Sanity, or, ‘shelter as we go’ - [Ben Howard]
"Love is the capacity for unity and multiplicity to exist in harmony" - J. Pageau
it's hard to make sense
of the world
in larger worlds;
things don’t register
in expected ways
the pace is all different
and nothing is counting -
time, space, motion
do their thing as one -
human happenings
don’t make sense -
seem separate, divorced -
a frantic scale
the earth holds quietly -
even words
dissolve
and transform
like breezes
and bird-calls,
not meaning the same
passing, passage, hold
passage, passing, held;
i imagine Heidegger’s hut
murmuring
these things, being
hard to make sense of
with reason
or belief, a stance
of simple sense, outside -
Why do we listen?
and what is listened
with and for and
how?
quietly, with wing-beats
a-flutter
water moves and i
move - out of my head
toward the rest of me -
skinning an open passage,
organs trudging patiently,
waiting -
blood moves -
accordion chests
filling limbs
hands clasping
feet feeling -
grounded -
laying back
all in
all othered
with / in / of
this world,
here.
Month: May 2024
Eau Claire
Eau Claire (for Clare)
“turns out tears don’t cause themselves, whatever the scientists say”
how do we talk about what we don’t see
in others
their beauty, grandeur, and grace,
what overwhelms and awes
is unmistakably perceived,
sensed, invisibly
like God, horror, love
wind on water, its currents
i can see the river moving
but not its source or pull -
what really matters
in any matter
the H, the O, that does not equal
wet, keeps happening
from ripples to roars to rain,
even from out my own body -
blood and piss and tears -
revising the letters
the responses
i’m learning
are silent
like praises
and weeping
even if the matters resound
Free-write: An apology
“how does a tired road become a songline?” (Martin Shaw)
Dear readers.
As i see “likes” occur again – dear, deep, sweet, long encouragers of my intermittent efforts in language – it is hard to describe. That you remain and are alive, and have the kindness to lend me moments, and even “like” what i cobble together, astounds me. Thank you. It would be very difficult to express what seeing familiar icons, remember many years of co-respond-ence has meant in my own strange life. Thank you.
My apology is intended more for my use of “categories” and “tags”. Returning to this site I am struggling very much with all the computable forms with which my scribblings do not seem to comply. The work of transferring my notebooks to this platte-form takes too much time. But when I view it rearranged to the proffered forms it is not at all what i had configured. [*especially my normally multi-colored spread across surface word tumblings I will probably need to upload as PDFs from now on, which still may not have the differing fonts and shapes from my hand*].
I do not consider myself a writer anymore, certainly not a ‘poet,’ ‘essayist,’ or any of those things. Trying again, I realize I do not compose* language, but rearrange it like pebbles I worry (or cherish), like the assemblages of rocks and feathers, bones and books all throughout our home… until they rest a little, or keep finding their lineage similarly, enough to let sit awhile. Then I take them up again, re-place, carry elsewhere, find. I don’t know what that’s called – but it’s not a genre or a poem or a song. It’s just the way I relate to words or letters. [*now i realize placing-with is the meaning of com-pose* alas]
Today I’ve been looking back through notebooks and journals from my past couple years – seeing repetitions, surprises, strange confessions and expressions that hardly seem (aside from the penmanship and the colors and shapes) that they emerged from “me.” Perhaps not. [*again, placing-WITH – this time beyond even letters and me, but all the world that provides them and you and rivers and sky and…]
Anyway, I’ll not be using categories or tags anymore, to be honest. Thank you all for your amazing gratuitousness in visiting me through these efforts of mine. It gives me courage that pebbles I find and arrange some others see something in too. I’m very humbled by this.
Stone Hefter in High Winds
Stone Hefter in High Winds (at Jack’s farm, Western Easter)
Maybe my mind is lost
holding the lamb
held
by holding the lamb -
hope and despair
not so different
after all -
as symptoms of alive
fingering rocks
in pockets
words
accrued structures
layers
of meanings
“Go on”
Stone Hefter
Living Tree
Breath Brother
Sighted Singer
no division
only specular,
complex,
complicated processes -
birds, soil
plants, mammals
always skies
everywhere in light
or what is darkness for?
he said,
let there be...
and there is
in beginnings
the words
ends and means
roots to branches
seed to flower
quarks to organum
charging inspired
bodies
carbonated sparks
in the high winds