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“This existential awakening to the presence of infinite otherness within the self-consciousness of the finite life wakes the relative self to the truth that this absolute is also immanent in all sentient beings.” Takeshi Morisato, Faith and Reason, 166.

WORK IN PROGRESS

Why I take these walks

is not at all clear to me

on overcast spring

days. I have to wait

a long time in the drizzle

for the difference

between the waves and

the ducks to appear, but when

it does, gray is not

gray. Nothingness is

nothing but makes room for this—

waves, ducks, gray poets.

“We can be lulled into a false sense of philosophy with respect to abstract dialectic; as if that, and only that, were philosophy; and not the emergence of thinking from an ambiguous ethos; not also the reinsertion of thought in the flow of life itself.” William Desmond The Voiding of Being, 177.

Big white boats tower

above the ducks at low tide.

In the spring sunshine,

the boats promise flight, the ducks

enjoy a few feet

of muddy water

in the shadow of the boats.

Poets dream journeys,

but I come down here

in shirtsleeves and sketch what

seems lit from below.

“Once the single individual realizes its finitude through its genuine self-criticism, it comes to realize its ground in what is other to itself.” Takeshi Morisato, Faith and Reason, 165.

The old Greylag Goose

couple loll in the Spring sun.

They own the boathouse.

Before your death, I

imagined us growing old,

inseparable, gray

if not white, like them.

Relatively simple lives

got complicated.

Now my life, simple

like theirs, has those rare moments

shared by animals.

WORK IN PROGRESS

“Would it be correct to say our concepts reflect our life?
They stand in the middle of it.” Wittgenstein, Remarks on Color III 302

It seems unlikely

but cresting, crusting Bay waves

once again roll in.

Last time seemed the first

and last time that Spring prevailed

over the world’s weight.

Ducks flap over ice-

edges and keep their balance.

Nothing comes to mind

like this. I awake

to what is other to thought

and the death of thought.

What I don’t know gives

me a lift as I let go

of my mind’s deep flow.

“Our posthumous thinking, which releases us beyond the bounds of the rational universal, also cultivates our attentiveness to the divine otherness at work in determining processes of becoming.” Takeshi Morisato, Faith and Reason, 131.

Susurration and

loud birds over my head as

I walk under old

trees renewed for now.

For now I walk without pain.

It’s been a good walk,

solitary, com-

panioned by the gift of time.

I wave to the dogs

that bark from trim yards

sporting Black Lives Matter signs.

They know their limits.

An egret lands mid-

bay on this soft day, itself

a dim splash out there.

The other side, gray,

green-gray. This side, Trinity’s

bells leap space and time.

I count syllables,

my way to play a part in

what goes on and on.

A little over-

whelming, lilacs block the path,

brush my face and hands

as I pass. Thinkers

say it’s Being suddenly

brimming from the bush.

And the poet says

it’s poetry. But I say

it’s someone you’ve loved.

WORK IN PROGRESS

“What’s ragged should be left ragged.” Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, 45.

In the pale Spring air

echo steady hammer blows

from high roofers. At

my feet swirl lucent

blossoms from the pear. Look up,

look down: the whole world

is background for this

and this! All’s subspecie

aeternitatis.

WORK IN PROGRESS

At last the fidelity of things opens our eyes— Zbigniew Herbert

Spring sunshine. Children

underfoot on the cafe

patio. Journey

done. Empty regrets.

Radiance forsworn to catch

the next train. Always

moved by moving on.

Now, the final fermata,

this helpless laughter.

WORK IN PROGRESS
The world can save us—Wong May

What is grief’s other?

I walk and walk and walk. I

pass the sunning ducks,

green or emerald

where they float. I pass the Bay,

cold cobalt toward

sundown. Your colors,

we’d say. Now the world’s colors.

Grief returns the world.

Your colors endure,

walk after walk. The emptiness

you left fills with them.