary
add a few spoonfuls of virgin oil.
If you're using flavorings,get them
made and ready. Continue cooking
until the sauce is smooth and creamy.

Death: First of all, make sure
your barbecue is clean. Add a
few small pieces of charcoal.
4 slices of thickly cut pancetta.
Wild mushrooms. Coarsely ground black pepper.
Use a piece of sturdy cardboard to fan
the fire. Then let the fire simmer down
till it's white hot and the flames
have gone.

The Un-Matched

The dog lies down by the fireplace. I am
sorting socks from the day's laundry;
few of them have a partner. The dog sleeps
soundly, mate-less beside the fire I built
with my identical hands, her jaw

resting against her leftover bone
as if being un-matched
is simply not a problem.

Finger-Painting Angels

The radio said: Three days of unexpected rain. The work of gravity and water; water that has set in earth enriched with particles of dust, flower's blood, wood and salt. Opening its rust-stained mouth, sky expels its liquid life like wolves regurgitate to feed their pups- rabbit, fur, splintered bone. Though I am old and cold tonight, the milky mist that rises thick as curtains on the panes, has not lessened my delight for finger-painting angels, horses, child-like birds with human, smiling faces on my kitchen window.

Glows

What can they tell me? What will they reveal- voices of the poets dead and dying? So I spin, a brake-less wheel to catch the fallen phrases each a testament to living when living could be praised. If I could publish dead men's rhymes, translate dreams of all whose dreams have gone, would life be beautiful or ghastly details of their crimes? This one writes of worms and dirt, another of the cold, dark night; see how different light becomes when stolen from the writer's eye? Deep into the ground the hearts and prayers of poets grow, yet what they left behind while living glows and glows.

Just Words

Words. Just words.
They cannot fly or pull
a splinter from the nail,
change oil in the car

or wash dishes.

But how they sit,
ridiculous or wise
like angels on their white,

white page.

Tonight, I write
"O beautiful words,
silly, playful, bleeding,
meaningful words-

why can't you
pay my mortgage?"

Of Wolves and Men: Love and Mercy (a medieval draft)

The sad, dark song of wolves and men
traveling oe'r cold and sleepless fields
hath thrust a dagger in hearts of them
who could not weep or sorrow hold.

The night hath wrought its justice so
to spare the weak and tender souls
no sound nor fear to wreck them woe
hath reached their blessed ear.

O! silence of the rising light! the tears
of dew that bead and shine so brightly
glisten in the eyes of those who fight
for love and mercy.

The Well

Nothing has happened, yet;
how many minutes are spent
between thunder and storm?

Faith, a booming sound
which summons soul; no!
precedes it like a bucket

blindly lowered
into the well;

how carefully we listen
for the resonance
of water.

Lessons of Flame

If I have loved you quickly, called
you, silver moth away from night,
flickered in your small black eyes
like burning star with promises
so cruelly broken- how can I

expect forgiveness?

If I loved you, certainly, the scars,
the marks you have so rightly gained,
will teach you not to love again without
a thought of happiness or sorrow.
For my light, the heat that you have

borrowed, will glow and spark
to captivate, to captivate another.

The Freedom of Having (Nothing)

Did you think I would
carry you forevor like
a sack of coins-
never spent,

never lost?

This question, too,
has value, equal weight.
I spend my thoughts,
my life, my worry on

the price of wisdom.

When two people love,
like cypress trees standing
in the garden, truly belong
to no one but to please

the world; like stars

whose shine resembles
precious diamonds, yet
cost the dreamer nothing,
so must I remember

that the contents of
my emptied heart
were given freely.

Unnecessary Epitaph

I slept late, for no apparent reason;
the day moved on without me
moving in it.  And I thought

how like death, this obscure
absence... even to those
who haven't really vanished.

As for my psuedo-missing presence
dreaming in its linen sheets, there were
no sorrows, lamentations, tearful prayers
nor funeral or ashes spread; instead

the sweetest yellow daffodils
that often line the altar of a final
sleeper's bed were still outside-

growing in my garden.

Substance and Longing

When the grace of earth
and air surround me,

I am a piece of world
that is but puzzle with

all my irregular edges
and fears. Where are

the missing shapes
that belong beside me?

Where is the hole
I was built to fill?

Some displaced things
were meant to be stranded,

wounded, unfashioned.
Consider the soul whose

vacant form is nothing
but prayer, whose unseen

presence fills the "nowhere"
with all it has to give.

The Remains

I've let you go. I have not
let you die. You are like
the wind, now: invisible
yet present. See how small
leaves tremble as if
their bodies are alive?

Making

Before this life,
we were but dark,
open, quivering.

Inside a planet
not unlike the cell,
a secret dream

is forming-

the tiny shell
that holds
so many things.

Who could know
that life was pleased
by "making"

that it gave
the "made" ability
to make itself?

And what of
suffering, when
shells are emptied

every gathered property
expelled: its light,
its well-earned love?

This is self-less;
making room for
something else.

Infinity

is the poison of discovery,
the chance of dreaming
recurrent dreams as the mind
is slumbering. Death,

and the notion of death,
a stringless kite surging
up and out through black,
black night until it disappears;

and what we're left holding-

a ball of twine fastened to
a small hole punched in the wood
of a handmade spool.

The Quest

You are looking where
the eye becomes a stone;
darkness is another form

of "finding".

And depth? there is
no ending to this silence
that feeds upon itself

from "within".

On a patch of snow, just
below the window, sparrows
scratch the frozen surface

with blood-stained talons.

Again, I Ask

I know too much about life
and so little. The writing
is on the wall, they say-

where is that wall?

Profoundly intelligent,
the river says nothing
at all; for this reason,

stones are deaf.

What great knowledge
the empty bodied stars
impart without knowing

the meaning of love.

On a hillside, the moon
begins its nightly walk;
no question or doubting

its well-worn path.

For All Things Promised

A new thing comes
from all things: what were
we before they gave us
science?

Wherever we go, there
is conversion; I have
struggled to be what
you had hoped-

simple, free,
immaculate.

Torn from seclusion,
an oyster scraped and
eaten from its jagged shell

leaving only hollow
outlines of our missing
bodies; I have struggled

not to be what is
missing, but what is
touched and travels.

Afterward, the molecule
unwinds and passes on
its fiery promise.

Just Deep Enough

For love, in ways of planting: seeds,
gloves, a hole just deep enough
to coat the husked tight bodice.

A wary eye kept sleepless, trained
in science, schedules chronicled
and followed; the wakened sprout,

frail green, lengthened threads
a burden on its troubled lover.
Chance, devotion: walking through

a garden, purpled, pulling vines
laddered to a thoughtless sky whose
education- light, a bird, a weeping cloud

and nothing else.

A Different Kind of Debt

Those hours, formed
like rock, fasten
earth into its body;

violence is a spice
the taste of salt
and soil. I am, at last,

the separating wall,
hip from heart, lung
from blood, the sea route

from its buttressed
path. Landlocked miles
gather heat and fog like

memories of loss; while
water thrusts then rushes
back from shore.

These nights, I practice
flowing past the breaking
point; a wave whose arc

fixes on the waiting
darkness. There, dissolved,
extinct and silenced,

what moves, what strains,
what struggles
disappears.

What Did You Expect?

Wait. Your body
is a tool for measure;
surely, now you know
the helpless are immune.

Once, I saw
my father's face
stranger than disjointed
bone, blue and swollen;

I am not as
useless as I seem.
Someone sees what
someone else is missing.

On a stretch of
beach, fragments of
a shell. I gather pieces
of a whole and glue them

into art, into memory
nearly reaching likeness
or an effigy of God; how
marginal the difference!