Shadow and Light


    Incised in concrete
    knife-edged shadow
    frond a perfect
    arrest of clarity

    a palm frond arrow
    from a declining sun

    shadow and light
    lust of epiphany
    the illusion that walks
    with me on concrete

    invisible come-along
    shadow and light

    epiphany of the shadow
    tangible as light palm shape
    holds me timeless until
    without thinking I pass by

    an arrest of clarity held
    and released by a declining
    sun : step over the shadow
    light vanishes a passerby


    Itinerary


    Monologues of white interiors
    time-dried of water and wind

    crowds gather in history's emptiness
    weightless in the hollows of memory

    description without witness
    so long ago lost.


    By the Lake


    Past years are figures in old glass
    wobbly in a lake
    wrinkled by a stone.

    The lake will settle down
    a face will reappear
    in a scent of evergreen.

    Years are present as noon as now
    or in a rippled moonglade night;
    they summon shadow as in fragile memory
    easy as stepping into a lake
    breaking the present mirror.

    It is the way events are stored,
    they come back twisted
    in wrinkles of water

    blurred inscapes into today.


    Utensils


    An available palette thickened by air
    words I hold and so fast lose.

    A thunder so low an inaudible present its slow
    cycles place me shaking in its throat.

    Stare and beauty opens like a work of fire
    a made thing a connection must be made.

    This is to say necessity is a place made all of stares
    come beauty come the final ruin of the world. Stop :

    for what it may be or was a burned-in-after-flash of fire
    over distance measured light years. The glamour of it all.


    Driving to Fort Bragg


    "... the existence of the appearance is the reality
    in question ..."
    John Searle


    Inferred only this time is history, yet uncovered:

    hawks on fence posts, even ravens those acrobats, fog
    has called a general strike along the coast, no
    thermal-lazing, hovering, no tidying-up by vultures
    descended from above;

    through cataracts dimly, once winged enterprise,
    feathers tented against rain, these vision-
    masters of the air ... headlights
    catch them in refracting dawn;
    whatever their hunger the ceiling will not yield,
    bird shapes lost in the moment of discovery,
    as if light, after millennia released, reduced substance to ash,
    a part of the vast curriculum of circumstance and nothing,
    with yesterday's blinding sunlight withheld there,
    so many questions fearful to be asked;

    place this with the pacific fence post
    posturing of hawks.


    Dog in the Forest


    A city in ruins as ever.

    In the forest every scent comes arrowing true,
    a "state of exception" where the air opens up to death
    as everyone's property thrown in the corner
    a loose rag "the ultimate configuration of facts."

    When we were young and feral
    we made paths into the city
    a sanctuary with doors and corridors.

    Then were promises and obligations kept
    like subway tokens against uncertainty.

    There were nights that continued ecstatic to morning,
    in the red of your hair dawn sprinkled you with diamond light.

    Can it be told when an ancient trace of faith
    gave way under stress in every modern word?

    Running through a melancholy of photographs and kitchen knives
    have we no more than that which happens?

    There are paths which have left behind no odor of life.

    The city was it a phantasm erotically believed?

    Read the wind dream a sleep of unknowing lie down
    with the Noonday Demon.


...