My Equinox of Sound and Silence, Book V of Songs before the Gaze now available on Amazon

 

 

 

If One Doesn't Resonate with the Beautiful, Soon She Will Want to Resonate with the Ugly Or She Already Does So

 

With noon knowledge and noon dress,

shadows, they say, grow shortest,

might even wholly wane at Equinoxes

under Libra or Aries in the tropics—

 

the way a soul might leave a body

yet still persist, linger

as rumor, recurring ring,

or like a name that tugs an ear.

 

Surely, and yet one may still ask:

in which relation to the sun,

to time, even at which hour,

at which turn of life,

 

mortals feel, even are, more honest,

less inclined to split who we are

under veneers and shades

emblazoning somebody else?

 

And as it appears to me, the hours

of the day do mirror stages of human age:

the early opening where new unknowns

beckon those alive, ready to stay curious;

 

then in mid-day, one begins to learn

what fatigue, along with entrées served,

and by evening, one tries to change,

catch up with what hasn't been done.

 

And so with evening dress and knowledge

that hearts, either jollier or melancholic,

dispense, empty into wine shops, pubs, bars—

she may sometimes take a stance,

 

and here much depends on whether with

or against the sunset, when words

themselves rise like easy-to-read fingers,

impressing seal, measure, on the lips.

What’s the Point? How to Balance What Moves Below with All the Above

 

What kingfishers snatch in that other world,

where buoyancy and gravity agreed

to wed and jointly forge a dancing flow,

they bring it up and hold it close

 

to their cherubic chests and thus they cut

someone’s threaded line of fate

with a peck and strike by the tip

of their bill lightened to the sun.

 

But what water is to those they catch

is what wings are to kingfishers,

they make them light, they let them fly

 

as they peek and poke into what the other

nether space jealously hoards inside—

but for me it’s poetry that helps me dance.

Why What Truly Is Should Belong Less to Me Than What Isn’t?

 

All that truly is cannot help but know

what transpires and what always holds.

Irrespective of the place, notwithstanding time.

And only thus laws each soul inherits,

as its vow and lot, can keep

a ceaseless watch.

 

But whose fault is it

if the soul remains reserved

and speaks to one no more?

That fault is his not hers

and likely worse

if long ago forgotten—

 

like a caries in an already insensate bone,

a snap, a crack, a flaw

that fails to bridge or fill

if one unlearns, forgoes

whom and why the holy heals,

only if one befriends one's own soul.