Psalm

A Psalm
for the Master of Music, and Leonard, if he's still here

Who can make fun of God?
Is not His sense of humor apparent to all?
The platypus, mucus, the big toe,
Do they not proclaim the Lord's laughter?

Who can mock the vast oceans?
Or belittle the mighty forests?
If I laugh at the least of God's creatures,
Does the splendor of the Almighty dim before my derision?

The dog stirs and twitches
As it chases after dreams.
So too are my feeble japes
Mere dreams of Thy cosmic laughter.

How can any gag of mine
But pale before the smiling Holy Spirit
That blessed the world and its creatures
With hiccups, the sneeze, and flatulence?

If I tell of Thy jokes and wonders,
They are too many to be numbered.
I hear not the lying voices of the humorless.
I will bend mine ear to the heavens
And hear the laughter in the wind's whisper,
The wave's crash, and sudden thunder.

Enfold me in Thy infinite humor.
Protect me with lovingkindness.
For I am beset on all sides
By vile lies and passionless evils;
Detractors and unbelievers
Spew their bile at me.
The gall of the unfunny
I cannot swallow.

Though one thousand sullen ones
Stand stupidly in line before me,
I shall laugh with Thee, O Lord.
Though five hundred minutes
Are poured out upon a waste of rocks and sand,
I shall chuckle as I stub my big toe.

The sun rises in the East;
I shall awaken laughing.
The stars shine in the darkening skies;
I shall recline to sleep, laughing.

May I laugh all my days,
As you have laughed since the beginning of time.
Help me in times of torment,
And may I laugh at Thy jokes,
Even those I do not get.

The Corpse of a Fawn

My heart would ache
If it started beating.
The thaw is hated
By the winter.
Against the uncaring outside
A vicious coldness
Forms its ineffective shield.
There will be no spring.

A Suitable Balance

(for Jane, on her 50th)

Life's difficult path makes us travel
Between the weight of woes and insensate matter.
Upon reality's anvil spirits become gravel
While pressing cares many souls will shatter.

A maddening task, to navigate betwixt the two
And not merely survive, but truly live,
For too sane a view washes the colors flat,
Erasing the beauty that life would give.

The sparkling light in the cup of Bacchus
Reflects the wild awe of nature's secret.
To capture that ineffable mystery -- Impossible!
Yet dancers catch and release art and poetry.

So dance in the sea of troubles,
Splash folly in the face of care,
Laugh at the hammer of worry,
Soar joyfully into the air.

A love is needed not quite rational
To write, to draw, to love -- to create --
Poised between what might be and the actual,
Helping others move from gray to the infinite.

A natural madness is a delicate balance,
Neither overburden'd, nor oversane,
Seeking wonder at the borderlands,
Bringing home beauty back to us again.

The Gift

Everyone received a gift. On the way
Home from the hospital, you left yours
On the bus. Or handed it to a stranger,
While you buttoned your coat.
When you looked up, it was gone.
Or perhaps they watched after it for you.
"We'll give it to you when you're ready."
But though you waited, are still waiting,
You've received nothing. Perhaps
The absence of the gift is the actual gift.
Perhaps no one else received a gift.
But you can see by their smiles and tears,
By the lyric lift in their faces,
By the absence in your own.
You can see what you do not have.

Always to be seeking, a step out of time,
There must be something, you say,
Something all others don't seek.
Is this your gift?

Lethargy

Asking for help is losing
The game we played in past lives is present
For a moment, although heartache
Argues otherwise

Unprincipled babes devour the mother, the carcass
Reeks of boredom. Night severs the ties
Of day repeating the phrases given
By angels. My flesh, so weak, denatured and dried
Like buffalo skin in a matchbook,
Files away the long silence and hopes for nothing.
A new dawn never breaks, only the same as before,
A lethargy of sad smiles and regretful embraces.

If she wakes again, if a smile escapes before the silence,
If maudlin joggers pass this house with eyes fixed
Upon the moist asphalt. Were there ever houses like ours?
Walls for windows and no doorways of steel,
Pray for someone's soul, they may need it before
The end. Mine, paper thing of dubious worth,
Lay near the stairs before I imagined learning
Not to miss the pain and loss.

Hours of ashes, the embers dead before us,
A rain-spoken benediction which arrives
Too late. Empty in speech, words flow a river of nonsense,
And devour time wasted by homeless actors.
If wickedness could claim this abandoned parking lot,
Where grasshoppers weave the only dreams,
And proselytize again the empty eyes of the despairing,
Then an end might be made. Ruined meat
For hungry souls, but to sate was never our hope,
Only to silence the barking madness.

The White Line

From spawn to that moment of clarity,
The salmon lives in, through, and with the water.
To swim thoughtless to the open sea
And hunt and hide in the river's daughter,
And to wend its way back again,
Borne by ancient yearning,
Is fused within eye, tail, scale, and fin --
To evermore be returning.
Shining in the dappled sun
Or nestled in cloudy seas,
No pensive mariner, but with the water one;
Celebrant of the oceans' mysteries.
But comes the moment when the oneness fails.
The thoughts recoil across the years to birth
And joyous cycles of spawn
And, turning again, careen forward to futures unlived --
One more race against the river (there is always one more).
But memories and dreams are ended
As the salmon is hauled into the choking air
By that white line that casts its fate.
So were my thoughts upon my first gray hair.

Valentine's Day 2006

The words will disappear,
The memory fades.
The eternal is fleeting -- Catch it!
And only the ephemeral abides.
The deepest truths vanish when spoken
To unlistening ears.

And if two gaze at the moon
From far flung ends of the globe,
They see different eddies of light
In the ever-changing river.
The orb moves on across the sky
Unconcerned.

And yet…
The dark gathers round,
Embracing her pale bright glow
Oh! The moon!