The Visitor

Starry night

After a storm,

Blows in

An owl,

Alights atop

A broom handle

On my front stoop,

Staring at me,

Surveying,

Looking for mice

And other morsels.

Looking at me.

Looking at him.

I turn. He turns.

I walk away.

He flies away.
But never leaves.

Islands

You drift fixed,

Tides grinding,

Taking some here,

Depositing some there.

Edges rise sharp

To glare at the ephemera of sea.

You anchor yourself

To stake a claim

At the ineffable.

Transported there, returning, passages

And harbors and bays and coves and open

Seas, the prow of self on bowsprit.

And you land, settled again, with one

Footfall to bridge the gap into something else

Just out of reach that you hold onto.

Why this? Perhaps because all who came before lived

On rocks adrift — Sao Miguel, Bermuda, Britain,

Out there amid the void, in currents.

And now you: Peaks, Barbados, Cape Ann, if you

Count the Annisquam, these rocks
From which you view the world

Each day, that piece of perspective

Firmly locked behind your eyes, within your heart,

Blood swirling currents and tug and pull of the limbic system,

Of what has come and where we will go.

Good things, good places, good thoughts endure.

We end up there, when the day comes to disembark.

Maybe that is it: Each of us on a single, self-same journey

That in the end returns to ourselves, with the swirling

Carrying on all about us, and we come to our resting place.

And in that pivot point of stillness: the question mark-shaped

Coast. The period at the end. That’s the idea,

The pursuit of the divine. That's what one wants to get near.

Rollicking waves one day followed by

The sharp tack of surety on others. 

It will take you there.

Pay your ticket. 

Keep your bearings. 

Do not drift.

The Red Bird

You

Just after dawn

This morning

In the spring

The gold flowers of the maple

Awash in morning sun

Spilling out over the ocean

Onto your fragile self there

Alighted for a moment

Like a good thought

I look away

In an instant
You are gone

From January to July

We’ve traveled roads together

And alone — country roads,

Interstates, island roads,

Bajan roads, roads the Romans built,

Roads with a strip of grass down the middle,

Framed by bright green birch trees.

Snow covered the roads, then spring’s flowers,

Then summer's steamy rain.

And now here, we ride together, more and more.
And all I want to do is to take the road home to you.

Suffering

How intimate

Are you with the concept,

Miss Know-It-All?

Easy for you to say there.

On the numb of reality

— That thin reed —

Things can come unhinged,

And it’s not your fault,

Remember that.

The fear is what

You dread the most —

That darkness,

That hollow place.

You have been there.

Anyone who has not

Has no fucking clue.

Have you ever been

In writhing, white-light

Pain? The crunch and

Fire of nerves setting

The body and mind

And soul afire and adrift.

This is the place

Of no sustenance,

No memory, no hope.

Remember, forlorn sailor,

It will, because it

Will follow you,

But tailwinds accompany it.

That is the wisdom of the thing.
That is the opening of the seed,

Quenched by spring rain.

Night Ocean

Never will this droning,
This clawing,
This wind-swept yearning
Cease — the surf, the ocean,
Sing to me
In my years.
My harmonies,
I see possibilities,
Though at night
I cannot see the sea.
I know it's there
Out on a wave and a wing,
Not a prayer,
My thing,
Buoys ring.
Popples are glottal.
Incantations of water;
Upon the rocks
A slaughter.

Don’t Just Sit There

Do something.

Hastily write a line.

Include an adverb,

And note the defeat

But disregard it,

Because so much,

You are finding,

Is unremarkable,

And dross,

‘Cept what you

Hold inside

Behind your eyes.

Build that space

There away from

The transient material

To feeling, to wonder,
To dreaming, to kindness.

Seal those areas

And regrow new ones.

Escape the shell

And slither 

On the sandy beach.

Nothing seems to matter

Any more. 

Trudge. Trudge. Trudge.

There is freedom in that.