Soul Gallery | Dave Nixon

Dave Nixon is a writer and the director of Community House. He teaches classes and conducts seminars on a variety of topics such as simplicity, post-modern thought, spiritual disciplines and esablishing residential communities. He and his wife Jody have been married for 27 years and have three children: Kimberly (20), Carrie (17), and Jonathan (15).

Weekly Funtime: a long run with friends early Sunday morn
Recent Reading: Thoughts in Solitude (Merton);
Current Reading: Open Heart Open Mind; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Some Favorite Poets: Denise Levertov, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Rumi, Billy Collins, Anna Swirzinska
Some Favorite Writers: Wendell Berry, G.K. Chesterton, Annie Dillard
Labor of Love: renovating our former convent; groundskeeping (picking up litter)
New Tricks for an Old Dog: hanging drywall, restoring hardwood floors, installing sinks, basic plumbing

Newest Poetry

A Prayer for Her
A blustery jam-tumble, thriving fire-bustle
zooming frostburstly into her
mop-swollen heart-heavy soul.
To her! To not a thread-single other!
And oh how my-godly she
torrent-throttlingly comes skip-suddenly
back to thrown-open life
with a thim-jamble of full-flight fancies
in a throng-warble of song.

On Playing Poker Poorly
Out of the heart, out always
wanting to be known,
finding language.
No lip too tight, movement so veiled.
The slow arching of an eyebrow,
pace of breathing in a storm,
response to spring’s thickness —
all speak you, all say your first name
with unmistakable clarity.

On Reading the Reviews Exclusively
"You who live in the secret place of Elyon,
spend your nights in the shelter of Shaddai,
saying to Yahweh, 'My refuge,
my God in whom i trust.' "

* * * * * * * * * *

We believed her. For two months
or more it was all true.
This quiet six-year old
spoke of her friend, the one
she sat next to,
rode to school with
on the long yellow bus
that took her from under our noses.
“Tell us about her,” we asked,
and in the telling we discovered
not a single word had been shared
between them.
Thirteen years later i don’t remember
if she even knew her name.

On the Joy of Having No Enemies
"You rescue me from the snare
of the fowler set on destruction . . . ."

* * * * * * * * * *

Who has wanted me to die, ever longed
to bring my life down? I can lay
my finger on no one.
But there was a time
i thought about driving off a bridge.
Unemployed, no money, in debt, a third child,
a dream or two in the gutter where they belonged.
That was dark.

On the Increasing Diminution of Our Lives
“It is estimated that Americans now spend, on average,
fourteen years of their lives watching TV.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Fourteen divided by seventy-four — a life span.
Multiply the quotient by one hundred.
Nineteen percent.
About one-fifth of your life (if you’re average, of course).

Sever one complete leg from your body.
Take it from the hip down. That’s close to a fifth.
Now run fast.

Take your house and board up a room,
without first removing anything from it.
How cramped does it feel?

Are there five in your family. Shoot one. Any one.
How long will you grieve?

Drop your salary from forty to thirty-two thousand.
Burn eight thousand one-dollar bills, one at a time.
Cover yourself with their ashes.

What is twenty percent of our vision? When gone,
are we legally blind?

Lose ten points from your IQ. Slam your head
against a brick wall, repeatedly.
Can you still read this?

And if this is all too daunting, go down easy:
watch others live their lives,
disregard your own, the real one,
the one slipping away.

On Becoming a Film Star
A dog was the star, centerpiece
of a movie it knew nothing about.
No posing for cameras, no thinking
about the merits of its performance,
photogenicity, whether this film
would bring more petting,
a roomier doghouse, raw steak,
many bitches.
I think about this dog — simply
responding to cues, unable
to see itself as an object
of attention, ignorant of the fictitious world
created around it, enjoyed by people
eating popcorn, drinking cokes.

Am i equally ignorant?
What do they eat and drink who watch me?
Am i ruining some film?

On the Need for Clarity (1)
What’s in the water
in the pot
on the stove?

I don’t know.
It’s dissolved.

Boil it away.
See.

I can’t get the damn burner lit.

On the Need for Clarity (2)
What do you want?

You’d think by this point i could say.

Are you saying you don’t know?

I know.

What then?
To sing, but —

Stop. Subtract one word. It’s just confusing the matter.

But i am confused! How do i do that and still —

Look, everything that comes after that
should bother you the most.

On the Need for Clarity (3)
He has a hand on this altar,
a foot on that,
his torso straddles a third.
An awkward position
and one in which
he is never fully burned.

On Being Good for Nothing
Are we good for anything or anyone anymore at all
once our lips have pressed against
what our eyes first devoured,
our tongues have savored
what those lips drew in
and we have swallowed the ecstasy
in our mouths, the bliss
inspiring perpetual longing?

Everything. Everyone. Still. Completely.

On the Good Sense of Canines
Coriander runs away
without a leash,
sniffing around for garbage
and a little excitement.
Tracy gets concerned,
keeps vigil for this dog
who always comes home
for the good stuff,
head down, tail tucked
between her black hind legs.

On the Joy of Waking
Overnight while i slept,
dreaming about unmade beds,
tangled piles of personal belongings,
confusing and chaotic rides in broken down cars,
a thin blanket of snow fell.
In ten minutes —
barring my death,
the immediate onset of illness,
or some unanticipated accident,
i will take my life
and run it through
the white cold snow
far from here
with only my breath
and two familiar faces
as company.

Fishtalk: Caveat Emptor
I spoke to a fish last night.
It swam at the surface of the water
while i floated alongside in a raft.
It was an adequate conversation,
fairly natural, devoid of awkwardness.
"When i lived in D.C. near the Potomac,
some of my best friends were pikes," i said,
hoping to build rapport.
Suspended in the water its gills flapped back and forth,
its two eyes lolled in a bright, narrow head
(never looking at just me),
mouth opened and closed methodically.
Then it nodded its neckless head
and swam off, upstream.
Fish are hard to read,
even in my dreams.

From a man! All this comes from a man
who in the light of day
would speak of God,
but at night
tries much too hard to impress fish.

Plumb
You have dropped plumb
into my center compressing
the core displacing
the pith and the rim
of my life shoots upward
and out, the diameter
widening with every pulse
as you drop again
and again into this eternal second.

Glossolalia
Amazing that it starts blank,
dumbfounding that onto this sheet
comes a concatenation of strokes,
a geometry of ink imbedded into pulp,
drawing out life
to some terminus
whose name i would strangle on
if now i tried to pronounce it,
but whose inflections i begin
to notice in life's grammar.
What am i speaking?
To whom? On whose face do i look?

* * * * * * * * * *

I have no memory of my first cooings,
the rapt attention,
yet i know they delighted my mother and father.

Triptych (part one)
A brass hexagonal base, one-half inch thick
mottled with white and teal candlewax
at points blended,
out of which — inset by another one-half inch —
rises a circle the height of a fingernail,
from which a stem tapers up and inward,
rising the length of my hand,
proceeding through a series of undulations
all gentle, all graceful bends,
each transition marked by a line
separating old form from new outcropping,
of which the final is fluted and hollow,
holding a half-burned candle, its wick lit,
casting light in all directions,
throwing its sheen back upon the underpinning.
All this was waiting to be noticed,
to command the attention of someone who
for a few minutes would not be thinking of himself.

Triptych (part two)
Both candlestick and candle,
the flame that bathes them in light:
they mean something,
are part of life, there
to be related to life itself,
to you from whom come holder, candle, and flame,
from whom comes the recognition of this triptych,
comes the pondering of the thread
between it and me — the space between us,
space which, apart from you,
is void and dark and anile,
but in you is rank Spirit.

Triptych (part three)
Did I mention the tall white coffee cup?
The wide yellow band circling the top,
the narrower one rimming it two-thirds of the way down,
the slimmest one at the bottom?
The eight vertical stripes, all of different width,
joining together the two lower bands?
How everything yellow is flecked with red?
How about the azure ribbons overlaying
the top two yellow bands?
Or the mural occupying the space between them,
filled wth two crudely drawn, thickly outlined
orange flower petals and a few green leaves,
the colors sometimes spilling outside the lines?
And what of the coffee stain,
the ring on the inside of the cup
partly lit by the candle, partly in shadow,
partly, like life itself, obscured?

I've told you most all of it,
even of the last gulp of coffee
waiting at the bottom of this tapered cup
with its sizeable handle in the shape of an ear,
an ear that i will grab at the end of this line
to bring the cup to my lips.

On Differentiating Affective States from the Source of Affection
You are not the burn on my skin,
not the sweat beading on my cheek.
Not the wind folding around me now like water,
the vigor infused in restful night,
comfort derived from friends.
But turn and i die
bereft of what passes for you
but is not you
who never turn, cannot,
only i — and for what good reason?

bien plus
Ah Seigneur, que tu sois solidement
établi chez toi, dans cet âme affaibli,
cet âme où le bruit interminable
souffle sans cesse, me rend sourd,
incapable d'entendre le seul bruit
valable, le son bien plus doux,
bien plus fort.

Self-Deceit
"He shouldn't go first! He needs to wait in line
and get a number like everybody else!"

"Seniors go first. That's the rule. That's the way we do it."

"I got a number and I've been waitin' in line!
He don't have a number!"

"He's a senior and he's gonna go first!"

"That ain't fair!"

"Well, you've been gettin' food for your brother —
and he's been dead for two whole years!"

That's what she told me,
several times
and wouldn't let drop,
indignant that this man had been receiving
one extra bag of free groceries per week
for a brother long dead,
deceiving us all.

"Relax. At the end of the day it will all be settled.
Nothing escapes God's eye."

"I know! Uh huh! And someday I'm gonna stand
in front of Him and and let Him know just
what this man did!"

Older Poetry 

Kenosis
All, he had all
more than anyone else
before
since
not claimed
not insisted
perfect in possession
native
released
exchanged for nothing
nothing but
a bending
a bowing
the wiping of feet
he himself
had formed.

d.v.
It's cold with a thin veneer of frost.
Cars, occupied by single passengers
cough up smoke as they press on
to God knows where.
Already I hear a siren.
The sky is still
drained of color
a wan canvas from which stars have faded.
A yellow dark-windowed school bus rumbles past
without any deposits or withdrawals.

Where are my neighbors? Who are my neighbors?
Sixteen houses across from me, growing smaller
as they run away toward a vanishing point.
Sixteen mysterious boxes.
Maybe sixteen lawnmowers.
Certainly sixteen TVs. Oh at least sixteen. Minimum.
About thirty cars.

Stop it. Don't object. This isn't the time.
Be at peace, i tell myself.
Drink you coffee, watch those two squirrels mate.
Play your warm breath against the cold.

But it's morning, and there are twelve hours,
deo volente, maybe more
in which i can make my point,
advance an argument,
explain what's wrong and
why these mysteries, redundancies, silences
should concern us all.
Tonight i'll be at peace,
will not let the sun go down on my anger,
will not let the sun go down,
the sun which now rises,
rises slow, promising
warmth to my hands.

Socratic Method
When Dawn's fingertips of rose stretched out,
like so many times before, in pale blue hellenistic sky,
your ever bare feet began to slow, finally fixing on a hillside,
your fertile mind spying an elusive thought,
approaching it gingerly, certain that movement would spoil capture.

No big deal. After all, people do lose themselves in thought.
But hours later, the hot sun drilling your skull from summer sky,
others beginning to notice
you were frozen still
sequestered in a secret, slowly reeling in some wild dialectic,
taking this promising trail, that, hunting for one path

whose end was beauty,
Oblivious to the growing crowd of spectators, Ionian,
who hours later in the cool summer night,
pitched beds within sight of blind you,
watched your moonlit figure motionless
through the bleary-eyed night.

This ought to be good! How long would Socrates go?
What about food, drink, stiff joints? A mosquito bite?
No, not these, nor night's arrival, nor summons to sleep,
not even the flabbergasted attention of your ringside audience
diluted your concentrated thought.
Jesus, Socrates, not even a bathroom break!

Twenty-four hours later, one full turn of our world,
when others had been distracted a hundred times a hundred times,
you moved again, re-entered quotidian life
having traveled to places where we long to be,
having circled ideas from directions out of our reach,
having sorted out neatly a welter of thoughts, nothing untied,
flowing always in a lovely steady stream of deep word with whom?

Me, in two short hours, I've moved from the cafeteria
because someone turned on Jerry Springer;
have moved from the library because of overbearing whispers,
have moved to a quiet sunlit lobby outside the auditorium
whose silence is broken only by the occasiona passing of others
whose light football I can't help but notice.

I meander through a grocery store and think of you,
know that here I haven't a prayer.
But you, I think you could retreat even here
with the register beeping, music playing,
endless advertisements attacking with exclamation points like swords

Is that you, Socrates, standing by the navel oranges in the fresh produce aisle,
gazing into them as seer into crystal ball, unmoving,
irritating and perplexing those who are forced to go around you?
I watch as a hesitant and confused young clerk taps you on the shoulder:
Excuse me, sir, but you'll have to ponder life's realities elsewhere.
You're blocking the orange aisle.

But you don't budge. And now come the security officers,
speaking more sternly, but still in vain.
With a quizzical shrug they lift you by your elbows, carry you past shoppers,
outside to a waiting police car. Off you go, Socrates, to jail.
How surprised you'll be in the morning when you awake in your cell,
an incomplete bag of groceries at your feet,
a guard eying you suspiciously from outside inflexible iron bars.
I would turn criminal to be there and have your ear,
to hear who speaks to you.

But you're fading even now, Socrates,
maybe rtreating to your clubhous of one
which I'd love to spoil.
For years I've wanted to be as deaf as you,
to hear more than blather.

I once tried earplugs, rolled them tightly,
stuffed them deeply in my ears, let them expand
while the world contracted into a small ball of silence,
but still too large, too noisy, not nearly far enough away to be ignored.
Is deafness really so bad?

Of course, it's not the birds or the wind through the trees,
is never the rain on the roof or the child laughing hysterically.
It's the other stuff: the car stereos, the billboards,
the damned phone, the junk mail, the planes roaring overhead,
a television in the background.
Once I thought an attenuation would suffice;
these days I think of eradication.

I should know better than to fall for the anecdotes of drunken Alcibiades
who professed to love you, but on this point I need to trust,
and do, for which I love you more.

Be Honest Now
And what do you
think of at night
when the ledger is full
when your head is still
when your eyes are empty
when sleep seeps
into your pourous self?
I think of him,
almost always him.
A question posed.
A guest who never goes.

Little in Common
Two birds, robins, on patchy damp grass
outside my window.
This spot more than any other
for reasons that will never be fully understood
especially by them
is simply where there are
dancing stacatto-like on spindle-legs
freezing, tilting pea-brained heads
stabbing earth with pointed beaks
sometimes catching a writhing slimy prize
sometimes not, mostly not.
Too close to each other they fight
in a blur of feathers and squawks and rolling.
It's difficult to say who won, but they move
away from each other, predictably
to different parts of the grass
that were always available to them
though they did not know this
(at least before the fighting)
in their little brains.

They did not sin, of course.
We could not call it that
for they are too stupid to sin.
But raise their IQ by 100 points,
let them both experience themselves
passing through time
so quickly,
anticipating the approach of not one winter
but winters beyond winters,
contemplating the offspring of worms they now eat,
imagining the day they will fall from a treelimb
for the first and last time.
Then perhaps we could call it that,
call it what we cannot now
in these estranged birds.

Beyond Anticipation
What is your sound by itself?
What an unseen moving in silence?
I have no words for this, no memory.
But i hear you now, even if obliquely,
through the larynx of this dark land,
hear you expressed as you bend over tree-studded hills,
glide over a smooth black pond,
sweep through fields of broomsage,
across my face this night.
You have wrapped us all, pressed yourself on us
to learn our size and shape and limits
in order to sing yourself in us and through us;
or for us to sing you — which one i could never say.

And what a blend of voices tonight.
I hear you in your fullness — not all there is, certainly,
but all there is to me. Waves.
You are waves breaking over a slumbering earth,
a rising and falling of godbreath,
a polyphonic exhalation beyond
all anticipation and prediction and accounting,
a seamless immeasurable embrace
reconfigured instantly — as when
i stick out my tongue, open wide my mounth
and breathe you in.

Requiescat in Pace
Who in the world were you,
whose only discernable trace to me
is now a bright white cross i ran by on a curve, slowly
noticing the litter tossed at its foot?
Bottles & cans, plastics & paper
dismissive sacreligious offerings ring you
on this winter day, warm, so warm,
which has caught us all by surprise,
arriving perhaps in the manner you left.

You are visible to me, slow; unnoticed to others
as they shoot through the curve
unaware of their closeness to you,
a terrifying proximity that would collapse on itself
like an exhausted star
given a single moment of inattention,
one blown tire, a misplaced drunk
or any lapse in judgment.
But they pass through safely
leaving your gaudy pink garland,
someone's attention, to sway
briefly, appealingly toward them in the draft of their aftertow.
Are you the only person in all creation
to have died on this Kentucky curve
just beyond view of an immaculate monastery
where the dead are never forgotten
where "requiescat in pace" falls easily off lips
where the 17th Instrument of Good Works
is to bury the dead, the 47th
to keep death daily before ones eyes,
where Benedict, long dead, still speaks
where brothers sleep Th Sleep,
observe The Grand Silence among clustered crosses
white like yours; unlike, noticed, always noticed?

* * * * * * * * * *

"You're too morbid! Why all this talk of death?"

"But isn't this a cause for reflection,
that we're born, live and die? Isn't it amazing
all this coming and going? this connection to,
alienation from the earth on which we move? this
vast, inconceivably vast congregation of thinking,
feeling, doing? What the meaning? Where the going,
if going at all? Chance? A brutish factum from which
no meaning can be, should be extracted? Or,
more horrifying yet, the pulse of a divine artery,
the respiration of one greater whose breath,
like air itself, has surrounded me on all sides?
If so, i need a white flag, not fighting, not ignorance.
That cross on the littered curve…don't you see it?!
It's one, only one, but it contains us all,
a cosmic bait that, bitten, scars forever."

Look into my mouth; it's lined with hooks
i've never been able to dislodge. Somedays
they hurt, painfully hurt and bleed. But the blood
tastes of deep knowledge and essence,
of enfolding upon enfolding, a fifth taste, wholly other,
so strong and constant
that now it's hard to run around a desolate curve
in the middle of winter
far from home
without falling into your arms.

On the Joy of Being Flayed
We dust weekly to keep things clean
but have neglected the blinds, horribly,
which grow thick, accumulate a carpet of particulates
on the side that bends toward us, the living,
Their concave, pressed against cold hard glass,
refected back into itself,
looks new, retains its color.

An inch of dust will settle on us
every hundred years. If true,
i must be 6,600 years old by now.
In 200 or 300 years i will suffocate, surely.
Blinds are easier to clean that this skin
whose pores, it feels, became clogged,
quit breathing years ago.
Make that millenia.

I've heard that being flayed
is the most painful torture of all.
It strikes me otherwise, a lavish gift even.
As you peeled away my body's blanket
i would startle at the sharp fresh air
licking my infant, latent skin,
would instantly awake
from the torpor of my dreams, fully sensate,
sensate at last, excruciatingly alive
to dawn, not dusk,
would laugh in joyful relief on seeing
the coat of fresh blood glistening,
enveloping me, staining with holiness
whatever i touched, touching
most everything, even the familiar
for the first time.

Everything Asked
That it would be credit to you,
make sense to me
even a modicum
though not necessarily
only hopefully
so i could, with you,
be pleased
not confused
about my life,
about which
i pray.

A Room With a View
But not any view.
First remove the screen and place it out of sight.
Why would anyone care to see the beyond
through 450,000 additional frames of black wire
making things smaller, always smaller?
Isn't the world obscure enough?
Next remove the window pane entirely.
Cranking it out and away
so that the view is three-quarters clear,
one-fourth obstructed, misses the point
entirely, and i'm finding it daily harder
to live with a fragmented perspective,
with a metal-framed, double-paned,
argon-filled rectangle violating this eye,
even a fraction of it.
Then widen the the screenless, glassless, paneless window
by six feet on either side, curving it gently inward
tucking it just behind my peripheral vision.
Raise the window as well.
Draw it back behind my head
so my wide eyes can look up into eternal sky.
Lower it, too, but stop at my toes;
i need a place to stand.

I'm breathing better, but let's proceed.
That 2-lane paved road upon which cars & trucks
fly by 200 yards away — let it go.
Aren't all cars foreign here?
They sound like the scouring of many cast iron pans;
let them be cleaned away for all i care.
And now the difficult part.
Take down this one giant tree 30 yards in front of me.
I can endure it for the time being
even though its leafless limbs are like cobwebs to my eyes,
yet when it parades its vigor in four short months,
i will obssess over the immensity behind it.

But this is no time for dissumulation.
After the coffee tree would come the lovely old sycamore
with her white sleeves; then the stand of slender pines,
blocking an unnecessary house
at the bottom of a superfluous hill
from which juts a grotesque green silo.
I would soon peel them all away,
one by beautiful one,
would topple infinite trees,
would scoop away hill and mountains,
siphon away the seas,
throwing it all behind me
always behind me
believing i would in time arrive at you,
pure, unfiltered, cold, dominant you,
the rest dispersed by the severity of your presence.

De Profundis
It will take a miracle to save me.
Lord, save me.

* * * * * * * * * *

It's as though another drop of liquid leaves
with each noise, each unmeditated act.
A dessication of soul.
The edges dry out, break off.
I am become plaster once wet then dry
now falling,
become paint no longer adhering
pulling apart from itself,
now flaking,
unfit for anything except a flinging away,
landing on vacant ground, being ground
or transported by the underside of shoes.
Light, give me light.

* * * * * * * * * *

I have not lost myself for you
or in you. Have not.
I have not — not anything of substance.
Someone, anyone breathes on me
barely, and my meager portion
flies from my fingers
exposed in its lightness.
All left is nothing,
a vacuous self
trembling on your threshing floor
afraid, far from verdant meadows,
far from placid waters, tired ….
Two graces only: that i am empty;
that i know i am empty.

Are there consents broad enough to encompass
our futures, our failings? Such that in a moment
of present clarity we may commit ourselves
to your divine asylum, irrevocably,
foreswearing all escape
toward vacillation, inconstancy,
all their attendant darkness?
Where we bind ourselves to be short-leashed,
led away from our own unkindness?
For you, blind to time's dissection,
would this be so hard?

I read you did this once with an ass on an ass,
made him bless when he would curse.
Precedent. Precedent for a suppliant.

Platanus occidentalis
Of all contained in this garden i'm drawn to you.
Unreasonably, perhaps, for what flows in you
flows in them, whom others might favor.
But this blatant presentation of whiteness,
of smooth skin on arms raised, i imagine, in exstasy
pulls me close, adoring you for an unholy reason:
contrast alone. But this difference,
extreme, which you could not help, did not assent to —
for it simply was and is — insists on notice.
You have mine.

Set apart, you are holiness exploded from earth,
white water coursed up, carved into sky,
alabaster erupted
vertical fountains of wood flung free almost
of the last scraps of mottled brown dress
round your waist

Prima Luce Assisi
When you shed your clothes in the crowd,
heard that startled, collective intake of air
felt eyes finger every inch of your body,
when you renounced the father who sired you,
left the mothe who bore you,
dismayed the rich-robed priest who blessed you,
when your bare toes dug into the dirt,
the leg muscles contracted and quivered,
the torso twisted,
the arms swung round,
that beautiful head swiveled on its firm neck,
and your body in full concert moved away,
away from the astonished crowd
into God knew what,
what were you thinking?

Simeon's Hope
Is it possible that on an obscure corner of a forgotten neighborhood, on a littered street lined with ugly housing blanketed by intrusive wires hanging in a polluted sky breathed by despairing throats — is it just possible that right now between lung breath and heart beat a mystery so glorious and bright is unfolding that it escapes our tired, analytic eyes, something so scintillating and substantial that when it breaks upon our dullness we will stumble in embarrassment as our assumptions peal away, leaving us naked?

Come, o come.

Daily I look, feet pinned to this land, peripheral vision cut off. I watch Bill the drunk, shuffling unsteadily down the sidewalk. Is it him? Toothless Jackie in a binge of rage. Her? That small filthy child bereft of playmate or oversight? What am I missing? What seeing but not seeing?

I don’t know.
It’s that simple.
But I cannot rid myself of the thought
that if I miss it here,
I will see it nowhere else.

Kyrie Eleison
Beggars by the roadside, all
breathless, listening
for the murmur, the swell of voices,
a sign of change,
arrival of hope,
but still for less, so much less
than is there.

But he did not gawk,
could not,
was foolish
enough to shout,
hopeful of being heard
if loud enough,
long enough,
ignoring voices
urging silence,
ending his day glutted with joy.

House Cleaning
I wait to hear the sound of dead wood
slamming against ground,
the jangle of spilling coins,
the grating blend of bird-squawk and beast bleat;
wait to hear the crack of whip
held by a fierce, outraged hand,
the fear-tinged cursing and
over-shoulder cries, indignant,
of the tail-turned.

Truer still, I wait for dust and dander
to resettle on sacred ground,
for air to grow lucid again,
for the moment when --
can you hear it? --
when the only sound left is
the unrestrained chant of foreign prayers
rising from undefiled earth.

Blooding the Stone
He tried to dig through a mountain
with his bare fingers.
He clawed and tore and strained,
blooding the stone,
sweating the rock,
misting the atmosphere in a holy communion
with something beyond himself,
translating his life into bits of moved earth.

Same Inside
I am in the middle of caffeine deprivation and my head is hurting and my body is tired and I am sluggish and I have done this so many times before that it is a wonder I ever start and a wonder I ever stop and a wonder I could ever look disapprovingly at Bill who just down the street sits on his patio and drinks his life away, because whatever placed him on his bed is exactly what has placed me on mine — only his has sharper nails.

Tongue-Tied
God, we dive do we not?
Do we not plunge into this pool
ready or not here we come?
And does the wind not tear and chill
with a fiery touch to our fragile skin,
sending our breath out in sharp spurts,
back in with ferocious gulps
as we go down down down
and then thrust our faces
through a sheer curtain
for a brief look
at what we can never retell
without sputtering
when we return to the bright surface?

Arboreal Psalm
Surprised by a hungrier breeze,
a more brazen touch,
I shed my clothes reluctantly,
slow and relentless.
The soil below,
newly cloaked on its broad back
blesses the nakedness it cannot see,
breaks the bread that once fed me.
Helios, marking my malaise,
this awkward stance,
tenderly drapes my skin round
with mute light and slant ray.
Quickened by his touch,
strangely roused by his kind eyes,
I bless the nakedness he can see,
break the bread that he feeds me.

Intrusion
She breezed by and from a slight distance where he was unobserved by others his eyes pivoted in their sockets by degrees which matched her pace and form and his thoughts turned by degrees until suddenly he remembered someone dear to him and stopped abruptly because he felt she deserved better.

Math 7: An Incremental Development
"The ratio of winners to losers was 5 to 4.
If there were 1200 winners, how many losers were there?"

He sits across the table from me, slurps
hot chocolate, clutches a pen awkwardly, fidgets
while his eyes stare off. He is thinking.

I know what he’s thinking,
can tell you the pathway of his logic
(even the smallest steps) :
1200 divided by 5 takes him to 240.
240 times 4 brings him to 960.
All this without lifting a pen. Mental math.
There are 960 losers he tells me.

I sip my coffee, smile, say correct,
am silent again — but with misgivings.
I want to tell my son he’s wrong,
the math is not so simple,
that in fact this is
a calculation of immense complexity
carrying no solution whatsoever,
that those who dared ask it are ignorant,
that he should never again attempt to solve it.

This is what I want to say to the boy
who sits across from me wearing a Pokémon hat,
showing absolutely no sign of wear on his face,
no stain on his big front teeth.

But he is already figuring out the cost of 2.6 pounds of butter at $1.75 per pound,
which seems to me like a more appropriate task.

Spirit Appeased
(Denise Levertov in memoriam)
Thank you.
They say you’re dead,
but that's nonsense,
so yes, thank you.

Besides, it was midmorning. A quiet room.
A chair by the window. Pale winter
light on two white pages. A slender book.

Lips widened, curled at the corners
-- up -- , eyes crinkled, blurred, head nodded,
being assented, lungs drew in more--
water, i was breathing water.

Your percussive touch pulsed my mind’s canal,
your breath whispered my ear, caressed my cheek,
your smoldering scrawl pierced this head, and
your fragrance lightly fingered these very nostrils.

I landed in a thicket of words
plush as moss, chocolate dark, dense.
Your tracks led me north
to that small forest hut where I opened the door to find

you! there! seated
at table, poised over parchment. Hair dripping
water, chest heaving, feet mudding bare floor.
On the desk a vial of perfume, open.
You dip your finger in, deep, begin writing,
the tip in flames.

Misplaced Thoughts
6,300 miles away a war is going on,
or so Mr. Rather tells me earnestly.
He adds that oil prices are going up and
auto workers are striking against . . .
was that Ford or Chevrolet or Saturn? . . .
and the dollar has risen slightly against either
the pound or eurodollar or yen. I yawn.

Tomorrow it will be new players playing old roles
in fresh and well-considered presentations
to keep me in the know.
(Jennings or Sawyer, Brokaw or Chun --
any photogenic, rapport-building, confidence- inspiring
face will work.)
My heart grows weary and forgetful.

But it will be a long time before I forget that
Kramer takes long showers, Elaine dances strangely,
George shits shirtless, and Jerry picks while driving.
I will rehearse and relaugh these scenes with my friends,
bond with strangers (there are so many, you know)
who shared these intimate moments with me.

But somewhere in the chuckling,
I will vaguely remember that
a few hundred
or few thousand people
died or suffered somewhere
sometime ago
for some reason
that right now seems to escape me.

Mysterium
Seven stranded stalks of broomsage, spraying
out from a raised clump of turf, arcing up
over a lip of icy pond.
They are sisters joined, feet wrapped
in a warm rug of swirled oak leaf.
Moss, plump green-glorious, lies behind
to catch softly this huddled sorority
should they swoon.
Their ribboned cossicks, pendant as arms,
sensate to the breeze, tremble, balance
in the air, touch their tawny,
filamental bodies in myriad ways.
Finely spiked hair frays from heads
curving downward, a parabola of prayer
and fascination.

Seven siblings balanced in an arching embrace
survey this newly charmed water. The wind
teases them forward, but they startle, resist.
Over their pale gold crowns a lone mosquito jerks by,
drunk with cold, shivering into oblivion.
On the far shore a wan sun has kept at bay
— by a bare margin — the full reach of wintered water.
A solitary goose steps gingerly along the seam
joining two worlds, periodically plunging
beaked head beneath yielding waters.
Sated or no, off it flies in unhurried flaps.
They fall on my ears like faint waves
breaking double-time on a distant beach.

This breeze, that mosquito, a goose
feeding or in flight, broomsage along icy pondshore —
there is a mystery here, an enigma of being
my profane eyes may never see.
But alone and quiet i sometimes receive
intimations of an enfolding of essence so deep,
a conjunction of place and time so dense,
an intersection of life so intricate,
symmetry so terrifying, that a
single note begins to distinguish itself in the background.
It arises from nowhere, everywhere — one pulse
ample and pure, so astonishing in beauty —
I tell you, so heartsplitting that i stagger
for a brief second under its sway.

Seven sisters dance together on a pond’s edge,
held through the night,
telling their secrets, your secrets,
mine.

Abbey Retreat: Day 1

Silence is no longer a stranger to me. The peace that hangs in the air here at the monastery is more like a long and good friend from whom I've been apart but with whom I instantly pick up the thread of dialogue we were last holding. There are now enough quiet moments in my life that the contrast I feel in coming here isn't stark as it used to be. Nature, however—I felt her absence very sharply this evening.

At dusk and before Compline I walked across the highway to the newly paved road leading to the gravel and dirt path, leading to the fields of grass and broomsage, leading to the large pond tucked neatly away behind a small stand of trees, leading to the water’s edge. Walking the gentle swells of ground on the way to the pond, pockets of warm and then cool air passed over me, air that was meant to be tasted as much as breathed. Sitting still and quiet beside the pond I watched as two pair of boisterous geese came gliding in, announcing their presence with forceful honks that bounced off the water's surface and spread out even as their webbed feet touched down and sent a series of ripples to the pond's outer edges. The frogs around the edge were croaking in full force, and crickets were raising hypnotic chants to the Almighty. To my left and right, both high and low, chipmunks were scampering over the ground and squirrels were winding through tree branches, both stealing their last bits of play before retiring for the night. A star or two were already visible overhead, preceding the thousands that would soon follow. And not a person was around.

The show was free and there will be repeat performances, encore presentations every day and night for as long as anyone cares to watch. Except for the few brief days each year that I'm here, I will certainly not be watching, and this strikes me not so much as odd but as something broken and in need of fixing. I hear that the world's population is converging on cities. More and more people are packing up their bags and moving to the large urban centers. If you ask me tonight, I'll tell you they're all going in the wrong direction. What I heard a short while ago by the pond was symphonic and delicious, the only show worth watching. And even though the concert was sometimes loud, it was always easy on the soul. Every note was an addition to life.

Returning from the pond to the monastery tonight I walked backward along the gravel road leading to the paved road, leading to the Abbey, leading to my bed. What I saw. A line of orange and yellow fire silhouetted the still barren trees in the distance, and a thin strip of pale blue tinged with pink hung over them in a tight embrace. Below the fire the undulating fields of broomsage and grass were retreating into a mystery, being enfolded into deep browns that now only suggested the presence of forms. The sky above the fire line rolled smoothly from light blue in the west to near cobalt on the eastern edge, all forming a backdrop for a new show that was gathering in strength above my head. In the east was Ursa Major, at the zenith was Orion, and toward the west were Saturn and Jupiter. I've watched Jupiter and Saturn all year from the city as they've tracked across the sky from east to west, arriving earlier every night. Tonight I see they were only phantoms, ghostlike apparitions. But these, oh these had substance. They look brilliant and sharp enough to draw blood if you were just tall and brazen enough to touch them.

And now I'm wondering just how pale my own life has grown in the city, but it's a question I don't care to answer tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Tonight is for adding, not subtracting. Tonight I am simply happy to be here and happy to have been in the audience.

At Compline tonight we chanted Psalm 4, and the line I think of is, "You have put into my heart greater joy than they have from abundance of corn and new wine." Yes. Amen. Good Night.

Abbey Retreat: Day 2

He lay confused on the bed in his small room. Perhaps the confusion lay in his sickness, which had, as most illnesses do, come upon him suddenly. A brief day earlier he had felt fine and was eager to make headway in untangling elements of his life in this extended period of quiet, but now he was caught in a malaise that had sapped his energy, his ability to think clearly and, consequently, his will to accomplish anything. Staring dully at the wall was the only activity that matched the vitality he felt.

This was not how he had envisioned his day. In fact, it was so far away from what he had hoped that he took it as a personal offence. Who, in fact, had dealt him this injustice he couldn’t say, but he felt it all the same. Something that was supposed to be his was being denied him. Some vague Powers That Be were thwarting him and now he was both miffed and slightly depressed. He lay beneath the plain crucifix at the foot of his bed and tried from time to time to seize a thought as it passed through his head. If he could find something substantial enough to grip, some idea worth thinking and writing about, then he could use it as a lever to pull himself out of this physical distress and into something productive. But every thought gave way, snapped off and fell to the ground, orphaned from its roots and disconnected from any sensible whole.

“Have pity on me, Lord.” This was the only thing he could think to say, so he said it out loud, for he felt his weakness acutely. After a stretch of resistance there came an easing of the discomfort. He recited his Lord’s prayer and came to the line, “Give us today our daily bread.” He didn’t reason through its meaning. Rather, he approached it head on and accepted this weakness as bread he was given to eat. It wasn’t the food he had wanted, but it was food all the same. And then he did something very peculiar. He sat up in bed and placed his bare feet on the speckled terrazzo floor. Gaining his equilibrium, he stood and removed everything he was wearing—his clothes, the gold ring on the third finger of his left hand, the digital watch—and turned toward the crucifix. With head bowed and hands raised, he prayed to be identified with Christ in weakness. Then he stretched out his arms and pressed his body against the whitewashed concrete walls, feeling the cold enter his skin.

Abbey Retreat: Day 3

Dark ashes in the form of a sloppy cross stained his forehead. The vertical stroke was bold and dark, sliced in the middle by a wide and bent horizontal line, the whole thing off center and almost directly above his left eye. Minutes earlier Father Matthew, poised before him on platform, had looked at him and said in his think Boston accent, “Remember, o man, that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” And then with his thumb the priest had marked him as a dead man walking.

He had not intended to receive ashes. Most of the day had been spent sick in bed. When he dragged himself to breakfast early that morning after a poor night of sleep, he noticed a large and dark smudge on the forehead of retreatant leaving the kitchen. His first thought was that the woman had either forgotten to wash her face or had been careless, but as he entered the kitchen he saw dark patches on the foreheads of all those in line. Ash Wednesday. He had forgotten. And then suddenly he felt very conspicuous and conscious of his own clean face. It was as if he had stumbled into a clandestine meeting and would, in a matter of seconds, be identified as an intruder and asked to leave. He considered leaving anyway, but hunger dissuaded him. After breakfast, he slept the morning away and didn’t come down again until dinnertime, at which time he noticed that the ashen crosses had either worn off or been washed off the retreatants almost entirely. And then he went back to his room and back to bed. At supper that evening everyone looked normal again. The event was behind him now, he supposed. He was, consequently, surprised that evening after Compline when Father Matthew, having finished his homily, pulled out a small tray of ashes and offered to mark anyone who had missed the event earlier. Impulsively he stepped forward.

As he left the small chapel and walked out into the warm night, he realized that no one had ever addressed him with such directness about his impending and unavoidable death. He had pondered it many times on his own, but this man had touched him, marked him, and pronounced him mortal with a solemnity that was absent from his own private musings. The priest might just as well have been a doctor administering triage at the scene of a horrific accident, who passing among the victims said, “This one we can’t save” before moving on. His senses reeled at the unexpected consequences of the priest’s words.

Descending the concrete steps, he moved quickly down the wide corridor between the retreat house on his right and the monastery wall on his left. In a few seconds he came to the double gates of iron which opened into the monastery gardens. Inscribed in concrete above the gates were the words, “God Alone.” He grasped the sturdy handle, pushed the heavy gate, and passed through into the dark garden, ascending seven steps that emptied onto the stone path leading to the front doors. “Remember, o man, that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” He was remembering. At the end of the stone path, he paused momentarily at the steps to the front door and turned to look at what was behind him. Some acknowledgment was needed.

The stars overhead in the black sky, the scented air, the beautiful outlined trees, the white slip of the moon, the exquisite silence and peacefulness of the Abbey countryside, this and everything else he considered dear and worthwhile—none of it could stay, he thought. He would need to leave it all behind. And for just an instant he wanted to cry. But he did not cry. Rather, his lips widened almost imperceptibly, and a pang of joy struck him softly but directly on the heart. He thought of the illness he had had yesterday and only now seemed to be emerging from. He remembered the crucifix and the impress of cold stone on his naked skin. He thought beyond that to a band of blooded light dividing a curving, receding, and muted landscape from an austere, open, and firelit sky. The breeze he felt tonight was the same breeze he felt then, warm and comforting. He thought, too, of those whom he had left miles behind but would soon rejoin if he should live that long. These friends, that beauty, this sickness all justified any amount of life given him. And knowing in this dark garden, poised at the foot of the front door, both his beginning and his end, he turned and made his way up the steps very grateful for the middle.

That night he did not wash his face.

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