On Healing Wings

 

Be thinking all the time
all the time

thinking just now
just how this big yellow
Wednesday morning
would appear
from the depths of
translunar space

studying all the time

I've made a career
adding up the numbers
subtracting
dividing
figuring
how long life could be

trying to take hold
of everything
from the Big Bang
to theological paradigms
for the third
millennium

with lamentations
for the planet
for the children
of this century
for the rain forest
the inner city
for all the unlivable
dreams the unmet
needs unmanifest
gifts and for my own
advantaged self
reproach unending

and still the verse flows
only where it can
twisting where it must

whittled on a walking stick
as all these poems are

traveling poems



Within this fully
human place where
our faces conceive
their shapes and our eyes
yearn to be more
awake than awake

where all inner
silences are flooded

and drawn with the tides
of the years
where our first and
our last words merge
here and now
on this pinnacle
how it seems
you are close
enough to feel

but I just can't
touch you

I am staying
tuned for further
messages

working plans
soul signals

mouth music



A mist conceals the peninsula
in the end which is
the beginning of things

by this twisted path
abides aromatic
the golden yarrow

the bush-tits' notes

ride the ocean roar

a great up-reaching
limb of the live oak is
broken off and prodding

its wake through the soil
of pine forest floor frothy
with ferns and tendrils

bare anemones and hermit
crabs and ripe seastars thrive
in transparent tidepools

mother seals outsizing
their black promontories
in waves of pups commune

dank as that sunrise
we first sank our feet
in wet sand I study

creases of flesh gathered
on the back of my hand
and Pacific seascape

the north wind

lupine in blue and
white flurries

saltwater sprays all around

the sage I rub in my palm
is pungent medicine

as hope descends
on healing wings

I must solemnly do
as little as I can

 

      Point Lobos
      Vernal Equinox 1989