I
The universe
perhaps
curves back
and around.
At twilight my antique WACO biplane
and I lift off
my grass airstrip
To rummage around the Champlain Valley
to be reassured by
Otter Creek the Green
and Adirondack Mountains.
We pursue familiar lines
and circles
for answers
But sometimes it feels like
we could be flying
with existence in reverse.
II
Think of a ball:
it cannot comprehend
or tolerate
the concept of corners.
III
Stephen Hawking
suggests that the elements
dance effortlessly in a cosmos
of gravity and space and time
While we attempt to deal
with events in a world
down here (or up there if you prefer)
that change and keep changing.
IV
Reality and change
are linked like lovers.
If you pretend things won’t ever change
beware of explosions
A big bang
in your face
in your heart
in every presumption
Except if you believe
you possess a spirit
that protects you forever.
But does this spirit
teach you about the curves
and corners
that define your life?
V
Perhaps
memories dreams and fantasies
curve back to some beginning
we might better understand.
It comes down
to decoding
the meaning of change
if it curves
or travels a straight line.
The leaf hesitates then pitches forward
From the ash tree onto my deck and acts confused
Not sure of its way down.
The way it’s supposed to go used up
Bleeding away its rusted roan the green
Of past youth forgotten those carefree
Radiant rash days when age didn’t matter.
Someone called me I think I was shaving.
I can’t even remember who it was.
Something about money something about
How I should send a check how important it was.
I wanted to send busted glass instead.
Colored glass from the beach polished with reality.
There are old and new things to learn.
Like in that epic poem about Gilgamesh and Enkidu.
Would they take on the gods today?
Were they lovers or just inseparable friends?
Shakespeare should have written a play
About their tragedy in ancient Uruk.
I’d like to smell them in battle but my nose is starved.
Max my dog could; he’d understand but wouldn’t tell.
All right I’ll leave now with my brand of dissension.
Maybe join up with that law-abiding leaf
No less confused and try to find my own way
Down to that incorruptible beach
Where driftwood chronicles disordered lives,
Where shells remember former housekeepers,
Where salt swims and tastes time before moving
Out into the universe on its mission to deliver the leaf
He flew airplanes as if he had to
embracing them as lovers
coupling, merging, rising up
from constrained earth,
like a whale from the sea, bursting
flushed with the skies he adored,
He was the father I knew on the ground
but never really above it,
until he asked me before he died
to cremate the hell out of him, toss his ashes out,
pretend he was taking his last breath,
the one he would carry into eternity.
that day noisy in the phone
booth the trucks on the expressway
I called you I did every day
wanted to needed to feel
complete my stunted mind
crippled with immaturity
a bad excuse for my narcissism you knew that
you loved me anyway
what others had to confront
you did when they told you
it was leukemia
gift gift gift wonder
daffodils rich gold yellow the sun
those snappy expectant April mornings
when we can’t conceive of anything
going wrong you took my hand once see
look at this one it unfolds like we do
remember I remember
every spring your expression flushed
you taught me sometimes we’d pull
off the road in the bushes
front seat back seat against the car
the rest of the world abandoned
sleep we shared afterward in bed so many beds
on the floor try to understand you said what’s
happening it’s all right no please I
begged you can’t go how can I live I did
you didn’t every spring I kneel next to one
particular daffodil I say your name today again
I don’t know what to do about the daffodil
When you waited alone through the night
to dream of buffalo and deer
sitting on the terra cotta bluff
you watched the dark winds
dispatch the stars into their sleep.
When you witnessed the dawn arrive
smoky-gray then change to crimson
powder-blue then change to azure,
You understood how the gods cause
the light to spill down into the sky.
Then you became the universe.
Then you became the universe.
I live in Makah country, my brothers, the wind and sea.
The mussel shell carries our song
Across to the April seal migrating north,
Its fur, its meat dark and lean.
The seal waits upon my prayer
To the Creator of Daylight, the One,
Who will decide if we are worthy of the seal
So that he will give himself to us.
The tall forests of the Olympic above us
Hurl down wild plants, medicines and evergreens
Filled with huckleberry, salal berry,
But mostly the great cedar upon which we depend.
My sister Keena walks the summer beach.
The low tide permits periwinkle, limpets, barnacles
And sea urchin; she smiles, her basket filled,
Her harvest from the past, present and future.
When the fish call, my brothers and I
Take our hooks of steam-bent wood
And cherry bark to pull sweet rock cod,
Halibut, the coho, steelhead, and blueback.
We trust in Thunderhead, who beats
His wings into thunder, his eyes into lightning.
When we need his help and that of the One
He carries a whale in his talons to our beach.
Thick rain penetrates the stuffed air
and scrubs it clean.
Every drop has agreed to begin
with two hydrogen, one oxygen atom
in perfect combination,
Free-falling, thirty-two feet per second/second.
They crash onto the deck, vanishing
like spent cells,
Their eloquent lives consumed then vanished.
Look: on the pond, drops bang the surface,
Their craters expanding into circles that flatten out
as if what happened hadn’t.
Others will repeat this behavior, ordained robots
Balancing equations of moisture and temperature,
Fulfilling their responsibility to the constancy
of mathematics.