"Such is the way of ecstasy. If it appears to offer an end, an arriving, an attaining, an acquiring, it is only a final no, not a final yes: it is the end of constraint, the shaking off of the last chains, the detachment which is lifted above everything earthly. 'When man moves from strength to strength and ever upward and upward until he comes to the root of all teaching and all command, to the I of God, the simple unity and boundlessness--when he stands there, then all the wings of command and law sink down and are as if destroyed. For the evil impulse is destroyed since he stands above it.'" -- Goblet of Grace, by Martin Buber, Parabola Summer 1998

MEMORY

leaves rattle in the drained trees

words float through my mouth
the way a boat floats
if you steal the rope

flat
face down

clumps of grass tougher than me

we are small

wind above
on the broken dry stops of weed

smell of leaf decay fills
an inch between nose and ground

minutes hum
as bees stomp through late vaults of pollen



LOVE POEM IN SPRING

Go, little
tangle of
labials and
fricatives.
Be my 
persuasion.
Coax her
like a nest.



INSOMNIA

Synapses fire again in the night's black brain.
Rain wears to a whisper in the yard,
and lightening bugs take back the neighbor's hill,
flickering numberless above high grass.

A man watches from the porch, plays
at stitching these bright points
into pattern, lines and shapes like signals,
forms broken by the dumb cast of chance.
Nothing meant for him,
only an odd pleasure
that the world slips his net.

If he needs something in the night to love,
there is endearing randomness.
Joy still might wander in from the woods.

If he could sleep, he would join
the dance of small illuminations,
would float above night blooms
until the intermittent flashes
were shining incidents in his own body.



AFTER GRIEF

The morning when it was almost spring
ached dull with infection,
though ordinary light
was only ordinary light.
He stirred and rose. Sunshine
winter-rinsed and weakened
crossed the table and washed one cup.
Late snow stuttered across the fields,
sticking on the windward sides of trees,
accumulating like the need for sleep.
He wanted the light dull, and he did sleep.

That summer a friend on the telephone
asks about flowers:
"...how did they do this spring,
those big tulips along the driveway,
she worked so hard---did they
bloom like she wanted them to?"

"I don't remember."

"Insofar as I could I approached it in the attitude proper to poetry: the willing suspension of disbelief." -- Beyond Tragedy by James McBride Dabbs in The Road Home