Macaques

In the steaming springs

The frost monkeys warm themselves.

Light sparkles the snow. 

How I Was Moved to Feed the Birds

The black grackle hopped

Up onto the patio

Its feet puddle-damp.

Untouched

My love will not be touched, like all my loves

I've ever had--my hugs are not allowed,

And holding hands with her, it just enshrouds

Us in a new-moon night. She'd wear her gloves

On both her hands and heart--cold unheard-of

Behavior for a lover?--such dark clouds

Reign over women now and only crowds

Away the chance of true love. Darkness shoves

Its way between lovers, women and men

Driven far from each other, yes, until

All contact's lost among most everyone.

Why must we taste this cold carcinogen

Called fear of being touched?--it makes us ill,

Alone and lonely--without hope or sun. 

Rebirth

The man I was, the child I've become

Are separated by the gulf of Hell--

A sea-voyage past terrible islands,

Into storm-tosses seas of chaos--without

The benefit of the taste of Lethe.

Surrounded by black flames and spirits I

Wrestled with the Devil until I won

The right to sail from the storm and away

From the beautiful islands of joy--bliss

Blew in from the west to carry me, cold, 

Up to the rising sun creating new 

Horizons of rosy-red, orange, and gold 

Spread across the sea--evening's rainbow sea

Shining smooth in front of me in blue miles.

Nothing can be the same for me from now.

I have returned to these stone shores, reborn,

A child once again, I'm living wonder--

A child returned from graves of living men--

A child with eyes that learned to understand

In ways the man I was could never do,

Blinded by my dark, preconcepted world.

Now, I see the world I thought I knew--dark

Is light. I return to these shores, reborn. 

Sorrow's Haunts

The cypress and the willow weep the pond full--

The sorrows of all they have seen slowly drip

Off their long, light, green branches and leaves.

Sadness fills the pond.

Dusk calls the loons to fill the sky with their calls--

Such sad calls from water's mirror surface spread

Through the woods and echo off the mountainsides. 

Sadness haunts the woods.

The evening's mourning doves give way to gray owls,

Whose deep, full, sorrowful songs cause cool shivers

To spread through everything small, creeping, and warm.

Fear fills the dark woods.

As morning breaks, I wander. beside the pond--

My skin is clammy in the dew. The crickets

Chirp their last, and I find that I still miss her.

Fear haunts my sadness.

Upon Your Leaving Me

The house is empty now and full

Of ghosts of all your works, the things you said,

The words which would delight and pull

Me out of all my sadness, gone

So long as you were there. And now you're dead

To me. The crescent moon at dawn,

The vanishing moonlight of night

Which I reflected from the sun to you,

It hovers over the sea, bright

For one last moment, and then fades

And fades into the bright, expanding blue,

The blue beyond the waving glades.

I walk among the grasses now,

Dalmatian by my side, scaring the birds

Before us--they fly up aglow

In the sunlight to carry high

The sorrows flowing out from all my words,

To carry them into the sky.

I stop and wish their lives were mine--

So simple, good and bad, hunger and thirst

So clear, obvious, and fine--

But such a life retards the flow,

We must refine and redefine the worst

And best in tragic high and low. 

How can a poet writing songs

Have base concerns like hunger, thirst for sex--

Should not the faculty which longs

For you be only of the soul,

And separated from my darkest X,

My animal lust, darkest hole

That wanted you now naked, under

My naked body, just two animals?

Why must we fail to be our wonder?

Our Dalmatian runs beside me,

And, neutered, happily is scaring gulls--

He acts we think our our lives should be.

The glades give way to sand and beach--

My boat rocks gently, alone at the dock.

The waves laps on the shore and preach

The love of the embracing arms

The sea can offer me, its loving rock

That makes me feel as one and warms

Me with the sameness of the clock,

Its regular tick-tock, its rhythmic feet

Which whirl me like a dervish flock.

I step onto my boat and wait

For my Dalmatian to join me and greet

Me joyful, ignorant of fate.

The sky is blue, the wind is up--

I set the sail and say into the sun

Which pours its light out of its cup

For me to drink deep into me.

Relaxing, I let my Dalmatian run

Around up on the deck--he's free

And, free, allows me to drop off

Into a revelry, and then, asleep

For I don't know how long- a cough

Awakes me, caused by falling rain--

The skies and seas were rough and gray--a deep

And flickering fear from my pain

Combined with the sporadic gusts,

Which tossed my boat between chaos and calm,

And made me, god, and boat mere dusts.

And then the gusts became a gale

And all the calm dissolved into a psalm

Of chaos that made me turn pale

With fear of the madness around

And deep within me--terror, terror, terror!

The sublime monster was unbound

And made the world around me dark

And everything vanish to nothing--error,

Nothing, and all the nothing's mark.

The darkness cracked into the gray,

And gale returned to gusts, which calmed me down--

The calms as beautiful as day.

My dog lay, cowered from the rain--

I feared the two of us would surely drown--

I held onto my rope and pain

And gradually released the last

As winds died, calmed and clouds drifted away

And clarified me to my past.

The sun has calmed the sea--above

The sea, the calm, the unity, the play

Of chance--even the sand I love

More now than I could understand.

I sailed my boat back to the waiting dock

And followed my dog to the sand.

I took a break and I felt hungry--

A meal was due--so what if man and clock

Said otherwise when there's an angry 

Stomach that's calling for good food

And drink--for nothing is wrong with the pleasures

Of the flesh, neither bad nor good,

Like sex with you-- I see it's true--

I see it now as one of our gold treasures

We shared--it was one of the few

We had together--food and drink,

And sex were all the pleasures that we had

Together--and our only link.

And now I see, I see so clear--

I see the thing which nearly drove me mad

Was this, precisely what's so dear 

To seeing how to be a man,

An animal more than an animal.

And, seeing this, turned and ran

Up to my hilltop house where I

Could now begin my new life, my new call--

Art, to ensure I'll never die.