Poetic musing
© 2000 Philip E. Harding
And I push ahead
One word at a time
For thousands of years
we have taken our turns
walking the tops of tower walls
scanning the horizons
A million nights of stars and night air
A million dreams of light
A dream I had was once taken to the moon.
I almost didn't get it back again.
When I saw it again I made it into a song
It goes like this...
A bit of ginger in a tree
made all my birds come home to me
and when I learned where they had been
I shot them.
I don't know where this is all going. Maybe it is already gone. I just keep going through the motions of making more words to keep from falling asleep. To keep from letting go.
Departure is certain
but not the time or direction.
There are options,
folds and tears in space,
pressure from the past and the future
pulls,
the compound of expectation, desire and will
also pulls.
It's plain enough I can't quit now
nor would I want to.
There is a lot to this.
As much as I complain it is surprising I still
get up at all.
It could be I just sit up each morning
to release a fart.
Nah.
I still know what I'm up to.
The goal was defined a decade ago.
It is not a thing that reveals daily
progress which accounts for the surprise
at noticing the decades progress.
Such a thing sneaks up on one.
I think about her
just this woman
I know virtually nothing about
like stars in the sky
she is just there
and I can't tell
if she thinks about me
I don't know,
which is what intuition is for,
but I feel that mine
is confused by desire.
Do I take her at her word? Is she only
what she reveals to me? She has revealed the
surface of the world in a sea of words but
I want to know what is inside the world. What
is under the waves.
How well do you know yourself?
look at your palm.
Do you know what this means?
Intellect and intuition,
What do you think? How do you feel?
How deep will you go with me?
What will you risk without guarantees?
You have been captured by a cold dragon.
Most dangerous - it has convinced you you are free.
I think you like it - you don't have to feel the pain.
- but then you can't feel love either.
I will only put up with this dragon for so long.
It is in my way
and I intend to kill it.
Lining it all up bit by bit.
What is on the inside.
Think about these things.
Compulsive pleasure.
Saturation.
I turned off the television set and
sat under the hum of florescent ballast.
There has been some restoration.
Drawings on the board.
More to go.
It is dark but I can see a million miles.
I can remember. 16 billion years I can remember.
I look forward to infinity.
Varying intensities.
I like her.
I am not even close to figuring her out.
I do not know what to expect.
Even from myself.
I don't know anything.
Even myself.
The tide, such a tide, Is coming over
the mountain.
Unexpected. It has carried my drawings.
They have nothing to do with me anymore.
I had hoped for more
but I am a raft of DNA
on a stormy planet's sea.
A little planet in a stormy sea of stars.
Dreams of light
in a cold empty room
asking what happened
shimmering
she stood on the mesa
but I could not speak.
Tonight I am overwhelmed.
A flood of images and ideas displace
the natural dreaming processes.
I can no longer hear the music
I can barely remember your face.
Why me?
Why you?
Why can't I sleep?
A pit of rain soaked ashes.
The memory has faded
and I have nothing with which to buy it back.
I am going home
where I can see the northern star
from my pillow every night.
She walks on her own
miles away
I don't know how to reach her
and I don't know what to say
So I walk on
miles away
I peel my skin away.
I lose myself
and what remains
is your impression on my soul.
A view of the infinite
placed in the limits of a mortal frame.
Some sense of place.
Some sense of balance.
Some place for the mind to roam
and intuition to weigh it.
a poem
a ray of light
some elation
yet
problems to solve.
decisions to make.
some vague sense.
It is 1:00 A.M.
There is paper taped to the board.
There is a to-do list on the floor.
Life is good.
A glow on a distant horizon warms my mind.
Gentle rain cleans my soul.
My whole world stands with me tonight
I turn slowly
arms outstretched
releasing and receiving
life in the wind
An impact
Flash of light
A child turning circles in a meadow
A sea of children with outstretched arms
turning
stumbling
laughing
flowers in the hair
We are the pages
on which we write our first words
we are the birds
and the meadow mice
we are the grasses moving with the wind
dancing
dancing
we all fall down
Faces to the sky
cool air, warm sun
dancing grasses crown our heads
holding hands
we close our eyes
and dream
Rays of midnight
pass through the fields.
A pulse and a breath.
I sit immobile or nearly so.
I see a transparent image of myself
And what am I?
I think that has always been the question.
My question.
And the answer is always multidimensional
when even one would be enough to fill
me with wonder and disbelief.
So, I wonder
and I do not know what to believe.
I've lived more than Nine lives and I'm not yet 34.
What is my life?
Who remains when I change?
An ego ripped away.
Another one emerges
green today. Like a sprout greeting spring.
It too will mature and die and I
will look up and see me die and I will still
be there, be here, looking on in wonder.
Wonder that life exists and that I am a
being with the ability to see that it
exists. In this eternity. In the ticking clock
resonating from the origin of time. In the hum
of a ballast running a lamp in an
otherwise dark little house, on a dark little street,
on a planet moving in a vast space.
The twist of a tree
The ripples of smoke from a stick of incense
A prospering ant farm
Beautiful music whose words I can not understand.
A cabbage moth explores the foliage in my yard.
Circle of rock
holding the fire
in the middle of the plains
Smoke of grasses rising
vault of the stars receiving
embracing the earth.
Life is a religious experience.
Descriptions are useless.
Seeking is useless.
Just look
Without preconception.
Remember this.
Everything else is just a waste of time.
Lofty dreams.
The wind carries my vision across the prairie
to a place where coyote still lives.
I've got this goal in mind which will require
much perseverance and self discipline for
months and years. This goal is like no
other. There are no daily check points against
which to measure progress. But I can see it.
I feel the daily progression and know the whole
road from the beginning. My feet and legs
grow tired every day and every night they
are renewed.
My coyote dreams are worth all your paper
presidents.
I went that way
bit by bit
looking into the void,
or is it from the void?
Life seems more real
and death a greater mystery.
I understand how much I don't know
and how close the stars really are.
A cloudy rainy morning.
The garden doesn't seem to mind.
Water is beginning to boil.
I yawn and blink my eyes in
anticipation of strong coffee.
Wonder.
A bird and a breeze (man can that bird sing.)
Boiling water for a cup of coffee.
There are piles of projects and ideas like compost.
Too much to do, to pick one out,
Too much to even turn the pile.
A whole world come alive this morning.
I can see the clove trees in Sumatra,
coffee beans drying on ribbons of cloth are turning
from red to brown on the ground in East Africa,
people boarding an ultra modern subway in Singapore.
But the forests are being cut down to make formwork
for the concrete towers where we sit in revolving
restaurants drinking coffee with our spiced cake.
I could spill out words for years and not know what to do with them.
The faucet drips, the lights hum and the clock drums on. A car honks in the distance. Someone slams a door.
What exactly is it that I want?
To live in a perfect dream or an imperfect world?
the sounds of infinity
the sacrifice
Some reason bigger than this shell of flesh.
It is really something about positioning,
like if I want the basalt gardens for myself
or do I want to save the plants,
animals and lakes for themselves.
Do I want to get rich or to enrich?
Many ornate words fell from his mouth as a carton of milk slides through slippery fingers. It was too late. He had committed himself to a program of increasingly intertwined elaborations and juxtapositions.