Goodbye to Hudson Springs Park

Something halts at the water’s edge,
Beyond which the lake is churned
Into aroused wisps of exalted mist,

While on the meadow running by the bank
Trees strain sudden sunlit alleyways
Trimmed with early morning shade,
Still holding their inlaid chill.

I know — must always have known —
That at cockcrow time itself
Quietly cracks,

And the countryside draws nearest
To some hallowed shrine
Meant somehow to persist

And ever abide,
Even if sealed away and lost
Amid the outer rush,

Like those last diminutive violets
I found there on the grassy shore:

So easy to miss in their modest
Yet immaculate harmonies,

Harmonies that flute marble temple columns
Just as surely as a lover’s wave-like knees.

Why, is there not in all this
An ever-welling presence,
Though often deeply hidden and locked —

A keening pre-sense
Behind the mind’s each living sense,
Or within every presence

For which we glibly borrow
Her own proper name?

Just as daybreak’s aquatic stillness
Cuts a marble statue-moment
Out of thought and time and space,

Staying what would otherwise flow away —

And just as waters embrace and fête
The sky above as the mien and métier
Fit to haeremai and cradle in their midst
What stuns and transcends their given selves.

So too this morning Hudson lake
And its magical ēlektron of sublime fifths —
One part silver and four of gold —

Shimmered with dots of milky light.

And then, upon the road back out of town,
Along Main Street, I passed the white church
Upon the little hill,

Shining like a fresh new page
In statu nascendi —
So pure, so naked,

Awaiting the illumined stillness
Of a coming verse.

Morning Valley Silence Strings Beads of Lucid Thought

Silences at their utmost lucent
Brim with glazing rifts and rimes,

As happens when morning arrives
To clear the dazing mists of dusk —

And where a nothing used to tarry
In guise of the yet unthought,
Unknown, unheard, and unseen,

A thought — a see-through stunning —
Hatches and flies to perch
Upon one’s shoulder even.

And a heron in the pads of Beaver Marsh
Has just caught a fish and raised it, pinned,

Up and out of its own element
To be swallowed whole
Beneath steady eyes of blazing gold,

As though the bird were but a snake
With risen legs and coating wings,

Careful enough not to disturb
The ring of natant calm
Among the yellow bead-like lilies,

Some unbuttoning their bulbs,
While others still stay clasped and buckled.

And then hyacinths come to mind
Entering the irises of mine —

Their beautiful and brazen heads
Hovering and floating, ever tight
Within their clustered throngs,

Like sunshine above the lilies’ scattered gold.

And He Is Gone Now

A short walk north from the Beaver Pond,
The towpath comes upon the river
Giving herself over to the view
In a gracious bend.

There an old gray man used to sit
On his little tricycle with its tiny flag,
And every time I passed by
He would raise his hand

And nod — a sound-distant monarch
Of that one exclusive place,
Relaxedly taking in
The vista’s reposeful awe

And the quietest of jolts
As the river’s rolling flow
Went on carrying away
And minutely cleansing

His maladies and angsts.

And every time he came,
I knew his spirit drove deeper
And deeper still its mooring roots.

In the Calm and Shade at Hudson Library Garden

Behind the Hudson library,
Where its rotunda ends,
Lies a little garden
Dispensing calm and shade
Across benches and trees
Enclosed within a fence.

There, at the end of May,
A sweetbay magnolia
Already closes its bloom,

While two Japanese dogwoods
Gleam in fourfold whites.

And beyond a Chinese elm,
Having forgone the rush to dizzy heights
After learning the wisdom
Of staying low and close
To the ground they shelter,

Japanese maples boldly assert
Their choice of pert rubicund
Amid the hush of nervous leaves.

See That Finely Latticed Dress — Both a Password and a Magic Spell

At last I noticed — but only after
Seeing a rich belle époque woman’s dress —
How ladies and goddesses approached
In long, well-woven, swelling mesh

The lords and their nether mates
In ancient Egypt, the Land of Ka,
Where even serpents, it seems,
Grew wings upon their backs.

So why the mesh? Wasn’t that too
Leucothea’s shroud, in which the woman
Who died to her former mortal frame
Wrapped and held a drowning Odysseus?

And does one not meet the same enigma
When brooding late at night
Over questions no one else would ask,

In Greek and Cretan Dictynna —

The Goddess of the Fishing Nets,
In whose eyes she herself was saved,
And a god became ensnared
As though no more than little game?

So is it some secret thing,
Small and arcane,
Which women alone may have known:

That whether to man or to god,
They come best in nets —

In nets with so many eyes
That even Argus Panoptes
Would be put to rout and shame.

And all those eyes — so many
Ivory and hollow-horned gates.

The Original Canvas Colored in All Flowers’ Shades: A Medusa’s First Look before She Was Changed

What cathedrals uttered in stone
They made soar in chorales on high:
The troubadours and courts of love
Teaching gentle hearts through song.

Then whole ages had to pass again
Before the world’s divine feminine
Taught artists once more the beauty and light
Of her infused curve and line,

Within whose lattice all begins and ends.

And then something happened —
Both ancient and new, long forgotten —

The French Impressionism painters rediscovered
A Pallas-like and pensive woman outdoors:
A Medusa, a Siren, who never changed.

And What Else May Love Yet Know of Lips? / A co láska může o rtech ještě znát?

 

And What Else May Love Yet Know of Lips?

Some strange immortal artist
contrived it so that human lips,
in color and in their soft gleam,
resemble above all else

those fleeting rendezvous
when sun and earth lean and plunge
into one another, while the sky above
drifts aflame into dusk.

And so both dusk and dawn people
bear upon their passing lips
and tremble them into eager kisses,

upon lips bent on radiance and thrill
that bear and burn until it comes to pass —
that deep within, the two learn to open.

A co láska může o rtech ještě znát?

Jakýsi zvláštní nesmrtelný umělec
to učinil tak, že lidské naše rty
barvou i hebkým svým zábleskem
ze všeho nejvíce podobají se

právě oněm krátkým okamžikům,
kdy slunko a země zblízka do sebe
hrouží se a kloní a s nebem nad stromy
růžoví a sunou se do mrákot.

A tak soumrak i jitro lidé
na rtech míjejících se nesou,
a do polibků chtivě si je třesou,

a na rtech vědoucích o žáru i záři,
sahajících, sálajících, stane se —
do hluboka dva spolu učí se otvírat.