Knowing

Let’s tend the small embers
Burning the night
Into darkness
Under descending cold
Bitter and biting
Incubating
Dreaming spring into being

Not too fast
We mustn’t rush
When we’ve only
Just met
Spiraling into each other
Summer washing ashore
Falling into each other

Winter is a wonder
A wandering pond
Frontier of falling fronds
Frosty yet on fire
Sweating intense
Feverish touches
Clutching at softness

Whispers at night
Shadows of shapes
Shifting sands of time
Unwinding line by line
Time and time again
Until next time
When we knew

Perhaps we knew all along
There was only one way
To be here now
To know those things
Singing the way
You do when singing
The way you do

The Big Freeze

This night is crystalline
In its silence,
A silence broken only by
The aching cries of the water,
Its bones being broken by
Winter’s hammer
With its shattering stillness.

In the sky
The Milky Way,
A dragon of a thousand icicles,
Remains perched
Motionless,
Reflecting space
As time is trapped
In a falling crystal.

Ode to Gabriel Garcia Marquez

He is a mountain
Encompassing the world.
His rivers spill over
Onto pages populated
By trees whose leaves
Are each his own
Unique and colorful form.

It is not enough for him
To create the magnificent
Countryside, to wring from every
Stone, every blade of grass,
Every cloud, a teeming universe,
He must make you understand
The secret heart of desire,
Of the anguish experienced
By his creation,
For he writes what we all
Secretly feel:
The crushing weight of being,
The feeling of death already
Eating our bones.

His words are mouthfuls of blood
Scratched from the desperate
Colombian soul,
Lifetimes of solitude and surrender,
Of soil soaked in blood,
Centuries that laugh and weep
With ironic tears.

Therefore, after traversing
His lyrical mountains,
One does not know
Whether to laugh or cry
Or to simply die
With handfuls of dust
And diamonds.

Always the sea

So near the sea
The days lose themselves
Since there are no numbered
Ways to measured her days,
To perceive her passage,
No way to receive her waves
Without losing parts of yourself.

Today could be yesterday
But how can I know?
Her face bears similar feature
To the gravestone of every year,
She shows cryptic resemblance
To ritual grieving, or
The periodic remembrance
Of catacombs for dreams.

Always the sea.
Always the sea,
All ways lead to her ceaseless
Increase and decrease,
Describing days,
Inscribing her fingerprints ashore,
Erasing the footprints of passing time.

snow

when fire falls off the air
lost in the tumult of atmospheric descent,
when the silence of the birds
is lost in the hushed whisper of imminent winter,
when the swollen sky's belly
loses itself in the enormity of november's gray,
and when what would be rain
is impregnated by the stillness of its joy,
then water is kissed by crystal
and the ivory feathers fall,
blanketing the earth under the smooth dream,
the furious placidity of the immense white wave,
the snow.

the air is silent, all sound is from within,
the multitude of falling flakes
reflect the inner quiet:
all things, time and space,
earth and sky,
are frozen for the long moment it takes
for winter to let loose its endless white-haired wisdom.

and the children sing, cry out,
let's go! for this order of tranquil perfection
is not to last forever when a child's boots come stomping,
when the sleds and mittens and imagination unhinged
are set loose upon these white planes.
the whole world is an amusement park ride
and the cold bite of winter's icy teeth
do nothing to slow the advance of children at play.

and when at last, through hunger or exhaustion,
or for steaming mugs of warm cocoa,
they take respite from their conquest,
the wood stove hisses from the icicles accumulated
on pant legs and scarves and hats
now hanging above.
skin gone red and numb now glow crimson
with blood rushing to reunite with warmth.

the day progresses, the snow continues,
the tracks are covered up, more feathers
adorn the winged crystal dream
of the hibernating earth,
and from inside the windows steam,
heightening the sense of this life we live
from inside an ever-changing
molecule of water.

the fist and the thorn, by neruda

it's been a while since i posted a neruda favorite...

it is not about forgiving:
the forgiven does not forgive,
nor is it about giving
because he who receives
remembers your kindness as a wound.

on what did it feed,
i ask you, your joy?
where did your eyes emerge
if they didn't poke them into you?
what makes one smile
and the wind dance
and a touch last
and on what does your song subsist?
inside the fist the thorn
wounds you to defend you
and the stone weighs heavy in your hand
or the revolver in your insomnia.

so, then, you do not kill anyone
when everyone is killing you
as though you had provisions
for the life they kill,
because the weapons are heavy
or the words are blue,
or because you must not descend
when you refused to ascend,
or because they do not exist, they tell you,
those who stomp on your head
or because those who proliferate
will leave to proliferate
or because you hide your pride
like a dragon of seven souls
or because if you are guilty
it's guilty of having been born, of growing,
of buying grapes at the store,
of giving up and of arriving.

for these myriad reasons
--or simply from sadness--
you coil up the evil they inflicted on you,
you gather up the stones of the damage done,
and you leave whistling and whistling
in the morning and across the sand.

unsure, to be sure

it is the early hour of the night
that crept through the sheets
and icy mist until it appeared as today,
it is the end, or beginning:
the end of a long fitful dream,
the off-ramp for distressed sleep--
or the beginning of knowing,
of remembering that which remained
after the kiss was consumed by flames.

i am not sure of these hands,
this hair, these percussive heartbeats,
i am unsure of the tide that leaves twice
and returns twice as many times.
why, i ask, do i need the bitter spoon
to stir the sugar in my throat?
is it absolutely necessary, i wonder,
to probe the wounded parts of me
with so much salt in the pumice stone?

when, in the course of crashing her waves,
does the sea reinvent the desire to cry,
to wail, to shriek weeping at our feet
when at other times she sings us to sleep?
had i not known i could not swim
i would not have left the shore
with a broken umbrella and featherless wing.

leave now, bitter wind, silent and invasive beggar,
stretch your arm to the next horizon
and take with you this lingering hope yet to be born.
i abolish my slavery to the chains of this unknowing,
here by this sea, by this sky, everywhere,
this i declare.