On the backs of seahorses' eyes
Page 21
we desire the other.
We seek out another,
be it man or woman,
god or goddess,
a creature, a plant, a rock,
a substance,
a form, an idea, an image—
to express, to know, to experience,
love's universal nature,
in this that we are the particular.
6
How strange, all this.
I don't know how much I like not knowing,
not knowing what this is, this that is,
but only how we define this or that.
How strange,
to see people who know
for certain the mind of God—
what God wants of us.
(Perhaps they read His will in a book.)
As everyone with half a brain knows,
we, each and every one of us,
create God in our own image.
And images, we all know,
are false gods, idols.
A cat knows nothing about King Arthur.
7
How do we know?
If we do "know," how do we know
that this knowingness is, indeed,
how things are?
We come into this world "knowing" something,
something that feels true to us no matter what.
For some, it's Oneness.
Others: God's will.
Others: there's just this; nothing else.
Others: life after life.
Others: we're here to learn lessons.
Still others...
On and on we go.
As I see it,
all we have is the Unknown.
Not memories or remembrances;
not past lives, not yesterday.
Moment by moment, we who are alive,
we enter the Unknown.
You say I repeat myself.
Very well, I repeat myself.
(As my friend Walt would say.)
Or perhaps that falling apple
hit me
a bit too hard on the head.
"Just one more thing...." as Columbo would say.
Don't go, please don't go!
they cried in their hearts,
those who adored the wise man,
those who hung onto his every word,
the singer of songs on the world's stage.
They had no idea, no idea at all,
of the singer's true identity;
as they had no idea
of their own true identity.
To future poets,
whoever you may be
You, too, in time
shall fade into history,
into the dim past,
however little,
however great your fame.
You shall be as a speck of light,
elusive as memory,
elusive as the Great Mystery,
humble as dust,
and proud as wind
blowing through the dreams
of those still sleeping,
bringing tears of recognition.
You shall be what I have been to you.
The Truth about the real truth
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
—William Butler Yeats
If you want the truth, I'll tell you the truth:
Listen to the secret sound, the real sound, which is inside you.
—Kabir
We see and read the claim almost everyday,
"The real truth about..."
(You fill in the blank.)
"The American people have spoken."
This speaker does not speak for me,
and am I not an American?
"The whole world is watching."
I'm not watching and am I not part of the world?
"I promise you everything will be OK."
A movie cliché.
"I found love again..."
We do not find love. We find someone,
a creature, a place, an object, an idea,
something to give ourselves to.
For we are love.
How many other Big Lies
do we swallow each day,
nodding our heads,
not thinking?
Religion, looking for truth in a box,
in a book labeled Ancient Scripture.
Politics, looking for truth in money and power.
Poetry, in lines and images.
Science, in reason and technology.
Astrology, in the movement and mathematics
of the planets.
Psychology, in symbols and dreams.
Movies, in fiction and the box office.
History, in the past and relics.
Lovers, in each other and the future.
Sherlock Homes, after eliminating the impossible.
The Nobel Prize, in achievements and greatness.
Judges, in the law and public opinion.
Lawyers, in sympathy and closing arguments.
Skeptics, in just the facts, ma'am.
Doctors, in the body and mind.
Spiritual seekers, in a Master,
within
and without.
Each one, all of us,
guided by faith and imagination.
We live in a make-believe world,
like Gaius Julius Solinus of old,
in his Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium,
we eschew facts for the fabulous,
we twitter the world with fantastic scenarios,
conspiracies, surrealistic dreams,
private nightmares, scientific theories,
flights of imagination,
all the unresolved emotions
within the universe and within each of us.
What is the real truth about anything?
What is the real truth about a stone, a leaf, a door?
How do we know?
Not by what we see and hear.
(Witnesses to a crime,
each may tell a different story.)
Not with the ego.
Not with the thinking brain
that schemes and gathers facts
to support this or that premise.
We know with the Heart—
the center of our being,
the center connected to all centers.
Yet the Truth for you means your truth;
my Truth means my truth.
And, that, dear friends,
is a hard truth to embrace.
Turning 70
for Michael and Shanti
Celebrate, celebrate!
Raise your glasses high,
your wine glasses filled with delicious promises,
elements of the earth and creation—
sun, water, air, and soil.
Drink in the earth, the stars and planets,
drink in the history of this wine,
red, like the blood that stains the earth,
century after century.
Or, if you so choose,
raise white wine to your lips;
wine that contains, don't you know,
the subtle shimmering of angel wings.
Drink pure water if you wish.
Not city water!
Not bottled water!
Drink mythical water springing from the earth:
an ancient fountain for all to drink,
sweet, flowing, connecting each of us.
Whatever your taste, raise your glasses high
and celebrate this day, this time,
as I enter my 70th year of life on this planet.
2
We do not know each other?
Does it matter?
Celebrate your own life.
It's all history, this poem;
no matter the form.
What you read, you see an
d read as history,
time long past,
time never to come back again.
History, as usual, isn't very pretty.
A traveler who litters the road with garbage,
without thinking or caring, but just keeps going.
Or a kid with shiny rubber boots,
a kid who stomps and splashes a mud puddle,
just to see the splash.
So we want a good story.
Every story—your story—
every poem—this poem—
contains someone's history,
as the Odyssey contained Homer's story—
a history that invites you in,
for a moment,
and takes you away, for a moment,
from your own history,
as the story becomes part of your history.
Don't hesitate!
Allow your story to unfold.
Love your life, this life.
Know that death,
as part of your history,
may, at any moment,
without apology or explanation,
bring your story to an end.
In your version, that is.
Others may well keep their story of you going,
changing this, altering that.
Even improving your story perhaps,
with a lie or two.
Wouldn't that be grand?
3
Hopeful, naive, foolish,
time after time
fortunes and misfortunes have marked my life
and the life of my friends.
We expected the world to evolve,
to transform from hatred, stupidity and jealousy,
into tolerance, compassion, forgiveness.
I read in the newspaper today,
oh, boy,
that our galaxy,
seen from the farthest galaxy that appears
in the sky,
hasn't even formed yet.
So someone has to do it,
create the story that will transform our weapons
of mass destruction into towers of peace,
fear into love;
to transform the shadows into caresses.
So let it begin now, this moment, with you.
My companions and I, we're not a movement;
only an energy in movement.
We're not a revolution nor an evolution,
a political party or a social club.
Let me emphasize,
we walk together and we walk alone,
each of us.
Come, come, if you will,
I invite you.
Come, Friend, whoever you are.
Walk beside us,
into forever.
Looking back,
with a bottle of wine
& a grain of salt
Here I sit by the fireplace,
a man 70 years old,
delving into the archives of his mind.
Delving? Is that a contemporary word?
An old-fashioned word, no doubt.
As I am, no doubt.
The young,
do they understand memories
and the quickness of time?
Some do, I'm sure.
For you: this poem.
For those, who, like myself,
nudged by a bottle of wine,
a fireplace,
and a grain of salt,
who look back for a moment,
just a quick moment:
this poem.
Not in anger or regret or reconstruction;
not in sadness or fantasy or myth.
Just looking.
Just for a moment,
like discovering a batch of old love letters,
tied together with a broken string,
in a shoe box you had long ago tucked away
and forgotten.
We humans,
how we hold onto such tokens of love!
To grab the tiger
by the tail
To gather strength from the earth,
to reach upward into the heavens
and touch the sun,
to tuck its light onto the page
and into my heart!
Sometimes, yes, I hold not
starlight in my hands,
but moonlight,
allowing it's golden spell
to color my mind.
Either way,
sunlight or moonlight,
I will hold this light
before you
only for a moment,
only for a moment,
then I'm gone.
After the last line, what?
(4 billion atoms I'm told)
Your bones end up in the earth,
over time, like fossils, until they, too,
turn,
slowly, over time,
(but what do you care?)
into Mother Earth,
once again,
to bring forth new life,
another beginning, another chance.
Or they go up in flames.
Your loved ones, if you have loved ones,
they're left with a handful of ashes—
ashes they put in a precious box,
or perhaps a shoe box,
on the shelf,
like a beloved book they once read
or meant to read.
Age 30.
Enlightenment?
Anything can happen!
As I soon found out,
traveling in a foreign country.
Age 40.
You dance most of the night
to test the proverb.
You wear a new hat.
You wear lots of new hats.
You smile a lot.
Age 50.
You look over your shoulder,
your left shoulder.
Those are not your shadows looking back,
or so you think.
Age 60.
If you make it to age 60.
You look into a mirror.
You don't see anyone you once knew,
no one looking back.
You plant flowers on the earth.
You gaze into the heavens.
This time,
the sky above your head—
How beautiful the ever-changing clouds!
Age 70.
You see friends dying,
all around you, they're dying—
those still above the ground.
Some in pain; some in joy.
Most still asleep.
The years have come and gone.
Am I at peace?
Most of the time, yes.
If you don't ask about the barking dogs downstairs,
barking like politicians,
barking at the slightest hint of a threat.
Or the carpenter ants, invading our home
with its overcast view of city and mountains.
Or the wars, the murders and the stupidity
I read about daily, each day, in the newspaper.
Or the fact that I can't remember your name
or two things in sequence.
Or the bottles of wine,
like myself, shrinking in size.
The bottles of wine, I swear,
they look the same size as they once did,
a long time ago...but we know,
we know they're shrinking.
Be that as it may, whatever they say,
as you can see, here I am,
writing my last poem,
my last line.
Again.
Running streams
After all this time, these years,
70 years and counting:
the experiences, events, memories,
crimes and tragedies,
mistakes, missteps: all this history,
joy and pain, all the drama: all,
all shall settle to the bottom
like r
ich river soil,
to eventually, over time,
grow plants to feed the fish,
dragon flies and other insects;
and above this dark bottom,
we shall run,
we who have found forgiveness,
we shall run,
run like the stream, clear and free,
sparkling in the light,
the mirror of self-reflection
gone, no more:
twisted images, scarecrows
hanging in the wind.
Tonight, alone in the house,
I drink and I ponder this world
Perhaps, tonight, this long winter's night,
my rambling thoughts on the human condition
will sound as common as this red wine I drink.
(Forgive me, Mallarmé, if, in my youthful folly,
I preferred the impure Les Fleurs du Mal
and Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience
to your cerebral and tortuous afternoons!)
I drink and ponder the mainstream corruption
of this passing world:
the fringe nuts; the unthinkers;
the unexamined premises
and our stinking rotten core beliefs;
the despair and angst of our lives;
love and marriage and family:
the full catastrophe.
The bankers, the politicians, the gangsters
in their dull-tinted limousines—
the same limousine that will run you down
when all you want is a fair shake.
The black spot on the rose,
the black spot on the lungs,
the black spot on the soul;
the hope until hope is useless;
the struggle to be real
in a self-delusional world of our own making.
"Where do we come from?
Who are we?
Where are we going?"
But what else is worthy of a man's thoughts?
Ah, wouldn't it be nice, my friend, to drink
exquisite tasting wine?
Wine made by an exquisite wine poet—
those $400 priced wines,
(in today's prices),