Visibility
of the sun behind the moon,
filmy sheen of fire
crowning the disk of
darkness: people want to see
it, just to see it.
This is their only
chance and it is dangerous.
Looking your dear one
in the face, behold
the eclipse of your earthly
self — just to see it.
The art of backing
up (down) the widely spaced stones
from thing to being
whereby to arrive
in the world as art — sparkling,
cold but inviting —
is worth the trouble.
Use whatever metaphor
makes it possible.
The mystery here
in the midst of becoming
Monterey tidepools
fill and empty, fill
and empty, starfish awash
in repetition
to my sense of things
beauty in the still moment
of transparency
the starfish between
the full and the overfull
to my sense of things
Hoodies up we watch
from the Memorial Bridge
snow flakes take a dive
into the silent
obsidian waters of
the Piscataqua.
The bridge trembles. Great
the undertow of insight.
We hang on the rail.
The vertigo of
being free and open to
our own nothingness.
Wildfires to windward,
and the crows fly into the
smoke sunlight-diffused
under the roof beams
of our imagined Heaven.
I lose track of them,
eyes stinging. No need
for apocalyptics, Earth
a gift slipping from
our grasp. Never was
in our grasp. Unbearable
clear-eyed Nirvana.
Broken promises
unspoken but binding, loss
of Earth’s kindnesses
all rooted in gift.
Imagined trade offs: wetland
community for
one’s own waterview.
Our neighbor’s privacies: Bath-
sheba at her bath.
We pay for free will
and pay and pay. The gift of
freedom is not free.
In light of first light
domesticities — like scrub-
bing, sweeping, dusting —
may be mindfully
done. In our patience a shape
takes shape, shapeless, not
an image, say a
second light doubling the first,
opening the space.
