paean 

 

Inside me, dreams drip and slide like sweat.

A life flourishes and ends on cue.

Such happy animals we are laying out alone

Mid-morning in the fog,

The craven appetite paused for a brief moment

With the sun.

Let’s worship the early crickets praying in the dawn.

Let’s worship the cat’s long stretch against the earth.

I write a poem on the turned cheek of darkness.

I stroke the untroubled bodies of the grass.

The sea is far but its music finds me

For tiny intervals upon the wind.

The universe is large but I reel in my modest

House of bones, in love with the whole damn tapestry

Of gases, and lights, and stars.

​

questions from the interior

 

Deep down where reason cannot reach

The curious in you begins to speak,

The true man with his soft, gray voice,

The true man with his penchant for mysteries.

 

The questions he has are not bred for logic.

They cannot be calculated or controlled.

They cannot be named, numbered, or announced.

They concern such things as the longing of the wind,

The insoluble riddle of the sea,

The moon, which shines so sadly

But never weeps.

 

They do not concern the “You” you think you are,

Or the “I” I think I am,

Not even the names we name the world.

They neither impart nor demonstrate,

Fill your head full of knowledge

Nor empty you to the core.

 

The true man, with his mouthful of questions,

Urges you only to ask:

How morning can come so softly

When the sun is so immense?

What is it that shines in sidewalks after rain?

What force really stops

A tear from lifting off the table,

Or a wounded heart

From breaking into song?

​