807

WALKING EAST OF GRENOBLE, FIRST PREP for the Old Friends TOUR.

From sushi to sashimi, from a walk to a jog,
France becomes a trainer's ramp.
Summer cannot wane or age the walker's bead
   on a new stage.
The heart moves in from the left.
The pitted kettle begins to make a sound.
Surrounding us, resounding to the Evermore,
   another thaw -    I am in awe    I forgive

 

821

    It might have rained last night;
The day is fiercely beautiful. Radiant
sun falls on interfolding hills climbing
to the spine of Tuscany, la Lima to
Pistoia and to Brunelleschi's dome,
home to art majors like me, a walker
in the dells (here, church bells) faint
E'truscan images only Carrara marble
tells in gorgeous morning air. Two eyes
over Italy, ridge in the Mediterranean
floor. Before me, shells on the Adriatic
shore, then down to the Dardanelles.

 

824

Big free show at the Roman Coliseum,
six hundred thousand Italians, a year
and a week ago.
I walk the Siena road today through
middle Italy. Little we know of the way
of things, of the Buddha's art - of what
will connect and what will remain apart.

 

827
How little we know

There in the shadows of Plato's cave
are the movements of the Pentagon and
the CIA. Crouching toward the opening
we watch the mute display - a matinée
of faceless figures on schist.

 

839
Good pitch is simple honesty.
Correcting pitch with Pro Tools
are simulated ways. All of our
days the searching needs for
unalloyed truth and beauty lead.
Morality played to win is a
plate of tin.
MARCH 27, 2006

 

862
No you can't blame elm disease on us
as such - it's Dutch. But the ravage hasn't
reached this original hippie sixty miles
west of the Mississippi. Here under the
magnificent spread of a hundred-foot vase
I am thinking of the fork in the trunk. An
early divorce. Trunks packed like trees,
they grew divergent, poised between the
reach of the leaves for open air and the
pull of the partner - a perpetual "V", a de-
voted duality, balm of blance, rapturous
realm, a remaining American Elm.
JUNE 14, 2007
ROCHESTER, MINNESOTA

 

888
I never believed in fortune cookies.
How could an Asian stranger know my
fate? But what if I open two this time?
What of the juxtaposition? Through
the years a thousand Chinese seers
have described my personality. Now
I will address my own duality.
— "You are, "   one starts   I am?
— "Your future is, "   says the other.
Hot damn! Already I'm flattered and
reassured.
— ".   as boundless as . "   a simile.
infinity
— ".   one of those people who  ."
discards discernment? (Here is my
group at last - critical thinks cap_
tured by the cookie)
— ".   the lofty heaven" and ".   goes
places in life" who wrote this stuff?
brain get numb from
too much dim sum

"It' always the same zebra.
We get to see it from all the
angles," I said about life
some years ago, "the eight-
year old angle, the twenty-
six, the sixty-five."
Now I see the shape of it,
ways of behavior; the smell
of what's relevant, animal-
stripes from flank to mane-
But what can explain the em-
brace of the deceased as the
soul revolves to face the beast?

5/14/07

We are what we eat
    not the things of words;
We're made of the meat
    of the wings of birds.

Today I'll judge my books by their covers.
I'll watch a pot, count unhatched chicks
I'll fix the unbroken, hold secret gods divine
A thousand fine soldiers, resplendent in their jacket designs
Are lined in shelves in my aerie —
All the noble sentiments quilled
Cry for all the milk that's spilled
Let the unaware buyer be sold –
If the book cover glitters it's gold
I'll make a Top Forty polled for pretty veneers
How the book appears and how it feels to hold and be held
The whole night through . . .
Today I'll do exactly what you're not supposed to do.

We have a three-foot diameter plastic globe
that sits on the floor of our bedroom. The
countries are colored, the ocean's aqua. These
days we keep it unlit for little Beau's safety's sake.
Through the east window comes the morning
sun. The bedroom is radiant with joy. The Brand-
enburg IV is medium-loud. Little Beau swooshes
before me, pushing the globe out the door - little
feet pumping strong, he rolls the world along the
tiles to the kitchen, it bangs into furniture, the
denting is global, I know I should take it away.
But Beau and the Globe are a 2-character play
to me. The things they do reverberate. See Beau
imitate his family of singers as he puts his mouth
into the opening of the north pole. His 1 yr-old
stretch gets him up and over and down and in, call-
ing his tenor note across the earth's interior. Echo and I.
Now a big welt across the English midlands,
a round depression at Odessa, and part of Poland's
chipped away. (I know I must save the world from Beau
but my discipline is undone by the lovely conceit.)
One night I find myself embracing my Kathryn and
allowing myself to be embraced and to be blissed
by the beauty of my life today. Our hearts swell
together. Out from our feet Beau rolls the globe
away.

The windy thing about fathering
is the having to do "The Groucho"
When my son is released from his
playpen on to the New York sidewalk,
his little feet pump in sprint-time.
Winded, I run with him and the jumping blood.
I run with my head as near as can be to his.
I want the vibrational joy!
(right response is rest.)

My x and y axes are put to a test:
I must run to keep up
and do the long-strided
sweep of "The Groucho"
to get down.

2/17/08

Tired of reading Macauley's England, I
followed the air at sundown. The older I
get, the more it's about the air.  .  .  How
extremely divine, the Tahitian air, as I stare
at the darkening cove. I must share my ap-
preciation.
— Are you from here?
I grope in English to the Polynesian girl
cleaning my room, at the tub.
— No, not here - from Raiatea.
She answers guardedly. She seems twenty-
two.
— I know it.
I say and pronounce it back to her. Then I
act out how beautiful the air feels to me here.
Now she smiles bashfully dropping her head
into the bathtowels she holds at her bosom.
Where have I seen this feminine grace, this
supreme law of serene acceptance in a face?

In the paintings of Gauguin. The blues drew
Paul to the South Pacific, but this is what
held him the rest of his life.