We are sitting in the cold light
of the loft of an old dairy barn
at the North Farm in Chatham.
Is it possible to grow again from seeds
of good intention what once flowered
rooted in the hardscrabble of necessity?
Talking to the senator’s legislative aide
via wireless connection — imagine! —
we are living in the age of miracles.
It’s a small world
moving ahead with you
when you drive into fog
on the verge of morning
Like the small bounds
of your inner life —
the reality inside your head
and all the rest imagined.
Last night I was burned twice,
once by one who cares too little
and once by one who cares too much.
Some nights I would light matches to stay warm,
if only someone would cup two hands
around mine to block the wind.
But I am dry tinder, and fire can consume
like the Ganges crematorium at Varanasi.
Did you know that when the monk
Thích Quảng Đức set himself on fire in Saigon
to protest the persecution of Buddhists,
he was re-cremated after his death
but his heart, twice burned, remained intact?
*Read and listen to the author at qarrtsiluni magazine
Twice Burned
It may have been Henry,
or Gary, or Wendell, who said
when you split firewood
it warms you twice. And I once
wrote a poem titled Twice
Burned, a very different
story. Sometimes you live it
once, then again on the page,
holding your pencil like a baton
and setting the tempo line by line.
And sometimes like an axe,
with a heft and a swing and a
crack that splits your life in two,
exposing the knotty grain.
And it’s best to begin
with that most obvious and undeniable
truth — like the protuberant nose
on which the lens-scratched glasses perch
that breaches the plane of every open door
an eighth step ahead of the sternum —
of the bitter logic that no poem
can transcend the finite and touch the devine,
so every poem is a tragic record of failure.
We’re already through the door.
Take off your glasses.
Feel the faint stirring of atmosphere
from the open window of desire.
Think about one particular kiss
which to describe it now would still make you blush.
Or that space between the flower
and the hovering bee. The motion of wings.
The way they, too, stir the air. Words
like beeswings.
Imagine the pipal tree (while looking at this spreading tree)
where the wanderer sat patiently, awaiting truth.
Imagine the cold (while walking through this winter night)
that he felt alone under the black roof of night.
Imagine the ache (while sitting stiffly on this hard floor)
that he felt in the stillness of his cross-legged posture.
Imagine the morning star (like this star risen in the east)
that he saw like looking skyward for the very first time.
Imagine the golden daybreak, and spread your arms like the tree.
That tragic spring day
I felt like a headless man
in a topless bar —
Beside myself with grieving
and nowhere to hang my hat.
