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Anima

The imagery here is drawn from an undated journal entry, which is itself likely drawn from a dream. In recently reading it over, I thought that it could be turned into a poem, and so I gave it a whirl.

Anima

She emerged slowly, like sun
through mist, and walked toward me.
Her eyes were the color of ice
from deep in an ancient glacier.
Her hair fell in waves around slightly
freckled collarbones like late summer
grasslands rolling in the wind.
                                                  She
raised arms and placed slender
fingers over my shoulders, tilting
bright brows forward as she looked
me in the eyes. Like an aspen leaf
on the gentlest breeze, I trembled,
entranced, overcome. Why would
something so beautiful, so perfect,
emerge from the fog of my life
to find me?
                    There was no time
in the fog, only moments, uncertainty.

In the moment she emerged and lay
cool hands to my skin, insight.

            “Who are you?” I asked. She
only cupped one hand behind my neck,
the other behind my head, and pulled,
gently, until my right cheek took pause
in the curve of her neck.
                                        Here I could feel
her pulse against my jaw, my lips. It felt
like stories, hints of long ago carried on
the bright blood of time to now. It moved
with the cadence of what could be, what
has been.

My blood, so long subdued by the ever
present mist, stirred. She pulled back,
slowly, and with the faintest smile
glowing from her cheeks like the moon,
turned away, taking my right hand.

“Now that you have found me,” she
finally spoke, voice like a still, slow
stream easing over rocks and pebbles,
sliding among grasses and alders, “I will
always be near.”
                             “Always.”

I took my eyes from her flowing figure,
from the curled sunrise of her hair,
and saw, for the first time ever, shapes
take form in the mist.

                         It was beginning to thin.

I’ve had dreams like this throughout my life as far back as I can remember. The mood and feeling of the dreams were always similar, though the face and form of the woman would change. It has occurred to me that she could represent my anima, that feminine aspect of a man’s psyche discussed in Jungian psychology. The title could just as well be “Sophia,” as this is the term used for Jung’s final phase of anima development, and I feel the figure in this dream could represent a degree of integration with Sophia, a process that has been ongoing for many years.

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Aural Borealis

This is my 14th trisect, by far the most challenging of them all for me. First the poem, then some thoughts.

Aural Borealis

Vibration

Her voice began in a furnace where blinding flashes of light
arced through scraps of metal until they swirled in a pool
of fiery molten fluid, drawn through a running cast
to red hot beams that slowly dimmed to a charcoal gray.

Her voice remained congealed within those cold gray billets
until at last they were moved once more into the fire,
reheated to a yellow that rivaled an alpine sunrise
then rolled into burning coils of thick unfinished wire.

Her voice emerged like a mist—heavy, cold and gray—
clanging anemic pangs with every shift and shock,
until it was drawn through the eyes of a series of shrinking dies
and thinned into tensile threads of spidery, silvery hue.

Her voice awakened at last, a vivid reverberation
borne aloft on the wind to dance over rolling hills,
chasséing amid the bunchgrass, jetéing through the sagebrush,
and pirouetting through the air with flying seeds.
 

Resonance

Her frame was born in the grip of weathered, ancestral hands,
leveled against the kill, for when the shaft was flown,
the hunter’s ears were piqued by a sound that yet remained,
inspiring him to hunt for a means to play the same.

Her frame took shape in the calloused hands of inspiration,
coaxed into living form from scraps of wood and skin
by ancient artisans who notched imagination
in ornamental bows that flew but melodies.

Her frame evolved in marble halls that harbored kings,
scales and chords expanding until resistance formed
a pillar to hold against the pull of hallowed strains
and serpentine harmonic curves to relieve the same.

Her frame outgrew the very hands that gave it being,
bursting forth a will that of its own accord
would volley out barrages of elegance and meaning
on airs reechoed over undulating lands.
 

Serenade

Her breath is a wind that brushes gently through the desert,
stirring the stained glass petals of Venus’ looking glass,
exciting wild bergamot atop green towers,
and swaying deep-throated harebells lightly on their stems.

Her hum is a feathery rain that tickles arid sands,
drifting down from downy skies until all ears
relax for a moment from the wary, watchful strain
that haunts and harries every living thing through life.

Her chant is the purl of a spring high up a narrow canyon,
wild mint and licorice gathered round the edge
of small, translucent pools wherein the heavens ripple
impressionist renditions of hawk and thunderhead.

Her call is a shower of light that streams over emptiness,
distant mountaintops and nearby shrubby hills
dissolved into a silhouette that circles round
beneath the shimmering flow of relativity.

The inspiration behind this piece is two wind harps, both conceptualized and created by New Mexico resident Bill Neely. Most people know the wind harp as a wide, narrow box with a few strings upon which one may close a window in order to force air past the strings. These two harps, however, are shaped like the concert harp and larger than life. The first, referred to by its sculptor simply as “the NFO windharp,” stands 20 feet tall and weighs 1600lbs. The second, called “Tempest Song,” was commissioned by the owners of the now defunct Traditions shopping center about smack in the middle of New Mexico and weighs in at 3000lbs at 24 feet in height.

“Tempest Song” was the first of the two wind harps I chanced to visit, in 2002, actually driving out to New Mexico to see and listen to this living, musical instrument after stumbling across some information about it online. The experience was somewhat ruined by noise from the close proximity of Interstate 25. Upon returning home, I sent its creator an email along with a copy of “Aeolian Strains,” a poem inspired by my visit, and I was invited to visit the first of the two wind harps on his private property the next time I made it out that way. I made it a point to take him up on this offer two years later, spending a night under the soundboard of this 20 foot harp—a wonderful and somehow enlightening experience. It has ever since been my intention to try to write a poem worthy of that first harp, remembering that night under the stars listening to her sing.

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Gray Brown Eyes

He has a floor mat with a domed shape tripod frame that sets over it. Toy animals hang from the frame just low enough for him to whack at, grab onto, and of course look at. When it comes time to feed, I’ll often sit down next to the mat, slide him over and rest his head just above my ankle bone, which gives the bottle a nice angle, especially since it’s the type of bottle that doesn’t run freely. He has to really suck out the formula.

Sitting there thus, I’ll hunch over and look at him while he nurses the bottle. Lately he has taken to looking at me, too—right in the eyes. We stare at one another, and wildly intense, indescribable emotions well up.

Gray Brown Eyes

I don’t know what you’re thinking
                                   or if you’re thinking

Your eyes are oceans of ancestry
and each time you look at me
each time you study my face with
those pure wide open wells
I begin to drown in their fathomless
                                   age

Then
      gently slowly
                       you blink
                                   and look away

For a moment the spell is broken
and I gasp for breath in my soul
claw at the rocks and pull myself
ashore
                                   ribs bellowing

Yet your eyes flood back to me
relentless as a tidal bore
and I am swept along and pressed
among debris to wash end over end
through unremembered histories

The momentum slows to a pause
for the space of a kick and a flail
then broken splintered timbers sweep
back once more toward that ancient
                                   abysmal pain

And just as I lose the last of my
strength to tread that awful swell
amid invisible fragments of time that
scrape and cut hands feet and mind
and I let go to slip drift sink beneath
                                   darkness

Once more
          gently slowly
                        you blink
                                   and look away

I don’t know what I’m thinking
                                   or if I’m thinking

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Samsara

Birth. Death. Impermanence. Samsara. Samsara is a concept I was exposed to and learned about during my late teen years. At first, the notion of a never ending cycle of birth and death—coming and going—was somehow a comfort to my thoughts. But as I’ve meditated on the concept over the years, it’s become less and less of a comfort and I begin to grasp the value in learning how to find one’s way out of this never-ending stream of coming and going.

Here I reflect on the coming, the going, and the impermanence of it all. This is my 6th synthetic ode.

Samsara

i

Roiling coiling boiling
             beyond memory dreams
   phase and shift in amniotic mists
         swirl in the silence of pulsation
      swim in the stillness of song and dance

Slowly gently gradually
   sensations coalesce illuminating
shapes only somewhat guessed before
      till time takes hold and presses
long hard strained contractions
         bearing breath into the light
      where lungs expel a fluid reverie
   and struggle with thin arid vapors of life

Now spry pink fingers fan out
            new translucent maple leaves
      that ball and bob and grasp
         at each candescent moment
   each ray of raw potential
               emerging from the void

ii

Ailing paling failing
             beyond hope of recall
   yesteryears evaporate like mists
         drift in and out of apprehension
      drone in the absence of conscious thought

Fiercely surely naturally
   perception dissipates into a darkness
shapes only somewhat recognized
      as time slows down and shuffles
somber strained abstractions
         toward an ever shifting shade
      where lungs expand in fluid misery
   and struggle at each dim sensation of life

Here sun browned fingers curl up
            frail exhausted walnut leaves
      that twist and creak and claw
         at brief pellucid moments
   at dreams of lost potential
               returning to the void

iii

An old oak grows on the side of a hill,
the side that faces the afternoon sun;
on the ground in the grass, her litterfall
has collected around her ancient trunk,
its bottommost layers turned back to soil.

A short distance away the blanched remains
of a sister lies rotting in the grass,
her wood resculpted by late autumn rains
and frosts that covered her corpse with a glass
that deepened the wedges along the grain.

The old oak rises, the last of her kin;
her trunk is split and a third of her limbs
in perpetual winter scrape like bone
the progression of ever changing climes—
the blistering azure, the thunder’s groan.

In the shape of a crescent moon, decay
has collected around her knobby base,
the twigs and branches that once would display
a green that shimmered now turning to waste
where skeletal shadows reach out and pray.

Another third is beginning to wane,
the crown has turned to a light mottled shade
and the leaves have begun to curl and thin
where, before, a reflective glimmer played
like fairy folk dancing within the sun.

She is old; she was old when condors soared
in the skies that revolve above her leaves;
for centuries she has weathered the storms
that lumber in from the watery weaves
which pattern the sandscapes of distant shores.

Her time is near, as it nears for us all;
the vibrancy of her youth has been lost
to the powerful change that claims us all,
yet she faces the end and bears the worst
with a grace that exists within us all.

So here part i explores birth, or coming into being; part ii explores death, or going out of being; and part iii explores impermanence, or the stream of beingness. Most of the parallelisms in parts i and ii exist between the two segments. You may find it an interesting experience to read parts i and ii at the same time, line by line.

Another thing that may catch your attention as you read is that part iii uses an entirely different style than the first two parts. Everything about it is different. Parts i and ii read like free verse while part iii reads more like a piece of classical poetry. This is intentional. This is meant to jar the senses by jabbing a sliver of “impermanence” under the fingernail of thought.

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Malaya

We knew the name within an hour of finding out she was pregnant. We batted around a couple of ideas, and when “Malaya” jumped out we both knew this would be the name. It took neither one of us to convince the other. We just knew. “Malaya” is Tagalog for “Free”.

Some have asked me what it felt like to discover that I would be a father. It’s not an easy thing to put into words. In fact, it’s beyond complex. Poetry may be the only verbal or written medium where it could even be attempted. So, here it is—to the best of my ability. Here is what it felt like.

Malaya

Everywhere they sense it

To the west in the mountains
     the junco hops to the cedar’s highest twig
          and warbles out to the east
     the marmot comes out from beneath his rock
          and twitches his whiskers east
     the big ram balances on a granite crag
          and nods his great curled horns to the east

To the south in the sun-stroked deserts
     the scorpion stops in the underbrush
          and scrabbles to face the north
     the wary diamondback quiets his rattle
          and flickers his tongue to the north
     the gray fox peers from her rocky den
          and turns her head to the north

To the east where grasses sing to passing clouds
     the large elk cranes his rack from the stream
          and fills his eyes with the west
     the black-tailed prairie dogs climb from the earth
          and gaze as one to the west
     the bald eagle breaks from her circled flight
          and rises on winds from the west

To the north on the ageless tundra
     the stern-faced grizzly stops to check the breeze
          and points his nose to the south
     the caribou pause on long expanses of green
          and lift their heads to the south
     the ptarmigan hops to a boulder-top
          and studies the view to the south

Even on the far side of the world
     the lion shakes his mane and sniffs
          quietly at the air
     the elephant matriarch raises her trunk
          fans her ears and scans the horizon
     the old crocodile holds his lunge and allows
          the watering wildebeest to bound away

And for a moment
     for the briefest inkling of time
          the sun the distant stars
               the planets and their moons
                    the far-flung comets and meteors
                         and even the most faded galaxies
     pause completely still

For a new star has flared life in the darkness
     borne on ancient cosmic winds
          from the dust of all that has ever been

                              And his name is Free
                         as white billowed clouds
                    as thistledown on the breeze
               as cottonwood seeds blown through the void
          as starlight flashed through geometries of night

Our son is due to arrive around June 21st.

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Flutter

She placed my hand here and there against her rounding belly, like a stethoscope feeling for sound. Then she exclaimed, “There! There! Do you feel it?” No, not at first. But a few moments later the universe sprang open before my mind and I saw clear to the ends of creation. All at once, everything changed—forever.

Flutter

She took my hand and opened up the palm,
then pressed my fingers flush against creation.
For several moments, all was warm and calm
as summer waters steeped in meditation.
Then all at once a fluttering sensation
lightly tapped and thumped against my skin.
Deep in my chest a sudden palpitation
responded to the motion of my kin
still swimming in the nascent dark within,
still coalescing from the alcheringa
and waiting for existence to begin.
And then it seemed to me what tapped my fingers
was more than life itself—but every hope
that ever strove to ascertain its scope.

This is my first attempt at a Spenserian sonnet. I’ve used strictly rhyme for the end-line scheme, which is ababbcbccdcdee—fairly involved and challenging. On the d lines, “alcheringa” and “fingers” rhyme, technically, since rhyme occurs between accented syllables. However, I did want to use more a conventional rhyme here since this is my first Spenserian sonnet, but there aren’t many words in English that have disyllabic rhyme with “alcheringa”, and this is the word—along with its extended meanings—I really wanted to use here. I plan to write at least ten Spenserian sonnets over time since I find the form to be very interesting, but I imagine that in the end very few of them will rely strictly on rhyme to complete the scheme.

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Darkwater

This is very loosely inspired by Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts. The place created here for reflection and as a metaphor for the “I” behind the “I”, the self beneath the self, the deep, dark, fathomless, impenetrable nature of being, is purely of the imagination. Yet, it is also a place I “know” and have sometimes been able to visit.

Darkwater

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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Spark

This, my 5th synthetic ode, has proven itself a difficult thing to write. I’m not really sure why. I think maybe it has to do with the insights behind the content being somewhat beyond the reach of words—Of language.

Spark

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.

The metaphor I’ve attempted to explore here is the coalescence of being and the spark of beingness.

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Gitche Manitou

Gitche Manitou is an Algonquian (Amerindian language group encompassing many tribes) phrase meaning all of “great spirit”, “great mystery”, and “great entity”. Manitou on its own subtracts “great” from these transliterations. This poem explores these three aspects of Gitche Manitou, and then some—Hence the title.

Gitche Manitou

  Before the first breath stretched my lungs,
  I felt throughout my entity a
  resonance that filled the mind with
  song as soft as morning drizzle.

Light touched my gaze with stained glass colors,
a struggle to understand amorphous
shapes that drifted like clouds and vanished
amid this song that grazed awareness.

Slowly, shapes became still and acquired
purpose and meaning—a name for each;
even the curious shape that stared back from
every silver reflection was named.

Seasons passed; the sidewalk laurels
cast their sundial shadows across long
years, expanding and shrinking with time as
understanding grew with the bones.

One day I began to seek the source of
this subtle song that brushed my skin like
static electric potentials—a nameless
song that moved like a wind from nowhere.

Though I could hear like waters rumpling
in darkness this abstract song, the stream
itself could not be found, nor the place
from whence its waters issued forth.

And thus it went as my long walk began,
I followed this ubiquitous sound without so
much as a clue from whence it came
and found only earth, the sky, and the stars.

For everywhere the song was heard;
where neon, steel and concrete rise up
from desperate shadows it was heard, and
where tempest waves besiege dark cliffs.

Where gray stone monuments stand silent
guard in fields of grass it echoed
like a dirge, and where rotting sideboard
peeled away from homes abandoned.

Where old growth sugar pines sway tall in
coastal alpine vales it shimmered, and
where winds etch patterns in swaying stands of
maize as far as the eye can see.

Where granite peaks protrude through clouds
it whispered ever so softly, and where
the sagebrush dream in the quiet light of
a half moon drifting in opal darkness.

For years I listened, searching on,
this strange and subtle song reechoed
always through my thoughts, yet never
nearing once its secret spring.

And so this dreamlike quest for insight
slowly waned for lack of headway
until more practical concerns
took hold, demanding all attention.

For in a world where everyone’s an
expert and none admit to knowing
nothing on any subject broached,
I learned no clues about this song.

No clues, but yet I hear it still,
all around—in everything from
stones within the riverbed to
red bricks mortared in the wall.

The song lifts up from dragonflies,
June bugs strong upon the air,
houseflies on the windowsill, and
silver moths that circle streetlamps.

It burgeons forth from hardy black oaks,
aspens shimmering through the air,
blue spruce towering near the ridgetop,
and alders lurking by the stream.

It emanates from grand paulownias,
little cloud-like stands of yarrow,
trillium gleaming in the forest,
and roses rioting by the fence.

It even wells from manmade things,
the favorite coffee cup, the car,
the painting in the living room,
the lamp, the nightstand, and the bed.

All things sing their beingness
amid the beingness of all,
yet no thing gives away the place from
whence the songs of all things rise.

The song remains a mystery,
an all pervasive mystery
that resonates a sentience,
a presence, and an intellect.

And as the years advance I learn
to just accept it as it is; for
this song that manifests us all
is that great mystery within.

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I’ll find you

I suddenly realized there was an entry in my large journal that hadn’t yet been transcribed to ASCII. When I read it over, I realized it might be worth turning into an actual poem.

I’ll find you

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.

The “you” in focus here is the creative self.

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Trail of Prayer

In 2009 I visited Bear Butte in South Dakota with my Filipina wife. We weren’t yet married, but we were soon to be. The hike took about three and a half hours, all told. It was the day after Summer Solstice, and something unique was in the air.

There are several stories behind the trip that led us to this special place, and a few specific to our experience at the butte itself. Perhaps they’ll find their way into poem someday. For now, here’s a tribute to the butte, what it means, and what it has meant for years untold.

Trail of Prayer

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.