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Thought is a fair candle— Welsh gnome

Gulls pierce summer clouds

Hot winds whip up white caps on

dark cobalt waters

I walk by the Bay

the paths empty, no one sees

Earth’s edges burning

WORK IN PROGRESS

“The idiotic singular is the loved child of time at play.” William Desmond, GOD AND THE BETWEEN,237.

Napping after a

long walk in the Sierra,

my thin body on

the granite, I woke

to the glitter in the stone

as the sun went down.

Just in time. Boyhood

experience of the gift

of being in time.

For no good reason,

I made it back to the camp

in plenty of time.

Now old, I sit on

a rock, watching the light play

in time with the waves.

WORK IN PROGRESS

“It is the resonant silence you hear, and the resonant silence you make in return, when you get the poem and the poem gets you.” Robert Bringhurst, THE TREE OF MEANING, 309.

Only the mourning

dove softly pierces the peace

of the August heat.

Song accompanies

the way to and from home: no-

body but the birds

in the distances,

their many versions of the

same few dropping notes

lasting into dark,

their far presence the too much-

ness of summer’s end.

“Esti: It is. This, Parmenides says, this alone is left for us to say. (Frag. 8, 1–2).” Desmond, God and the Between, 55.

PARMENIDES’ MARES

Addressed too much by

the egret up to its knees

in the dark water,

the thinker doubts him-

self. If that exists,

I’m a minor premise! Yet,

the egret steadies

the horizon, flies

away. Where it was, the light—

that (Parmenides);

there’s the glossy mane

of the mares who brought him where

ESTI resonates.

.

“The one is all things but no thing.” Plotinus

I walk out into

the bloc heat of August noon.

The absolute one.

Things in the cool shops

and a little money buys

air conditioning,

human relations,

my smiling self. Once outside,

the inscape wobbles:

which overflows, being or

mind knowing itself?

A few sips of pop

and things settle down: finite

goods are the real goods.

Summer Song by the Ocean

“Our horses winnied to each other at parting.”—Li Po

Voices cross the bay.

Duck voices, boat people, waves—

all carried by wind.

It could be any

time of year, but it’s summer,

and you are away.

The empty- fulness

of this day leaves plenty of

room for a love song.

Summer friends stop by

but I’m not there, I’m here with

you by the ocean.

“The image is a mediator in the porous between—making the between porous to what is beyond the between.” William Desmond, GOD AND THE BETWEEN, 270.

In the July sun

the cove becomes a mirror

too bright for my eyes.

I listen. The ducks

keep talking quietly. Time

overflows it seems.

The peace that passes

understanding passes as

the ducks fall silent.

A SONG IN PASSING

I’m the blind man who

waves to every passer-

by—the bird wing’s sigh,

the human footstep.

I have beautiful hands, or

so my lover says.

I’m told I’m naive,

trusting. We are all passing.

We make our own luck.

WORK IN PROGRESS

You kill me, I said.

You looked off to the pond where

a white egret stalked.

You kill me, I said.

I looked where you were looking.

The egret plunged its

long white neck and

drew it out shining, throbbing.

You kill me, you said.

That made me happy. We were

young, we spoke our minds.

“It is thoroughly unbiblical and destructive to think that we can never suffer innocently as long as some error still lies hidden within us.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, PSALMS

You died peacefully

at night, having faced the worst,

smiling. A few days

later, your ashes

drifted on a Pacific

wave. The wrath of God

hounded me for years.

Today the Atlantic shapes

the stones I turn o-

ver idly at sun-

down. The only cure for grief

is another love.