(The following is from my 2005 book of poetry, Ordinary Time, which provided the inspiration for the title of this blog. I will be republishing the poems here over the next several weeks in their original order)


Remember Memory

The water, turning over on itself,
the shifting of a formless mass, swirling
in and against itself, and refusing

to cease is safe, between the embrace of
the arms that hold it dear, and know the folds,
and all within by name, and how to bend

the resistance at the edges, and pull
the waves on the receding tide into
the deepest ocean’s heart. When the ear’s sense

can finally hear the sound, the harmony,
then truth will enter in the hollowed space
and take a firm hold, deep where it belongs,

where it can grow. The plane beyond the shore
is restless and will never sleep as long
as the pockmarked moon forces it to keep

wrestling with the land. Love cannot rest
in the sleepless thrashing waves. Remember,
the strong momentum of the sea must stop

eventually—when the spinning earth rests,
When the moon drifts away, and when the sun
begins to swell up red—but until then,

on the darkest shore that strikes land, forget
the words. Remember the revolutions
of reality’s struggle. Remember

the sounds that lined the edges in the dark,
the soft returning and the withdrawing
of the slow waves at night and the way they

can drag a pebble out to sea and drown
it in itself. Forget the words spoken.
Forgive the lies. Forget the truth and listen

to the sounds dragging in the waves. Forget
that waves have washed the shore before. Forget
the sound remembered. Listen to the sound.

For only the sound can tell what is there,
and only what is there can uncover
what is not, and separate memory.
 

(The following is from my 2005 book of poetry, Ordinary Time, which provided the inspiration for the title of this blog. I will be republishing the poems here over the next several weeks in their original order)



A World of Mind’s Creation

A world of mind’s creation stands
unhindered in a darkened sleep,
while night hours fall to morning,
and dawn gives breath to day,
but first, the cloud must hover
upon the veiled mystery of dreams.

A ghost upon the heart endeavors
to consume the free flame’s heat,
now cold, now dead, now still
as brittle ash on a windless morn.

Waking, we find that all is well,
that none of the horrors passed
into the waking hours of day,
that the ghost of sleep now sleeps,
hidden like the stars on a warm afternoon,
and as our eyes open, and as the memories fade,
all seems lost; all the memories fade
back to the mind from where they came…

and as smoke comes off a fire,
as raindrops fall in the sea,
so too do dreams fade and diffuse
and get lost among the mass of memory—
the collective thought, the spirit of the world.

(The following is from my 2005 book of poetry, Ordinary Time, which provided the inspiration for the title of this blog. I will be republishing the poems here over the next several weeks in their original order)


Care for the Dead

              To sense the life

    that used to live here,

       I pick up a clump

     of dirt from the field

                  and let it crumble

    between my fingers

        and watch it fall  

 and mix back

              with the earth.

        Something here

                      has changed. I

                 changed and changed it.

    I have desecrated

      something sacred.

           I ask nature        

              to forgive the bulldozer

       of my hands, crumpling

           the graves of men

                             I never knew,

                and never cared about,

         until now.

Now I come. Now the poet

     in me

  pretends to care.

                   I try. I do. But I

         cannot wait for a better poet

     to caress my dust

           and write of his love

                              for the dirt

                  between his fingertips

          and buried under his nails.