Natural Force

The earth shrugs
and beneath the sea
mountains lift shifting waves
driving man
to higher
planes.

Primal force defines
the earth
as we are defined
by the rise and fall
of breath.

Yet contented we live
by the constant sea
as darker oceans
roil deep
beneath our feet,

and transfixed
we gaze as eternal waves,
pounding thrusting stones,
shatter to frothy foam.

No wonder, then,
when deeper lungs exhale,
in terror we flee,
and cry to God
for mercy.

(10/30/2012)

Peaceful Evening

Like a dark tower,
my window looms;

ebony night waits
just a step away.

Deep silence
consumes empty spaces
in the tall trees

where breezes sing
in the joyful morning.

My feeble lamp
can only reach
a few feet out

and sets
the pale grass
aglow

as glimmering ghosts
softly search
for peace.

But peace
can be uneasy


and stillness signify
oblivion.

(9/10/2010)

The Bridge at Rio Vista

The bridge stands low

over the swollen

Sacramento,

black water,

rushing to

darker seas,

hypo-thermal,

sucking breath

from the fallen,

the overboard,

the suicide.

Its sturdy stanchions,

hold fast,

give refuge

from the maelstrom,

a way across

or a place

to jump.

Mohave

Rocks carelessly cast

from granite hills,

trapped by gravity and time,

slant skyward,

knives pointed at the throat

of heaven.

Like God’s memory this desert stretches

beyond our ken.

Ten-thousand cliffs rise from the level bed,

of a forgotten sea;

long ago in steam it rose

and jet-stream borne,

races through unmeasured time

in endless storm.

Wisdom

Photo: Red Rock Cliffs, courtesy of Sonja Bingen 

"She (Wisdom) is in all things like the air receiving the sunlight.  
In her they prosper.  In her they glorify God.  In her they rejoice 
to reflect Him.  In her they are united with him. " 
                                                                                       Thomas Merton

striated layers of time

rise sharply to the sky, 

and flatten out 

against anchoring blue

ages of rain and wind 

and pain. 

we are

the air receiving sunlight, 

shattering the long night

on smooth, warm stone

we are 

the morning joy

of earth, wisdom

of eternal

birth.

Gravity

We walk secure, grounded, heavy, oblivious,
safe from perplexing weightlessness,
unlike Life Savers candies on Atlantis spinning theatrically
as glittering Las Vegas floats beneath,
or those rusty spherical droplets
of Tang, humorlessly drifting over the Indian Ocean;
we are safe even as Kubrick's treacherous computer,
tenderly releases the cradled voyager to drift reeling away,
receding, smaller and smaller, no longer a man,
a fading star, and then just gone,
unclaimed even by the false gravity
of his mother-ship.

Yes, we are safe because she holds us tightly, binds
us with unseen, loving coils, lest we range to adventures
too high, too dangerous,
too unnatural;
the bungee jumper, skydiver, snowboarder, eventually all learn
her love is costly,
and even tired, timid professors shudder
when top floor classrooms into basement labs fall;

then, with violent, jerking movement,
her jealous love pulls us, prize seed all,
into the deep, cool soil of newly furrowed cities,
Chendgu, Port-au-Prince, Santiago, Christchurch,
San Francisco,

and Gravity, jealous lover, finally claims us as her own when
in the recesses of our graves we wait,
germinal, for the static earth again
ardently to quake.