My I

When I says "My body" who is this "My"?

Am I not my body? Is it my "I"?

If it is not my body, can it die?

If it is not my body, how can I

Control my body, make it move and cry?

Could this separation be a true lie?

If I say that I know that I will die,

Do I mean this, my body, or my "My"?

Do thoughts such as these make you rage or cry?

We ask such thoughts, but then only get by

On the simplest thoughts, so why even try

To ask what happens when our deaths draw nigh?

This is what makes us ask the question 'Why?"

And no matter how hard, I cannot shy

From asking what or even who am I?

I am this I who I see--I am I--

I am this body, my body's my "My"--

My eye I see I see now is my I.

When I meditate on it, I see my

I looking down at my I, and my I

Looks at my I looking at me, my I.

And all of it, my "I"s, are my body,

And, as my body, change and let me be--

And, knowing this, now I know that I'm free. 

The Silver Sculpture

My brother and I stood in the white room

Of the museum, each of us staring

At the silver sculpture, mirroring whom-

Ever walked by. A round-bottomed spike sharing

The room with a tall man in uniform,

The security, each uninviting

Until the man told us to push the form--

We did, each making a tinkling delighting

Each of us and the man as the sculpture

Rocked back and forth. This was the thousandth 

Time he had heard the tinkling--the future

Would of course bring more--I doubt the millionth

Could make this man's delight ever depart--

His constant joy was the far better art. 

21st C, Salon

A cafe, black tables, fresh fruit, and wine,

People in black chairs outside conversing,

Surrounded by the thick, sweet scent of pine

That precedes even the flowers of spring.

I miss the salons, the movements, the thought

That comes out of like minds talking as one.

We've missed out on things that we could have taught

Ourselves about culture, what art has done.

The cafe brings us the promise of art

Lifted from the shackles of Heidegger,

Kant, existentialist angst. A new heart

Can now be born, flowering within her.

We sit at the black tables, lean in close,

Art's new medicine is the strongest dose. 

A Night Below

Where were your dark eyes when I searched for them?

I found a place, a deep, water-filled cave

Where I could lose myself for a time, stem

The expanding void--I knew I'd be brave

Among the bats and the mud and the stone.

Instead, I found echoing in the dark

Heartbeats of promise I was now alone--

I saw my life on a desolate arc

That would not vanish when I left the cave--

I'd stayed down so long, I now saw the moon

Lighting the forest that fractured the wave

Of falling rain beating out the same tune

Your eyes made in me when I saw them last--

All my love's beauty belongs to my past. 

The Baobab Tree

In the cavern we carved in the baobab tree

We awoke to the life we had created

In the openness cut out between the thick

Wood walls and branches.

In this space we can find a small place of peace,

A small place where we can separate ourselves

From the wildness we find outside these walls--

Out where leopards lurk.

The unpleasant heat of the sun stays outside,

All of the smells are replaced by just the one,

The cool, soft, heady, pleasant smell of the wood

Penetrates us both.

In here each of us can make a home of each

Other, the dark hollow of the baobab 

Is a place where our closeness can finally

Be felt most fully. 

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.

Pro and Contra Fraser

Timeless light shines through the window, the day

Making electric the atoms likely

To bring every object certain to move

Into the life that feeds and breathes and breeds

With slight intention over organic

Ways of seeing those symbolic goals we

Have made into concrete houses for us

To turn over to history--or, no,

History actually precedes by far

The uniquely human, the social found

In all our ape ancestors, chimpanzee

Culture, ritual, even medicine

Bringing them closer to us socially,

Since social history precedes humans,

Each of us, loosely, was already us,

Social like other social mammals, not,

Thankfully, like the murderous social ants--

We have built a very different house,

One where love lives, a bright electric light.

There is no such thing as collective love,

As we can learn from the collective ants,

There is only found among them murder. 

Daydreaming

The sun fades into the forest top, trapped
Among the leaves that entangle the rays
And keep the sun around just that little
Bit longer when they really shorten days.

My legs strengthen walking through the open
Fields and woods, as I climb the mountain, rocks
Scuffing my skin thicker. My brain is clear
As this air from busyness, stress, and clocks.

The meadow lark is giving way to owls
And whip-poor-wills -- the bullfrogs lose to crickets --
I lose nothing in this transition -- night
Brings the milky way -- no city light thicket

Blocks out the vast majority of stars
Out here so only Orion stands out
As he hunts. No, he is joined by others --
Out here the gods exist -- there is no doubt.

Of course, the land I walk here in this dream
Must be paid for over and over -- tax
Is always due -- I'd have to keep the money
Flowing in -- they'd never let me relax.

I might as well stay here in this office
And continue living in the suburbs
And chase my tail here in my others life
And make sure that my life never disturbs.

Constructal Trees

I love the branching form of dicot trees --
Order, chaos, criticality please
The eye with expectation and a tease
Of difference. The bald cypresses have knees
That clear the water. Mangroves border seas
And branch above and below their trunks. Breeze
Brings movements to branches as their leaves seize
The air. A few have flowers, attract bees
And bats and birds and butterflies. Decrees
Are sung from their branches. We feel disease
If we're too far away from their firm lees
And their shadow darkening a few degrees
From the heat. And what other guarantees
Our air, ensuring that we do not wheeze
Through life? (Unless their pollen makes us sneeze.)
Complex beauty belongs to all of these --
We thus must always be all life's trustees.