Sunday, November 18, 2012

Dog Star






These days?
Well these days

I'm just a lame dog
in cold mud

Once was a wolf
probably be an old coyote one day

but now I'm just a circle-walking wound-licker
tethered to a sinkhole

My how I could howl
at a bulbous moon

and I can just imagine
how I'll croon to find a grave

but here my hum's a whisper
with a little too much tongue

and though as beautiful as blue
and shining like the Dog Star

my song won't raise a hair
or even reach the ear I'm singing to

only muddle my understanding
of an otherwise comprehendible world


Friday, November 16, 2012

Summer, and then





from "Aestivare"




                              was is the earth-shone moon?
                              that shook my hammock
                              that dawn before the birds
                              began to sings as if
                              telling me to remember
                              to look up and see
                              the white sphere of Venus
                              at its zenith
                              in the light of day













in the blackest waters
of the depth-less quarry
I lost my lover
to the Bull Frog King











what bird was it
that sent me wandering 
this orange evening?
to the edges of the hollow forest
echoing with day-fade soundings,
where spears of yellow mullein flowers
bloom in spirals by the road,
where yellow-jackets hover
by the ground, their wings displacing dust,
where I am sent chasing songs as images
that fade as dreams do 
when touched with sunlight 
with the parting of,
at dawn,     my
heliotropic
eyes.









o field          of night

o night        of sound

come into this room

o broad darkness

lay down across me

o field         o sound

of air                 o dome

of night

o  sky of     quiet light

o field           of air

as   room   of   night



o feather by my head

that holds the sun

move        that        night

may come           may lay

its sound          as field

upon my head



ah,

the night
is
a
room
of
dark
light










back now--
my mothers favorite moon
low and thin
facing away
here again from swinging 'cross the sun

                   [emerged in twilight
                    as white piercing red dusk,

                    and Saturn
                    --a shimmer beside]

the summer triangle
rising east and up,
the acute angle points
to the galactic center, behind Sagittarius

those Great Birds
[Eagle and Swan]
spring forth from early dark
and dance     /      their following

the Lyre of Orpheus
alights the sky
[its moving over; the song of summer]



















from "The Ego Poems"



I, as sunlight
sometimes will,
aim for the leafs inheritance









I, with wounded foot, advance

I limp towards a dawn unwoken for










                                    late,
                                    on dark avenues
                                    I watch gods walk by











The Trembling Way

I sat         and rode

the winds pattern

on a feather

in golden flame










We lose our gifts as we claim their giving


Tamalpa




                                          o! sleeping lady
                                          'cross the water
                                          whose hair unfurls horizons

                                          your mountain-breast
                                          tit-tip points
                                          at sinking stars

                                          o! one of some wet gullies
                                          though mostly sloped and dry
                                          and yellow as the sun

                                          you smell of sea-wind
                                          and among your powers
                                          the command of fog

                                          and you hide sometimes
                                          but I have known
                                          the wet webs of morning

                                          on your side
                                          and the shadows
                                          of the North

                                          walked heel around
                                          to heel,    across
                                          your flank  and

                                          crouched in rain wet
                                          thicket with a lover,
                                          cold,             in awe.

                                          But I still have questions!

                                          Who are you?

                                          When you roll,     in sleep
                                          must you turn the heavens so?


Little Mercury




just what Earth secrets do you seek,
little Mercury, that you keep your ear
so near the ground?
your aphelion from sun still finds you close
and just before the dawn.


---


in a mornings time
or evenings, even
I can measure the Sun.

o little globes
from far you teach the
circling
circling
spirals
seem to make the movement
[form]
but down, WAY down
the snowflakes shape

:


angular



columnar.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Old Moon


John DeMartelly "Old Moon"




Memory, it turns out, is a persistent ghost


I stack books
bury my face
but it walks by
every other minute!
---specter of joy, passing.


Yet, joy remains
in folds of happenings
as learned to love
from the well I'd fallen into.


The only mediation:
long glimpses of the
old moon at dawn
and dark rooms to laugh in
at the marvel-web
thats been spun upon itself.