seashore

I wonder if Zen mind
is as good
as the seashore 15 minutes north of Jacksonville.

I'm talking about
the eternity of a horizon
and the waves of the womb.
The smells and sounds of sex and death that merge
into sand, that lose their name in the long stretch
of sand, of ocean basalt
and microscopic creatures hewn
unto the infinite, the atomies;
of God in everything.

When I am taken.

When I am taken up,
my mind will be like this -- emptied.
Devoid of person
and filled instead with the world
devoid of metaphor.

death certificate

The final disposition:
where we ceased to monitor your affairs
or rather, the government declares
its hands are washed of you.

The servant stands
his back to you, and one hand laves the other
in the white noise from the tap.
Later he undoes the cap of a pen,
kept warm near his heart; a line
of ink flows out,
embracing a name, it is done.

The cause of your death
was simply ceasing;
the beat beneath your breast
at first off-tempo, then
unbroken line. You stopped
moving forward into when, you ceased
at then. Arrested.

Or if you prefer,
your flesh was stilled, while life
flowed outward into light
like ink on paper, clean perpetual
and left behind the name.

Hear then, the sound of the pen
consigning your remains, the last resolve.
Into your hands, O Lord,
we commend all for whom we pray,
entrusting on this day to someone
far away,
this bag of bones

To journey on alone, and unremarked
wherefore the servant's hands are white
as snow; and on alone, undone
across the untracked landscape of
your final disposition.

the day after
one tipsy winter evening spent
making out in your car

I am crowded with disjunct sensations:

For instance, my back is killing me.
At my age, what I can do in the moment
limber, hungry,
leaves a bruise
(from the steering wheel, I figure)
And the tops of my thighs burn; and my left knee
from the emergency brake
which I ignored at the time.

a lingering sweetness,

to know you still could

do it, that way, you remembered --
without being asked.

Though it's been years. Like dreaming,
unfair, unavoidable. Or nearly.

in the suspension of belief
required
to justify betrayal.

You are left then,
the unfulfilled requests of
days now gone. And this
alone, this emptiness of history
would be sufficient unto shame...

the bruise, and the sweetness,
tell me I'm alive,
that some man somewhere can


balanced, alive alive-o
undone, unbound and unselfconscious
on his outstretched palm
fingers curled upward, inward,
while I thank my maker.

lost at sea

separated by a ruler's length of conscience
the repelling force of magnets face to face
a gap alive with light, and minute signals,
alive with atomies condensed in finite space

and when you're far away, temptation fills the void
the narrative unwinding, raveled skeins of days
brush harmlessly and fray and snap across the oars
shipped leaden to the bow, borne back by endless waves

the airy threads will still do up the mast
true north is only Heaven, compass-cracked
and love is only salt, is light and salt together
along the beam of motes that binds us, back to back

standing by part 2

consider the attention to orbit
and trajectory:
in any finite space, two people
in their patterns interact,
and pass through their clocks of days
like the mailman,
appearing on the doorstep, on the same page
always;
we circle and spin, towards and away
sometimes so carefully that I suppose
you'd call it
dancing.
Routine is intimacy.
If I look up or look away, it's just
my cue, the bell
of your attention or neglect.
Tempting though
to lean in once, skipping
off your atmosphere,
to watch the sparks.

standing by

sometimes, when you smile at me in a crowd
I pretend not to see you.
it's the dumbest thing. but I want you
all to myself, in those instants; so badly in fact
that I'd rather you didn't touch me at all.

when you smile in a way that's new to me,
I check the impulse to reach for it, hands outstretched --
to warm myself before you hungrily.

so shamefully familiar are your noises,
your expressions, that it's best
to turn away once in a while, to let you be.
no one really wants to be studied so closely.
x-rayed by love, anticipated,
surmised.

if i ignore you when you walk into the room,
please don't take it to heart;
all down the length of me I'm listening.

i'm standing by.

coming home

I imagine you on the flat two-lane roads,
coming on ahead of the weather.

Behind you, a blizzard falls out of the northwest,
the kind that nearly froze Pa Ingalls as he stumbled blindly
past the barn, past the corner of the house,
into open prairie.
Snow drifts against your mother's headstone,
softens the print your left hand made
in the frozen earth at the base.

I hear you sang today, the Lord's Prayer,
to a roomful of mourners;
and in between the lines Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
they could hear the dripping from the eaves.
A warm wind; the lull of comfort
that softens the earth a little before the storm.

If I'm going to crack
in the middle of a service, it's usually
right there -
Thy kingdom come
(and the sharpness of longing)
Thy will be done
(and the joyful fruitlessness
of submission)
On earth as it is
in Heaven.
You can't sing if you're crying,
you can only whisper your prayers.

Dry pavement under your wheels,
thin shoulders squared to
what's behind you.
The whiteness comes on, obliterating stars,
and I hope your clear blue voice
rests now; on the earth
where it welcomed you,
that your tears had their turn.