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Gleam

You won’t guess it. You won’t conceptualize it. You won’t expect it. You won’t doubt or be convinced of it. You won’t have any idea it even existed. But, suddenly it may be upon you, and in that moment you will realize it was always there—that you were never apart from it for an instant.

Gleam

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.
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Projections

This might go some small distance to answer a question posed concerning my previous post, “Ode for Joy“.

Projections

We are small yellow suns
suspended together in space
plasmic arms entangled
in mutual relativity

Our avatars roam galaxies
seeking to see touch share
what momentary forms we
manifest in the tracts of time
remembering if but a sense
of our ancient dance

For how long have we caressed
our tandem orbits bathed
in the other’s light
For how long have we warmed the face
of myriad worlds and moons spun
round the plane of our equator

Here on a rock called Earth
warmed by a kindred’s rays
we have met once again
to joy in the spectral hues
we have loved an eternity

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Ode for Joy

My first synthetic ode. This form hybridizes the near-original Grecian ode form of Pindar and the dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. I will eventually write an article about this form and what I hope to accomplish through its exploration. For the time being, I hope you’ll find this an enjoyable, or at least interesting, read.

      Ode for Joy

      I

  Her eye was caught by a distant name,
    unfamiliar and yet not quite.
  Inspired, she followed a dream that came
    from somewhere deep in her quiet heart,
a link that led to an unexpected hope,
      born of intuitive sense
      cradled in bamboo song,
confirmed by a kindred voice that helped console
      the reign of a keen unrest
      that troubled her, unconfessed.
   Canticles from another time
         settled near
      in the curve of her ear,
   bringing a dark horizon light,
         raising the sun
      where a half-moon hung,
until her soul, embraced by vibrant hues
of promise, once again became her cherished home.
 

      II

  He felt the touch of a silken tongue
    brush his mind from across the world
  with observations and thoughts, half sung
    in accents cast from a dreamtime mold.
Intrigued, he listened to every tuneful word
      whispered with delicate breath
      soft as a moonstone breeze,
expressed from a place of enigmatic birth,
      where steady Pacific rains
      sang life in refined refrains
   straight to his heart through lays unknown
         to his ear,
      just abolishing fear,
   welcoming home forgotten hopes
         faded within,
      but arisen again
like morning rays on cloudscapes scattered far,
igniting new horizons to vibrant shades of faith.
 

      III

   Their pasts unravel thread
         into a bright new tapestry.
   They’re both reborn and dead
         to what was once and what will be.
      Visions leap before their view,
            revealing possibilities,
      and each is clear on what to do
            to make them actualities.
                     And so begins
                  the recreation of their lives
               as deep within
            a transformation of their minds
         reveals the way
      to stand forever side by side.
        The best thread of their days is used
             in the shuttle of their unity
        to weave a scene they know by trust
             on a loom of shared serenity.

Joy is my fiance, whom I met online purely by chance. She, from her life in the Philippines, one day stumbled across a poem I had posted elsewhere, “Perfect Silence”, and found herself researching its author. On one profile she found my Yahoo Instant Messenger ID, and on another she read that I work with children but don’t want to have any. Then she popped me a message out of the blue, “How could you work with children and yet not want to have any of your own?”

Needless to say, I was puzzled by this note from a complete stranger. I responded with one word, “Overpopulation”. This sparked a conversation—or perhaps debate—that lasted four hours. The next day we talked on the phone. The day after that, Skype. And we’ve been talking-talking ever since.

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ice

I have a commitment to myself to write about writer’s block itself if ever I feel it coming on. This way I’ll still have something to write about.

ice

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.
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Solitude

During my week in the Yolla Bolly Wilderness last month I encountered a stillness of mind and peace of spirit unlike I’ve ever experienced before. I’ve only twice before gone more than three days without coming across another human being, both of which were on the Yukon River. And I found these two experiences extremely disconcerting. Clearly I wasn’t ready to make peace with Solitude.

To make peace with her I’ve had to—not reconcile myself to a life without intimate companionship—but accept that it’s a very real possibility. Accept that maybe it’s not the most important thing in my life, not so essential to my health and wellbeing. And when I met Solitude a third time in the wilderness, this time backpacking, I found her not so repulsive, not so unfriendly. In fact, I found her energy quite feminine in nature, and comforting, accepting.

Solitude

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

This poem has taken me a month to write because I felt it so important to take my “self” completely out of the poem, and to make only pronominal references to Solitude herself. This stretched me to find other ways of wording a journey and expressing the development of a closeness between the spirits of two beings, one an embodied entity, the other an immaterial principle.

Poems like this represent what I strive toward as an animist poet.

Publication History:

Clamor — Fall 2009

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contrition

There are many reasons behind an individual’s behaviors. We are complex creatures, conditioned by complex histories. So complex, in fact, that we rarely understand ourselves what motivates us. But it is worthwhile to try to gain insight into and an understanding of those motivations. These insights and understandings can guide a process of change and personal growth, and an honest contrition for past behaviors that may have caused harm to others, and ourselves.

contrition

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.
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In Yolla Bolly

There is a wilderness area in California near Ukiah, where I live, called Yolla Bolly Wilderness. Most locals have no idea it exists. It’s a pristine wilderness, never logged. And roads have never been cut into the region. The trails are only scarcely maintained due to budget cuts, which actually increases the appeal of the park by large degrees, making it feel the more wild, natural, and untouched.

In Yolla Bolly

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general. However, the above player can still be used to listen to it.

I spent six days backpacking solo there from Sep 7th to the 12th, just three weeks after a lightning storm blew through and set 17 fires ablaze. All but three of these were out when my walk began. Two of the three were as yet uncontained, but the third was expected to be all the way out soon. The uncontained fires burned about 15 miles north by northeast and 10 miles northeast of my trailhead. I had an informative chat with the fire chief in person about the fires before going out, and he assured me that the area of the park I planned to visit would be safe for backpacking. I carried with me a map of the locations of the active and recently active fires, so I was able to avoid them all.

This is the first time I’ve backpacked solo more than three nights, and the second time I’ve backpacked solo at all. To my surprise I didn’t come across a single person during my six day walk. But this was a welcome surprise. A very welcome surprise.

As I walked I sometimes found myself reflecting on my experiences backpacking with others and my observations of those I’ve come across in the backcountry. Everyone I’ve backpacked with or come across has always been filled with a blustering impatience, stressed to be here and there or do this and that during their hikes. Their thoughts were full of highest places, longest treks, conquering some aspect of the wilderness, themselves, or both. Then I thought of the loggers, hunters, rafters, and how it seems that anyone who comes to the wilderness comes not to commune with her, but to conquer some aspect of her nature, to take home a trophy.

It was nice to walk alone, at my own pace and in harmony with my surroundings, rather than hike with others, trekking madly about, on the clock to be here and there, with hardly the time or energy left to notice where I was, where I’d been, what was around me. I found that upon returning from such hikes, I couldn’t remember one vivid detail of my experience, other than being in a rush, straining to my limits, and feeling like I had been roped and dragged by a pickup to a bone-splintering pulp.

This time I got to visit with the wilderness, get to know her a little, enjoy her company. The experience was, and continues to be in vivid memory, refreshing and harmonizing.

I welcome the conquerors to their ways, and to each other. But I have finally discovered mine, and something of myself.

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just a sigh

They are out there, those rare beings. But, for the most part, they are best left where you find them, like a snake in the wild.

just a sigh

if only
            your eyes would swim to me
      rest in the cup of my gaze
even for a moment

i would never
            snatch you from your world but
      merely marvel in the light sensation
of your shimmering presence

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Features

As I go back through my old posts revising some of the poems, a lot of the intros, and adding intros to those posts that don’t have any, I find that I can’t quite remember what inspired some of the older poems. Take this one, for instance. Just whose features does this poem describe?

Yet I seem to see my own face in the mirror as I read. Yes, maybe this is a pen-portrait of myself, of all people.

Features

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.
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Phases

My 2nd terza rima. I got the idea for this poem as I fell asleep in the mountains a little east of Wyoming’s Devil’s Tower. If anyone has ever been a true and constant companion throughout all the phases of my life, she would be the moon.

Ah, yes. The moon. The ever-present moon.

Phases

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.