“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.
WORK IN PROGRESS
“To make way for the other is to create an opening for freedom that is not for oneself, though in that opening one is fully there for whatever may eventuate along the way.” William Desmond, quoted by Morisato, Faith and Reason, 124.
I have met others
on my summer rambles through
the estuary.
Village gardeners
wave over their bent shoulders
and beds of iris.
From time to time glints
of ocean shine through the hedges.
Heaven and earth one.
I follow Basho
following Zhuangzi: forget
your self on the way.
I have met others
as I get home: the coolness
in the shuttered house.
In the lush tree tops
this long summer afternoon,
children endlessly
play. The sun goes down
in the thick poplar windrows,
leaves stir in the breeze
and suddenly there
the moon is— abrupt, whole, clear;
nothing else matters.
WORK IN PROGRESS
SONG OF SITTING
Still as an infant
on her mother’s lap, I watch
the world go by. Folk
pass as the weather
worsens and the killing set-
tles nothing. Couples
hold hands loosely or
with white knuckles. Mother shifts
her weight, her gaze
never leaving me.
Buddha gently directs me
to her empty smile.
SONG OF EXCESS
From Luke 6:38: ”good measure, pressed down and overflowing.”
Daylight streaks the walls.
After last night’s discussion,
what more can be said?
I fall into day,
squinting. We touched on all our
favorites, and then
some. And today’s bright
emptiness confirms why we
hold the silences.
Metaxyturn Diaries 