I wake at dawn
and find you
stretching
ahead of me,
the honeycombs
of a day
flowing
with golden light,
each cell
a white abyss
pouring out joy
and calling me out,
into you,
calling me
to ready my body
and come out
and till your fields,
join your golden dance
and plant my seeds
inside of you,
in each nook and corner,
each stretch
of a verdant sky,
and become
with you, through you
the gardener of joy,
and call my labor
poetry.
Month: February 2016
Haiku # 345
Her bony fingers
a cup of sorrow…
bare tree in winter skies
Haiku # 344
However I turn
your cheek against mine
brushing at dawn
Haiku # 343
Cœur sur lui-même
replié,
dans le fond
de ton puit
j’écoute
vibrer un silence
plus vieux que la terre.
Free Verse # 349 (poetry from her breasts I imbibed)
Tonight
the winds come,
against my mouth laying
the shiver of your name,
a well of stars
gushing,
its rivers my veins.
~
Poetry
from her breasts
I imbibed
and under my skin
the white rivers
coursed
beyond time and memory.
~
When a little coffee
on the book spills
and amid the pages blooms,
a brown flower
harvesting a moment,
a transient breath
become a memory.
~
By the timeless shore I wait
for the ghost of your ship
on the far horizon,
for the poem
that is my birthright
to come tangled in your hair,
breathing in your skin.
~
All the ripples
in my heart,
when you touch me
I swell
larger than life.
~
Burning past the ache
of a thousand hot knives
dancing in my veins,
your tears, o poetry,
rounding up the wells
deep in my heart.
~
Everywhere I look
humans aching
for a drop of belonging
~
I touched her simply
like the butterfly strokes
the tender flower,
like the silence whispers
dawn…
~
With poetry for eyes
he looked at her,
and like a verse of stars
she unfurled herself
in the waters of his heart.
~
On the table of the night
a candle gently sobs,
with each sigh drawing
your face in tender light.
Letter, February 21, 2016
You are not a person; you are the place I can never leave. Loving you is awakening in myself your eternal presence, and realizing how, from birth to death, I am submerged inside of you. I feel you pulse in me as though you were the root nurturing my soul, wedding me into a poem of belonging celebrating you as the effervescence of all there is. Seeking you is but a pigment of the imagination, an illusion of the soul, for you are here, now, always and forever, this lived moment, this translucent veil through which I see and am seen, this dynamic, invisible medium eternally at work as it shapes and reshapes life in the bosom of existence. Now the wave breaks, and its froth scatters on the shore of silence. Now your breath becomes ink and blood and fire, and my veins the flower blooming on your skin.
Haiku # 342
Winter solstice…
to the light turning again
poem of my heart
Tanka # 68
The starlight
into my soul fell
with a thud,
a stone of light stirring
bygone shadows.
Tanka # 67
Bird in the tree
falling silent
as I come your way,
bird in the tree
love is your name.
Free Verse # 348 (I touched her and my heart beat)
When I feel your hand in mine
I write my best poetry
~
I take my books with me,
at any free moment you’ll find me
sitting in a corner
or in an open field
a book in my lap
unfolding its ink,
its winged poetry.
~
In the heart of the night
I fashioned my heart,
a little corner
in which bosom
a sacred altar
burned,
its drifting incense
filling the whole night
with the hum
of your name.
~
I touched her
and my heart beat
like a song that could carry
the world on its wings
~
He wrote,
and his words
amid his ribs flapped,
bats flitting
from wall to wall.
~
When I open my diary
and read back
I find you there, everywhere,
in every smudge of ink,
in every curving breath,
and when I sift through
the unwritten pages
you are there too, everywhere,
the future ever beckoning
my heart and soul.
Senryu # 129
Moonlight in the pond…
the body of a woman,
a poem drifting white.
Haiku # 341
Dusk over the woods…
amid the rustling leaves
a world of shadows
The Playground of Love
I watched her from afar
like a bird
on the branch of night
envisions the sun
from behind far hills rising,
and envisioning her
he feels her breath
washing over his face,
billowing in his chest
then bubbling from his beak
irrepressible,
a song in the middle of night,
a mystical sun
overcoming the darkness
and declaring night itself
the playground of love.
Free Verse # 347 (in her skin I confide my poetry)
En de moments simples
Quand l’aube est une prière
Sa voix bat ses ailes
Et je deviens un feu
S’élançant vers elle
Comme un vin amoureux
De ses lèvres vermeilles
~
Her freckled skin
a sky full of stars
and I
a white bearded sailor
who spent his whole life
reading their orbits
to walk through the world
~
No one hears me,
and as this poem falls silent
my heart blooms open
into a flower made of ice.
~
These lines
penned with blood
for whom do they flower?
On lonely pathways
the falling dusk
strokes my shattered heart.
~
All alone
in a house of shadows,
yesterday’s lights fading
as the night
with a wounded mouth
sears my body with ache
for her who never comes.
~
In her skin
I confide my poetry,
the murmur
of its white essence
in her veins flowing
a silence deeper
than the sky of dawn.
~
Her breath the seashell
where my poem curls,
when I inhale
I take her in,
when I sigh behold
she is the whole sky.
~
In her heart
I go,
a boat
behind far horizons
sailing,
in her clouded breaths
vanishing,
eclipsed
in her land
of no return.
~
My fingertips stroke
the hem of your light
and my heart falls silent
as my poem fills
with the marrow of your voice
Histoire de Création
Toujours contre mon cœur
La coquille de sa voix
Où se blotti en un nid
La chaleur du monde
A travers ma poitrine
Jaillissant de son centre
Les vagues fondant
Dans mon cœur qui bat
Le poème éternel
Qui va comme un oiseau
De ciel en ciel chantant
La lueur de ses yeux
Et ce parfum intime
Coulant de ses ailes
Arrose l’invisible
Qui articule la terre
In the Company of Death
Why must we isolate the world of the dead?
This awe before the spaces incubating
the bodies of those who travelled upstream
through the dark river — what is it?
Is it from fear of incurring
the violence of death
that our hearts tremble?
That stirring the deathly sleep infects us
with an indelible stain,
a stain waxing to engulf us
and immerse us in the dark realm?
Or is it to preserve those we loved
and who under the dark arch have passed?
The bodies of those we loved,
the playgrounds of our fondest
intimacies and memories
now so fragile that a most supple breeze
scatters their dark fires
and dissolves their limbs
like wisps in the air?
To preserve them, yes,
but also to save ourselves the pain
of watching those we loved
more than life itself dissolve
as the boundless hunger of death
feasts upon their flesh.
Or it is before the unknown that we tremble,
and death being the ultimate, impenetrable mystery?
And yet, ‘die before you die’ the Sufi said.
Lost
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
— David Wagoner, 1976, found in David Whyte, The House of Belonging
Wandering Thought # 28
Poetry is no pastime or leisurely endevour; it is life and death and so is the vessel flooding with their secrets, unfolding their most inward temple. Poetry, we are drawn to it as a moth to a flame, a lover to his beloved, and is hence tyrannical, irrational, and unfree. We pursue it as though we are submitting to a fate most sublime and kingly, one elevating us to our highest height, even in the solitude of our woods and cloisters, even as it burns us slowly and achingly in the abysses of darkness and depression. For poetry — as philosophy, and all spiritual arts — is a lone star, is a solitary act and endeavour, one communing us with existence in its entirety, planting us like a quivering seed in the fountainhead of God, there to vanish and become the house of eternity.
Tanka # 66
February moon
with the milk of her skin
flooding my veins,
her breaths inside my ribs
a bloom of white flowers.
Free Verse # 346 (since the dawn of time)
Her lashes
butterflies’ wings
flapping
as her eyes flutter
over garden poetry
~
Nid ardant
au creux du ciel
où la lune
cache sa gloire
~
Her heart was a wound
and she only breathed
when its lips gushed
a universe of stars
~
The silence of dawn
comes to me
and I wake,
my breath on your lips
a white flower,
a poem pulsing
with the ecstasy
of a heart returning home.
~
Since the dawn of time
I’ve been cricling you,
a poem turning around
your ineffable center,
her wings in your sky etching
a universe of love.
~
I am clay turned poetry
then melted by your touch
into a fragrant whisper
drifting through your sky
~
I am all clay and silence
and a light that has forever wandered
dreaming of your touch
Rooted in Love 