bright. luminous.

bright                                                    luminous

 The universe is made of distance and of dust

                                                                                Anna Leahy

Maybe dreaming requires sleeping that sleeps

long—long enough to be called

sleep, and if it’s being

called won't it wake up depending

on the distance between

the caller and the called

like the distance between the meaning

of brightness and luminous

one observed from how far

and what lens and the other

perceived like a dream all dreams

not being equal that may rely on day

upon day of making and putting up

like in jars observations but need,

to be considered luminous, some-

thing that can receive sound-

waves and for the moment it takes

to translate it into pulses, the pause

before it begins to throb and then extend
beyond its reach.

Laundry Basket, In Winter

Laundry Basket, In Winter

Our horizon is never quite at our elbows.

                                                                                Solitude

                                                                                Henry David Thoreau

Consider the prospect of stepping down

from a tall, no taller, place without a railing,

beneath those pristine whites: I'd guess sheets, kites,

and there’s lightning, there’s prospects

rising up, or if not, oaks, or if not

pines, or if not, a child on the edge

of the angle pointing just so to the top

of where you are, or touching it even, where

skies like mothers, rely on prospects

of degrees being just so to create rain

and if rain then some thunder and if some

thunder than all her living life given to the wind

as kicks into that rain that came up with enough

mud to offer.  And all that’s white

above it will stay white above it, and herds

of children’s heads will spin when

they hit the pelvis bearing the basket, the hip

that swishes into and away, needing to lean

a freedom, one free weight on the solid spot

that all her life she’s had to stop and catch

her breath on, the prospect of an angle being just

slightly off and from that great height, step

and fall without falling.

mosses: volatize? stabilize?

Mosses: Volatize? Stabilize?

(There is another world

but it is inside this one.)

tranquility—vast, unencumbered,

terrifying, and primal.  That

naked river…

                                                Forrest Gander

                                                Madonna Del Parto

                                                               

It’s come down

to a question

of when: when do

                                                                when should

                                                                or even

                                                                do

or if

I

should

The moss

that’s gathered

into her own

like a com-

munity on

the stone

or stones—

the poet

the other

day said

lichen

doesn’t die

and his

wife who was

a famous

poet died

she did

she died

in her sleep

suddenly

and without

notice. 

But she’s not

lichen—

maybe

in some way

his thinking

is kind

of like

prayings

that are

lichen

and he

passes them

on to us

to nudge

our way

into

elbow

knee

to settle

into

the settled

cervices

and grow

our own

deeps

grow our

own sighs

grow

our own

children to

release and maybe

let what

brought us

here

become

our feet

folded

beneath us

the way

praying

beings do

or deer

or any

ruminant

who bend to

one knee then

the other

until all

four legs

are

folded under

their warm

torso

and if

a child

or a small

surface

bug

nudged

the nipple

there’d be

calm enough

to go around

for the long

settled

for the just

settled—

for the rooted

ones and

the rutted ones

and the ones

whose hollow

hairs

are filled

with what sun

is offered

and keeps

it for when

inevitably

the night

comes on.

Red Berry

Red Berry

And he will protect those who love

the woods and rivers, Gods and animals,
hobos and madmen, prisoners and sick

people, musicians, playful women and hopeful

children…                    

                                    Gary Snyder

                                    from the Smokey the Bear Sutra

                                   

Today, the bear is making

quiet, she is nose low

and hoping that the lonely old

late in growing berries will come

up from under the cold

bog.  The world accepts her

mostly because they don’t

know her from any place

other than their own

arrogance.  They’ll hold

moldy bread between

their fingers – and rigid,

stick it out and into the lip

of the bear’s memory, trying

to change her mind.  They

think they’re being believed,

they think they’re being

trusted.  Sons and daughters

are given permission to touch

the sacred hara of the bear,

two inches below the chewed life

line, where it is believed

all chi resides.  They are burned

but don’t know it until later,

much, much later, when they,

reaching for their own cheek,

or their own feet, see

the scorch on each finger

print, and, leaning into the mirror,

in the dead center of their eye.

Keepers

Keepers 

six steps up

lubec, maine

My hope is that this minuscule prayer

will reach out to the god unknown I just sensed

passing in the rivulet of breeze above the mere rivulet

of water in this small arroyo.  To the skittering insect

this place is as large as the Sea of Galilee.

                                                Jim Harrison

                                                Small Gods

Before automation, before, when the fog

would come in or the heavy mist or the high

seas were sensed  and the light arrived like

a conjuring, when the keeper had to

climb the tower and light the fire that would

guide the men through the coming and going

seas, feet between each metal stair and hand-

wrought tread with its lack of backing, that went

deep into the air, that went straight up and straight

down in the brick cylinder, I imagine

looking out with his eyes, and too with his wife’s

eyes, who both stay awake, he with his lit wick,
she with her midnight bread. Both of them, fingers
sticky or slick with soot or with flour,
lubricant and a whiff of kerosene,
up the wrists with a sudden flip and push,

flip and push, like he’s drawing on a small
pipe and she’s exhaling all her weight in-
to the flattening of every pocket
and lung of air rising up, the sea or
the dough.  He’s cupping a flame to

the bowl of his pipe, she’s pushing her body
into the frame of the table he made
years ago in his off time.  It’s blond with age,
this wood’s particular gray—and days and days

they eat separately, he in cleaning the Fresnel
lens, keeping meticulous minutes with
barometers, from wind meters, she with need-
les, with modest preening, and each completes
something: he his log, she another dainty

lace doily she’ll read and then donate to
the church bazaar come summer.  It’s a quiet
life, mostly, this kind of keeping.  The beam

of it, perpetually lit, penetrates
the deepest despair, like a hand at the end

of a solid arm plunging into
the molasses black of a fogbound August
night, when the men in the haddock-full boat don’t
know where now to row, and go down after
breaking up and plunging into the Fundy
water.  And by simply knowing where, that hand,

that wrist, that elbow and right up the shoulder
knows, no groping, and grips the exact spot
on the paused throb of the shocked muscle. 

To ease it toward shore.  To coax it back through
to life.  Like the wife who touches him when

he’s done with this particular storm, touches
his temple where the grease of the wick still
smudges, and she rubs it, and he her, where flour
still, a curl of hair still, a gloss of oil.

The Art of Skipping Stones

in-side
bertha sortiss
andres institute
brookline, nh

The Art of Skipping Stones

Birds know us as “the people of the feet.”

                                                                                Jim Harrison

                                                                                Old Bird Boy

How many skips your flat stone lives through

is determined by the curve

                of the earth

                of the elbow and wrist

                of the grip of the fingers and thumb

                of the confidence of the knee

                of the sweep of your timed release

               

of any number of things though mostly

the story goes

                of the weight of the choice

                of all the other choices

                of this particular stone

                of the toe against the foam

                of the hips        

                of the pelvis

                of the winding

                of the throw and

                of the letting go

and so

the first and then the second and so on

                of honing

                of momentum 

                of throw after throw

                of those lonely days

                of the water

                of it being odd in no way you know

                of it giving felicitation 

                of it taking and letting go of the stone

                of that skip again and again and again and again (and if you're lucky) again

of that stone who pulls the surface of the water up dripping and dripping

from the twist of her appeased earth and wave and palm pounded cheek.

A Little Trick We have or Have Not Learned

dome
first church of christ scientist
boston

A Little Trick We Have or Have Not Learned

after Peonies by Jim Harrison

The time will arrive (and maybe quickly

                pass us by) when the stories

                we’ve been telling ourselves

                to keep us alive will prove

                to be some kind of lie like maybe

                we liked the first ride because

                we were told we were supposed

                to and that it wasn’t always this

                painful just the first time or maybe

                it was the exact obsessively

                opposite: everything about it was

                ecstasy and wasn’t supposed to be

                but we made it and moved in

                and became the shape of it 

                even if it maimed us we guarded it

                like a dog because we knew

                without words someone wanted to

                take it away from us without

                thinking to ask us or thinking

                they needed our permission.