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Continuum is a poetic dialogue among friends.
There are often several responses to a given thought. As
time went on, Troika became the preferred conversation.
Troika is the linear combination of Haiku, Cinquain and
Tanka, traditional Japanese poetic forms. Continuum is now
in its fourth year. This is an edited version. The original
version ending January 2006 is available .
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Quiet first,
breathe slowly.
Old pain is singular:
of that isolated
Time.
past that,
nothing.
so What!
big Deal!
bring out the sand
Rake and Comb
your small
Garden |
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Last light through the trees
lasting for just long enough
to note its passing
reminding me you
passed this way so long ago
lighting my long life
your presence so brief
and the memory so long
lasting with such light |
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An appledab of mab is fab,
quoth she
and quoited her querls.
But every sylph likes hilph
(hee hee)
and cuts a merry whorl.
The briney bog of Mog sagog
she say
and huddled her head.
Three weavers found
the threads unwound
and, quarking, slipped under the bed. |
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Her head, directed West,
Addressed the wind.
Fierce insistence pressing
Against each cheek,
Increasing with each
unnoticed minute, hour, age.
Ah! If that tiny cloud
Could but move, just a smidgen,
Her Father's warmth could
Ease the strain of
Bracing on that crag.
Tick. Tock. Tick... |
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I believe in the orchid man.
I am no longer sure of the gods of the West defined
by blood and calling for war.
I believe in the orchid man,
who preserves delicacy and beauty.
As mortality slips by, I step aside
the dictatorship of words
or images of sacred savagery.
But I believe in the orchid man-
saving, coaxing life unwilling to let the brute have
his day.
I believe in the orchid man
who believes in life and practices hope more than
other gods I have met.
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So these three muses are sitting together
in a bar.
Muses, you know,
they dress weird;
really provocative,
but weird.
Anyway, while talking about
clients and all,
Clytemnestra blurts out
(they have weird names)
"Why are they all so
NeeDee?"
"What's the BiG deel?"
Argentenio counters,
"FeerFactoR!" "IdenTiTeeCrysis"!
and several more
Blah-blahs.
Blog, (no gender distinction)
eying the other two slowly,
-- sighs. |
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It is never a good day to die.
Children stir in troubled sleep
In the thrall of approaching dreams.
Women stir their coffee, eyes blackened and red,
Wondering at the streaks in the windows.
A stitch has dropped from the fabric With the terrible
consequence of incompletion.
It is never a good day to die.
Young men wrench their sinews to the steel, Stubble
faces slack and dripping.
Young women apply lipstick and leave messages on the
phone to invisible past friends.
Street merchants sell trinkets and tin rings And foreign
toys made of paper and balsa wood. We are physical
beings with physical minds
Our everyday doings are encapsulated by flesh.
It is never a good day to die.
Sheep bawl in a distant meadow.
Under skies tufted with their wool.
Starlings raise bright alarm at disturbances;
The harmonics of red-winged blackbirds
Vibrate the still, tall timothy-grass.
And small animals burrow in the Deceiving cool earth
and under.
We are like them and unlike.
We do not seek the earth:
It rises to claim us and
With life around but not within,
we are obedient but burn with resentment.
It is never a good day to die.
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Andrew came for the light
and gave us the crippled,
backlit beauty
of the long grass.
"Christina's World" is protected
by ten miles of six foot seas
and sometimes sun
and sometimes not.
- However -
(?) She really wasofhis
other(s) light(s).
S(he),
hermits of Mannana,
unison cripples.
The Light - his light - their light - light.
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I tried to walk
in Christina's shoes,
but could not,
she could not.
My grass green as hers
Wyeth gold,
A thousand spears
Softened
Are my bed.
Here, ant armies
carry out their duties
to the last.
Here, beetles
with rainbows
on their backs,
small creatures
I have no name for,
citizens of a plentiful
civilization
living underfoot.
A white moth
pauses on my arm,
the cloth
that covers my hip
slips
fresh and grass-stained. |
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Such bright longing, Christina!
Such incandescent angst.
Hide in plain sight.
Allow the untroubled grasses
Their climactic conversation
With the sun;
The burbling brook its run to the sea;
The beetles their tiny triumphs.
The timeless tumult goes on
And all have their place
Except you. |
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White mold on the leaves.
It is time for the garden
to return to earth.
Maple
leaf drifting down,
sinews of yellow, red,
with random path, but direction
certain.
Walking in wet grass
while afternoon is ebbing,
finally knowing
the right time for closure is
when the heart opens. |
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When autumn comes
The leaves
Should twist and turn
In passion so unrestrained
As never said good bye. |
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A night sound too close,
too unknown, so high and clear,
begins the goodbye.
Rosebud,
bending slightly,
done, yet not full open,
the harbinger of tears for the
morning.
Crickets no longer
fill the night with harmony.
Their season of call
passes through the quietness,
softly into a new day |
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Anyway you look
at it, truth is difficult.
Saying it matters.
There are
alternatives.
Black is white, fire is rain,
a total eclipse of the sun
tonight.
Singing quietly
just a simple melody,
almost a whisper,
every note more softly,
until the cadence is all. |
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She, small and
Alone on the pier, watching
Me leave with the tide.
Lonely.
I'd gone to Greece
To find something she was.
She interrupted my vain search
With love.
The sun shone brighter
While her smile surrounded my
Fumbling want, her
Soft hands so pliant, so warm.
And then, my ship sailed.
She, so small,
alone on the pier, and I,
with the wake, leaving.
Summer,
twenty years old,
she coolly watching me paint,
lovely, in her floppy straw hat
in Greece.
We went to breakfast.
She spoke little English, I
no Greek whatever.
Eyes, locked hands, lingua d'amour.
The memory yet again.
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Red is first,
Among the
dappled seas of green.
The air becomes crisp.
Then, the
Riot of orange,
So obviously beautiful.
Like bees
we are drawn to richness,
To drink.
Youth passes quickly.
Ochre oaks bank the fire with
Age. Time presses on.
The green disguise fades,
then dies.
See what was always there!
Among our busy
lives, daily tasks and stresses,
red leaves lose their grip.
Falling
slowly, swept by
sudden gusts they reverse
the inevitable call of Earth
too late.
This closing season,
mirroring migrating geese
passing over lakes
among riotous oranges
will pass into quiet soon
Colors among the colors,
we stand among the leaves;
knowing their home
and the strength that set them free.
A peace there is in that;
and roots-
deeper than we may have thought,
closer to the forest,
where it all began.
Slate--gray September:
Dawn -- heaven heaves
rain water;
Noon -- jewels on the grass. |
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As we pass from sleep,
first thoughts are simply feelings,
and words have no place.
Our eyes
cannot adjust
to our surroundings yet.
Our senses coalesce into one
purpose.
To reunite us
with our essence, so fragile.
Diaphanous wings
of a white moth hovering
much too close to a candle. |
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In the valley where those before have
fallen
like chips of grey flint,
the headstones are marked with moss
flecked with charcoal: rubbings on a Sunday afternoon.
Only then do the living and the dead confess and converse.
Memory is the graven image on which we write
On which we try to dream.
It is the safest way for all concerned,
one least disaffected by hope and expectation.
Parents gift their works to waiting children
hanging framed on the walls
hanging framed in their hearts.
And left to themselves at night, the stones and celibate
dead
Do not move under a blood red moon. |
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New to the cold air,
our faces tighten and brace
against the morning.
Nights have
lost their softness.
The moon, still mystery,
is now subtle and evasive.
Distant.
This is the time we
feel vulnerability.
We protect ourselves,
look at our reflection, but
the mirror is unsilvered.
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Your body breaks. Not
a surprise, not expected,
but now accepted.
Waiting
becomes present
tense. You made your
wedding
dress on the train.
He waits for you.
Your time
does not have tense. His
time calls you. We say goodbye.
We were your future
our ages ago. We say
goodbye together to you. |
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She holds out her toy
for the camera. Smiling
in her Sunday dress.
Her house,
is blurry in
the black and white background.
She is squinting
in the bright sun.
Daddy's
shadow is in the
picture. The edges of the
photo curl and tear.
Time does that. The toy held in
her small hands softens her heart.
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My old clarinet.
So many years forgotten.
Then the case opens.
The smell
is still the same.
Velveteen, wood and spit.
Unencumbered raw memories.
The reed,
encased and dormant,
wants to sing again. My mouth
hopes for harmony.
Some notes begin.
Breathy and
free. The rest
will wait their time. |
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Sudden thunder in
January. An only
moment. No reason.
Quiet
showers follow.
With no cold and no snow.
Maybe a nightingale will sing
tonight?
Maybe it will be
easier to sleep tonight.
Just one simple thing
at a time. Maybe on this
coldless night, a dragonfly.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Clear night, dark night, still.
Whisps of memories collapse
into cold breath and
are gone.
A plastic tree
carries my Christmas lights
this year. She passed it onto me,
somehow
knowing that it was
the right thing to do. Funny
how life has a way
of giving and forgiving;
of giving in forgiving.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I remember when
the lake spoke in December.
Slowly, while turning
into
ice. Beginning
softly. Swelling, and then
Fortissimo! The long echoes!
Cracking!
And then the silence.
The nothingness. The no sound.
And then the soft moans
began under the surface.
This I remember.
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