The years have dressed us in golden threads, Warmly woven brighter than those first bright seams. Through winter’s bitter and springs remembered, We find our love outlives our youthful dreams.
Our steps did falter on unsteady ground Like toddlers with legs weak and unsure. Now our roots run deep; patient hearts we found And time has given us what only time can secure.
The orchard has secured us year after year— Love walks with joy and promise on the earth. Our fallen apples drip and disappear. New blossoms crown the harvest with new birth.
Glad boughs hang low with fruit ripe and sweet— God’s grace bestows each new day we greet.
He speaks to you through the screen and you watch his lips and lick the words off yours as if you said them and they begin to drip like honey.
Is it your dream or his?
You each go into your own madness. You’d rather sleep than walk this crooked road. But he churns up the gravel with his coming and going. You suspect he knew he was planting those seeds, but you had no clue you were a plowed field waiting for them.
But what can you do now that the rains have come and the sun has showered the fields and the plants are knee high and the bees’ legs are covered with that dust?
What can you do but tell lies that will keep this world from calling you sinners?
What can anyone do that will keep liars from sinning against their own souls?
You belong to that world of long braids, and pipesmoke coats papers you pull out of your weathered bag and hand me and riddle my brain. Your poetry is what I think ancient ruins are made of. Gold glimmering from the domes of exotic dreams. Riders on horseback come dragging in the dust of a Montana evening and you capture their essence, and the streets of this Indiana town shine in the rain as it blackens the tree trunks,
then the yard shines, smell that rain and remember when the lilacs first tempted you to spring. Our lives sprawl out before us begging us to inspect them and spindle the corners and ransack the trunks for bits of our living. You have an eye that gathers the corn and when I finally squeeze out a word
about how cold the river was that May, even though the tulips flooded the houses on Main Street, you look so surprised that I remember, and I have to remind you that I have lived here a long time, even longer than when I knew you, took summer classes, drove a car without a license, but I didn’t mean to confess, and I know you
wouldn’t let me confess any real sins, like the ones I committed when I thought feminism had arrived to save the world, before I knew that each soul has to save its own life,
but you didn’t know me then, and I am always so glad, because that was not me, the person you see here and care to listen to; I have news and a flag, and as we walk to the burial ground where the chief proclaimed this land sacred,
I know you feel the stream flowing under our feet and you hear the call to come home.
Grasping this world that seems so solid in motion and the wheel in my hands so obedient. Frost-burned weeds out in the fields wave acknowledgment of December wind. Others wind down the concrete path.
When did I begin this route through space? I answer in riddles to my self but quote experts in debate. The sun on any cornfield atones. And any rainbow ties together beauty and truth: Science has proven that much.
The next town always owns me motoring across country in this shell of mystery that reveals itself layer by layer until, somewhat like an onion, its pungent center pervades, but without dissolving.
I will stop again in a few hours just to rest these restless thoughts, to refuel the vehicle, to reorient my faith that my direction still leans the way the map leads.
Mind is musing on the Eternal Now: Seamless width where past and future fold Into a single point of searing light No clock no calendar no fleeting hour Only unbroken being always present
Heart beats the drum with Its rhythm No yesterday no tomorrow only today Not bracing for what has not yet come Sounding its music in the present skin Vibrant adamant unyielding
Soul remains enshrined in Its temple A quiet realm where time cannot intrude Where every breath is neither first nor last But simply is complete unto itself Eternity has no length only depth
He was a peacock about his manhood, Measured his mind by the length of it. He was kicked out of high school but cut his wisdom Teeth on the Encyclopædia Britannica. He went to tell President Nixon How to run the country, And ended up in jail—in Wyoming.
He told stories about planting his seed, Claimed he was directed By an expert in eugenics. Threatened To incest his own daughter. But his head served as a block of meat His co-workers at the wire factory Would slice off at the lunch break..
His mother was a gentle, efficient woman. His father was just gentle. But his brothers were determined To shit in every yard in the north end.
He gave people the creeps. He was too self-slung to know. Narcissus breathed on his mirror. He made people cringe: like when He took pictures of his sister in her coffin— The sister he told his brothers only he could satisfy. He wanted to remember her before she rotted… One can only guess…the way you remember Road kill before it goes to flies.
“How can sense slaves enjoy the world? Its subtle flavors escape them while they grovel in primal mud.” —Sri Yukteswar, in Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi
Flesh is the battlefield. Every soldier takes it to war. The armies marching under the cover Of skin are the enemies. Your neighbor may be the worst bag Of blather to carry a stick, But you can walk away from Him. You cannot walk away from That bag of guts. You cannot walk away from Those thousands of miles of blood tube. You cannot walk away from The heat and bristle of the loins.
Your head is on straight. You’re a moral giant. You exercise bladder control. You spit only in the bathroom sink. But you’re not one of us, If you don’t carry around a sack of excrement.
Every sack of bones and motley sense clown Learns sooner or later That the mind is a terrible thing Wasted in the slime of primal mud.
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