French revolutionaries guillotined God at Cluny, but He exacted
His tithe all the same: one-tenth of their bad ideas tossed back
at them. The tyranny of terror, cheap dream of heaven, in ruins.

A vast emptiness swamps the nave; stumps of pillars stained black
and gray and black again by age and rain and blood. Only one tower stands intact. I scan the burnished hills behind it; they do not look back.

“The birth throes of liberty,” cried Thomas Jefferson. “Rejoice!”
Despots toppled; authority crippled for a future that never comes.
Terror and waste; waste and terror. The desolation of faith.

On the tiny town square, a high-tech bistro beams. Lights
surge behind the bar, sending out distress signals of the mind:
the throb of synapses firing wildly in the wind. Material infinity.

Old men saunter in to down a beer, and harness their dogs under tables.
Parents and students slurp pricey shots of caffeine. Emancipated energy.
Above the din, they cannot hear the Earth’s foundation crack.

Freedom leaves a sacred void in its wake, watered by the blood
of worldly martyrs. On the menu: égalité, fraternité, fissure and ruin.
Thunder in the hills. Words crash around us like cannonballs.

Liberté lingers outside in the municipal lot. A van propped up
on wooden blocks for the night. No hassles, man. Free parking.
Let’*******another beer to Robespierre. His dog strains at its leash.

bright floral bonnet
young lovers nuzzle, silent
Eros' kiss; first blush

Darkness devours the gibbous moon.
Its final sliver shivers in the freezing void.
Pockets of pock-marked light spill out of dusty craters.
Prints from space-age boots deface iconic astronaut signatures.

Colonies of phantoms have settled on the surface.
They sacrifice stars in elaborate rituals of absolution,
then aimlessly amble in circles around the circumference.
They squeeze water from recalcitrant rocks.

In darkness they decline to speak to one another.
Mutely, they await the daily rebirth of solar flares.
The moon generates nothing on its own. Cosmic
passivity mimics social order. A fiery Logos descends.

I follow the droppings-dappled sheep trails of Exmoor, veering right
toward the hills. A ***** white flock nuzzles the close-cropped
ground, but gnaws only humid air. In the dim light of evening,
a presence looms on the uneven horizon: the world of my
future and former selves, fitfully revealed and obscured,
first liberated from, then confined to the clinging veil of illusion
that clutches the dark English countryside, legacy of my birth.

I detect through the flattened corona of the monarch moon
outlines of a troupe of Shakespearean ghosts tottering my way.
Revealed and obscured, like questions in Hamlet's tragedy, they
mime the news of my heritage and inheritance: sin and ambition,
deception and pride. Emptiness reigns within me like a ruthless
queen, ****** and shorn, painted an otherworldly white: Elizabeth.

All this once would have been enough, but the soaked smell
of sheep reminds me I am still alone. No one comes to England
for solace or comfort. Yet the recipe for lasting identity, for a
significance of self, abides in the dark hills of Exmoor, launched
from sodden sheep trails, trammeled by a gaggle of ghosts who
juggle the jewels of Elizabeth's crown, sparkling in fog before me.

Supersensible residue of sound
      reverberating within
the waves & waves & waves of consciousness

reflective laughter flashing
          in the depths of eyes

upon the precipice's edge
          the Absolute folds in on itself

One hand in a field of diamonds,
the other slopping pigs.
You are neither star nor earth,
as Rilke would have it. You are
always in medias res, always
on the way, thrown into the world
toward some dark horizon.

Never settled, never open,
never easy, never found.
Truth eludes you like a fugitive.
Your will evades everything
but pride. You run toward sunrise,
a being-unto-death. Now hisses
In a still small voice: then.
Here means elsewhere, there
means nowhere.

Turn back into the void. It taunts
you, tightens its grip on your gut,
spews smoke in your face.
You eat despair, regurgitate fear.
Where Titans swagger, you scurry
toward safety. You keep searching,
one hand in a field of sapphires,
the other trailing God.

My father’s legacy dies within me.
I carry his book of rules like a coffin with no lid.
A long, grey, wooden rectangle
Full of admonition and praise,
Phrases spilling out like stones
Splashed with symbols and ciphers.
Stones stacked to heights below my grasp,
Staging the play of ancient axioms:
Do, don’t, resist.
Ahead, the future, rife with signs:
Go, stop, resist.
Resist the emptiness of death,
The ephemera of memory.
Carry stones like sins.
Pray for mercy, forgiveness.
Carry his legacy like iron
In the soul.
Weight of sorrow and disbelief.
Weight of anguish and grief.
Nothing dies within me.

Two glaciers that once kneaded the neck
of this tiny tourist town have bled
into the mountain -- now twin rivulets of ice
ambling aimlessly up the rocky, grey *****.
Robbed of its tourist prize, the town shrinks
like snow in the scalding sun.
I have not come for the snow nor the ice,
but for the warm-blooded Alpine splendor,
which cannot recede from this isolated valley.
The ghosts of glaciers haunt my path up the hills
into the belly of these bulky peaks, cemented to the earth
like pillars of stone sculpting themselves.
Tourists must settle for such shrunken beauty,
still as intoxicating as new wine.

How many times have I poured heavy cream from a squat wooden bowl
onto a fiery batch of raspberries --- the glory of this medieval
Swiss village of Gruyeres? How many times have I trod its cobblestone
streets, smooth stones scuffing my shoes, stones that fit like
molars in a jaw bone-- polished by millions of soles?

How many times have I spied a ***** blur the road, like an
atom split in fusion? Only once, today: an orange-red body,
windswept ears, toothsome snout, black-tipped tail, torpedo straight,
a rudder perfectly fixed on one course only: Elsewhere.

Repetition is the maker of travel, the reinstantiation of
the essence of our experience, each piece yearning to grow
into a medley with others. Only an on-key tune can capture
the elan vital of belonging nowhere but in memory. All travel
begs for repetition, for affirmation, for like turns to like.

Zen practices the presence of the now, instantaneous,
paradoxical, vanishing as it appears. Travel practices the Zen
of Zen, deconstructing the present into a precious piece of the past.
Travel recedes to remember tomorrow as yesterday’s promise.

I am back there, not here. I reminisce, reconstruct, relish
the essence of travel as I taste the heavy cream, the tartness
of raspberries, and the afternoon amazement as a ***** crossed
my path -- just as Merwin describes in The *****, his masterpiece.

I look back. His experience gains on me and quickly melds into my own.
His spiritual exercises inspire me. My repetition of them and his incorrigible wanderlust reconstitutes again and again his own timeless poetic reward.

moon white face
fiery red lips
perfect female beauty blooms

The pallid, pure, lemon-colored sky
is no great loss.
You are suffering now,
floating like the dreaded archangel
through the fragrant floral wreaths.

The end of day,
this gentle light upon
the resin-colored hill,
filters through
all threat of sorrow.

You shall be known
tomorrow, it proclaims,
as they are known today --
en masse,
without pretense,
bearing new names.

Diffused rays of ever-brightening light
scoot across the hardwood floor,
pooling on the space where we last lay together.

A long, yellow-pine slat of wood
gleams in the afternoon sun;
a bump of lacquer breaks above the surface.

For eons, we have coaxed each other
into the light, bearing down upon us
in ever-whitening stripes of purification.

Our love becomes the light, seeping through
the dark crevices of our hearts,
scouring the deep recesses of shadow and doubt.

The floor creaks as we glide across it,
hardy survivor of this hundred-year-old house.
Our love creaks as the past thrusts itself into the present.

We cannot grasp it, but we feel its warmth
wash over us again and again. We know
the light of love overcomes all oblivion.

The living hibernate in earth,
feasting on stored layers of fat.
The dead turn restlessly in their graves.

A bear's den lies dark and dank,
cozy enough for three.
Cubs ride their mother's back.

Snow piles on snow, shedding
a winter warmth only the sleeping
can absorb. The dead freeze alone.

Spring breezes to the door,
knocking rocks out of place.
Time to rise and roam.

Time to dream of berries and roots,
gorging on harvests of herbs.
Piling on more layers of fat.

Life spins in a cycle:
eat, sleep, eat again.
Sunshine marks the way.

"Y not"? You say.
Y is a singular fork in the road,
and you always choose
the road less taken.
(You've read your Robert Frost,)
The road less taken is full of beauty,
discovery, adventure and an
unpredictable walking surface.
But you cannot take it.
The more you are tempted to,
the more the road becomes more taken.
You must follow your Y like a Euclidean puzzle.
The fork offers only one tine to you.
The road less taken cannot be taken by you again,
or it will turn into the road increasingly taken.
And your journey by foot will turn trivial and
banal. By taking the road less traveled, you rob
it of its mystique. That, shamefully, stands out as
a mistaken use of this very special road.
Triviality, shame, silly self-indulgence all
mar your journey. Y would you risk it?
Y directs your path like a whirling English
traffic cop. Watch for the telling hand signal.
The one that says, "You, begin." Follow the
lonely tine and be on your way. You will
have traveled the right road, leaving the
less traveled one to its Y-ly mystique.
From here on out, walking in the woods,
when you come to a crossroads,
you will never have to ask Y again.

i have climbed the mountains of the west
massive, endless, and blue
forsaking the common trail so well-known and so well-defined by
cairns painted orange  green  like shrines
rising high and far apart:  forever forward

and i have dug my hands deep into rocky hillsides
to stay upright and have fallen
i have trekked cautiously through smoky forests and snow
always higher, gaining so much ground    steep and sloping
until both air and trees spread thin

and i would stop
to listen to the wind blowing hard through the pines below
clouds would cover me:  they could go no higher
and i would breathe, with my whole body,
the silent serenity of solitude and half-frozen lakes

time had no meaning here; there was but one day always
and in the afternoon it began to rain
silver beads of water, like tiny clouds
froze upon my beard and glasses:
i could not see nor speak

the darkness would grow cold and numb and cover me
a blanket without warmth

the night afforded no apology
i could not be distinguished from it
i do not remember becoming part of it

part of it shivering beneath the stars
shivering into dawn
alone

i could find nothing there but strength    pure and flowing
from within
it was here i built my dream in homage and wilderness
so high above the earth

Circles of rope, white, grey and bilious, squeeze around
Wetterhorn Mountain’s chest, leaving only its angled
forehead in sight. Like the tail of St. George’s fiery dragon,
the clouds sink into stone, ******* down their grip
until nothing is left breathing, until nothing is left. Stone
emits a feeble cry of fear and trembling. The dragon’s
tail squeezes tighter, intent on suffocation -- severe oxygen
deprivation above timberline.  
                                                          
Rain is the Sancho Panza to the mountain’s Quixote;
the circles of Dante’s Hell mirror the clouds’
constant clinging below the pointed, harpoon peak.
You can climb this mountain as in Purgatory, but its path
is polished to a slippery ***** from the clouds’
constant rains: such a dubious, deadly affair. Only St. Georges
persevere here; only the holy ones manage not to stumble
on the bulky, slick rocks.
                                        
Rain is not a baptism, but an ablution.
Rain threatens the clarity of the day. Rain threatens
the clinging of the day to the present. Always, such rain will pass.
Puddles in post holes, precarious ascent to the cloudless light.
Rain clears the path in hindsight but nurtures the future to come
quickly, like cacti with brief, brilliant blossoms.
Let the thorns be your payment for grasping the blooms.

Mephistopheles moans.
His bargain won; now what
to do? What good is a human
soul as vanquished prey?

Faust exults in his superhuman
strength. He holds an unfair
advantage over all other poets.
No drug testing for magic.

He dances with the devil,
cheek to cheek. He swoons
at the crescendo, falls into
his partner's waiting arms.

There is something maniacal
in his character, like arsenic
in a tall, cold glass of water.
He gets drunk on it, gets high.

Who will judge his newest
achievement? Like for like cannot
be found. He stays isolated
in his cold grey cage. No touching.

Freedom breeds creativity,
the force of all masterworks.
Faust settles as a lap dog
for Mephistopheles.

Soulless, the poet wanders
through Dante's circles
of hell. With whom will he
find his place? No place

for his cheapened soul. No
punishment for his fiery
hubris. He forms artist and
audience as one substance,

and applauds himself.
His victory is self-serving,
but he has no human
self to serve. His triumph rings

hollow. He plays the xylophone
on his ribs. The music turns
toy-like and irritating. He has
gone too far. No way back.

yin and yang embrace
feng shui breeds prosperity
dragon roams the clouds
wu wei leads me home

Eternal Now calls
time grasps infinity
all rivers flow upward

Roman thunderstorm crashes
around our ears.
The Forum gurgles gamely
under water.
Rain pelts, ricochets off
slippery stones, shrouded ruins.
History drowns before our eyes.
No road back stands passable.
So let us swim through the ages.

(For Mary Oliver)

In winter much of the living hibernates.
The dead seek out warmth.
Birds sing only in treetops, serenading
the world beyond. Let us soar to it
on the white wings of your poems.

You have said that one day we shall
live in the sky. but our consolation now
is the green earth, draped in snow.
Our footprints fade as soon as the sun burns down.
You left us in brightness. All your poems
embraced goodness, love and light.

A blanket of feathers covers your grave.
Beside them, a silver pen shines,
the instrument of grace. You wrote
more than we could absorb, more
than our mediocre minds could imagine.

You blessed us with the whiteness
of wisdom. We yearn to follow you
and the tree-top birds into the sky.
For now, we must feed on your alabaster
poetry, nature's hidden calligraphy,
spelling out our names.

A wise painter once said to me,
"Make every day New Year's Day;
resolve to start each new day
afresh, full of possibilities."

I retreated to my Stoic cave,
meditating on 2019, and all
its dark, ****** turmoil. I vowed to start
each day fresh in inwardness, beauty, peace.

To love you as myself
is the second highest command.
Yet if I do not know my own dark corners,
how can I take your hand?

You frown, you cringe, you grimace,
all reflected in my face.
You suffer in this bitter world.
How can I not take your place?

On the flat edge of the horizon
a purple-pink glow beckons me on,
across empty fields dusted with snow.
Trees raise their hands in praise
for the end of this day, plump with possibilities.

I have accomplished nothing.
Yet I turn the lathe one last time,
cutting metal, cutting bone,
with a wound too deep to plumb,
too dark to lighten, transfused
with blood that stains the sun.

Sorrow trails me like a bird dog
sniffing out her prey, startling
quail to take flight. I watch them
pass overhead. I am not a hunter.
They are safe to flee, coveys of comfort.

"The world is too much with us,"
Wordsworth proclaimed. I contemplate
his lament, but see no way out.
Ancient faces watch my route --
aimless, famished, still
seeking out transcendence,
still hungry for God.

I embrace the horizon as it bends.
Purple-pink sky leads me on.

The world is a vast library
with seemingly endless time to read.
I know my time is ending, on the brink of the void.
So I stroll the stacks of fiction,
dislodge Dostoevsky's masterpiece,
The Brothers Karamazov, rich in drama,
good vs. evil, and grand, probing ideas.
The book weighs more than my brain.
It weighs on my soul: Who creates
ultimate value in the cosmos, God or man?
Here rises the perfect question to ponder
before gasping into the grave.
I turn the first page and begin.

How many times have I poured heavy cream from a squat wooden bowl
onto a fiery batch of raspberries --- the glory of this medieval
Swiss village of Gruyeres? How many times have I trod its cobblestone
streets, smooth stones scuffing my shoes, stones that fit like
molars in a jaw bone-- polished by millions of soles?

How many times have I spied a ***** blur the road, like an
atom split in fusion? Only once, today: an orange-red body,
windswept ears, toothsome snout, black-tipped tail, torpedo straight,
a rudder perfectly fixed on one course only: Elsewhere.

Repetition is the maker of travel, the reinstantiation of
the essence of our experience, each piece yearning to grow
into a medley with others. Only an on-key tune can capture
the elan vital of belonging nowhere but in memory. All travel
begs for repetition, for affirmation, for like turns to like.

Zen practices the presence of the now, instantaneous,
paradoxical, vanishing as it appears. Travel practices the Zen
of Zen, deconstructing the present into a precious piece of the past.
Travel recedes to remember tomorrow as yesterday’s promise.

I am back there, not here. I reminisce, reconstruct, relish
the essence of travel as I taste the heavy cream, the tartness
of raspberries, and the afternoon amazement as a ***** crossed
my path -- just as Merwin describes in The *****, his masterpiece.

I look back. Merwin's experience gains on me and quickly melds
into my own. His spiritual exercises inspire me. My repetition
of them and his incorrigible wanderlust reconstitutes
again and again his own timeless poetic reward.

My Beloved glides through the room in light.
A flick of her hand, shadows dispense.
Her form beams shapely, vibrant and bright.
One sharp look wilts my world, weak and dense.

She is as fragrant as hyacinth at night.
She turns 'round; my willpower’s spent.
I reach for her arm; she’s fast in flight.
No coquettish flirting to make me wince.

Her inward freedom exposes my plight.
I am lovelorn, hard stricken. No defense.
Rising skyward, she claims heaven, her right.
Living earthbound, I maintain my poor sense.

Still, I yearn for her beauty: heart's light.
My pursuit is authentic. No pretense.

-- For Laura

In the checkout line again behind someone who has forgotten:
her wallet
a photo ID card
cash, check or credit card
an item to purchase
a coupon
her loyalty card
a note to self to not forget
to ask for cash back
forgotten

Ah, how simply the simplest things
turn complex.
Buying groceries is not brain surgery, of course.
If it were, the patient would be dead,

and once the mortician arrived
to collect the body,
the checkout line delayed
even longer.

blue assembly line
dull labor, faceless workers
slaving for robots

I sit ******* the side of my grandfather's bed,
the bed I had envisioned him dying in:
my dreams as a child.

I sit firmly now to watch
the distorted, yellowing image
in the bureau's mirror
begin to matter-of-factly undress:
its long, thin limbs outlined
in ****** reflection.

I delight in contemplating
the angular movements
of the torso and hands.
I delight in the mirror's contagion.

But my face is what truly fascinates me:
lean and intelligent, its protruding,
weak eyes rest astride
a slightly flared, upturned nose.

The mouth and chin's
angles of curvature are defined by
whiskers exploding
into wind-blown strands --
spirals of long, dark,
pubescent locks.

Here the truly primate features
predominate. Simian and secretive,
my face is not my own.

My face speaks of a vast heritage:
the common gift of humankind.
But it is also eternal -- the face of
Poetry and Art -- destined for a future glory.

I peer into the mirror
and think of death as one possessed:
a bearded, pale, thinning face
lingering beside my grandfather's ghost.

1
Shivering, I stand alone
inside a sleepy railway station,
looking for a train that never comes,
watching as my spirit comes undone

From the ceaseless clicking of the clock,
the senseless ticking of the watch
that weighs my body down.

Behold how the mortal earns his fate:
There is always time to wait.

2
No sooner does time expire,
than it rises up to sire
its progeny again.

Shamelessly self-seeking,
it wrecks our days reeking of narcissi.

Gaze into its plate of polished glass
and watch your phantoms pass.

They punched their tickets late.
There is always time to wait.

3
The Flame of Life arrives on a second-class coach.
He eyes me, careful not to reproach my sensibilities.

He comes to cauterize my wounds of time,
but worries I might swoon or mind
the excessive heat.

Perhaps he’s right; I’ll change the date.
There is always time to wait.

1.
Stone castles float high above the moat,
rising in the empty sky.
Colonnades of clouds pummel the shoreline,
but plunder only Time.
The silver lake reflects the face of God.
Forsake its lifeline;
trace its outline in darkness,
then dive, dive, dive
to retrieve your destiny.
The horizon sleeps at the end of the road.
Light turns, but withholds its blessing.

2.

Pilgrims clamber over slick, thick cobblestones,
combing the ruins of history.
They slip, slide and slither back,
only to lose their way.
A baby-faced mountain bends low
to brush a raindrop off a rose.
The rose reddens; the mountain shudders;
and love blooms —even as older peaks,
streaked in early snow,
grind their teeth in envy.
Obey your nature.

3.

A crown of fog settles on the silent village.
Wet cobblestones snake back upon themselves,
pooling castles on the ground.
The road plummets to the shoreline; the horizon weeps for no one.
Light turns; Time tires; and infinity seeps into the soul.
Bruised pilgrims withhold their blessing.
Beneath the love-struck mountain,
a lonely traveler gropes homeward.
Patches of empty sky carry scents of welcome:
There, unbidden, La Tranquille awaits.

— Chaulin, Switzerland.

Time climbs
the sycamores,
seeking a resting place,
a nesting place
to contemplate its passing.
No words can express
the sadness.

Wind whips across
the lawn,
scattering leaves,
slapping trees
for their insolent
refusal to fall.

All directions collapse
into one,
into none
worth following.

We break under the weight
of the void.
It insists on absolute
emptiness.
I am full, a plenum.

This phrase tells no one
the truth.
Words scatter on the wind.
Words crackle in the leaves.

Poets guard ancient
initiation rites.
Mystery settles on the Muse.

Silence burrows underground,
digs for gold.
Only dull ore rises
to the surface.

Flakes scatter on the wind,
disjointed,
clattering
through the sleepy dawn.

Shadows obscure Time
as it exhales
the past.

The future photosynthesizes,
green, green,
with broken
promises.

Time weeps for no one.

Broken limbs, tenuous twigs
snap under
the weight
of a plenum.

Time wrestles the void.

Time is full.
But it’s
cracking.

Sleep eludes me like
a jilted lover.
Eyes shut, ears shut,
craving unconsciousness.
Brain waves break
against the waking shore.
Breathing falters, gasps,
Hiccups in a fitful daze.
Tiredness descends like
the evening fog.
Vision doubles, loses focus,
seeks the unity of dark.
I dream the world
in aching color.
The world dreams back,
a screen of void.
Who can project the emptiness
of calm?
Who can protect the solitude
of rest?
Vertigo ***** the marrow
from my soul.
Pain fills the fissure in my head.
I turn to turn in the ocean
of my bed.
I no longer can go under.
In the shallows, I cannot swim.

The meaning of Eucharist
is not empirical. The bread,
the wine, the priest in his
splendid robes hovering
over the Host. We can see
them, hear them, taste
them, touch them. But
the mystical essence
escapes our senses.
It is accessible, revealed
only to faith.
Faith encounters the body
and blood of Christ
in glory at the altar.
Faith beholds the bread
and wine transubstantiate.
A daily miracle, hidden
from the unbelieving,
the unenlightened. Faith
fuses all, makes new
the covenant of Jesus,
who proclaimed, "This do
in remembrance of me."
The bread is tasted and chewed;
the wine is sipped and swallowed.
Our body remembers, but
only when informed by faith,
the pinnacle of the unempirical.

Jeffers’ poetry is as hard as bone,
His windswept lyrics fed by his dark side.
At Carmel, he built a tower of stone.
Wind, sea and storm fostered his rugged pride.
On nature’s fiery force, his skills he honed.
His message bleak, from which he could not hide,
Foretold an elemental strife alone.
He wrangled roan stallions only few could ride.
His wide-winged hawks over the waves would moan.
He joined their wildness with soul open wide.
His poems made me yearn for his coastal home.
Nothing human-made would pull the tide.
His poetics read: Etch your heart in stone.
A Zen he practiced till the day he died.

Wordsworth tends his daffodils; Coleridge rhymes.
Rydall Water circles, slow in the rain.
The poets compete -- friendly, over time.
Coleridge finds ***** eases the strain.
Each writes beautiful verse of his own kind.
Wordsworth favors daily speech, spoken plain.
Coleridge bows at imagination’s bright shrine.
Wordsworth’s sister, with them, divides the twain.
Her journals paint the joys of simple climbs,
Or walks through the fields: Dove Cottage awaits,
Awash with white walls; moss-dappled sides
Of the roof. Inside, Lyrical Ballads proclaims
That the power of Art will outlast time:
The Romantics shall never be put to shame.

(After Anne Sexton's "The Starry Night")

Van Gogh's "Starry Night"
illumines a damaged heart.
Poetry remains therapy
until the patient is cured.

Pulitzer Prize, parties, men
and accolades galore.
Anne Sexton, the poets' darling,
dances to the darkening sky.
This is how you want to die.

This is how the world ends:
without swirling stars,
without a crescent moon,
stuck alone inside your garage,
door closed, car running.
Inhale the aroma of the blackened night.

knowledge aims at pride
wisdom seeks humility
mind awakes in light

1.
Framed by a well-worn,
wooden windowsill,
we peer down on Purgatory
from our hotel perch
high above the restless shores
of Lake Como.

Behemoth slabs of marble
hang in limbo: rough-hewn
bodies awaiting their savior —
the divinely appointed sculptor
to chisel away the sins of their world.

Reflected in the window’s wavy glass,
the ghost of Michelangelo
glides past — an aging slave to beauty —
humming an Italian hymn to Venus
in syncopated rhythms.

He whispers that the stone
comes from Carrara,
carved out of ragged mountainsides,
carried down muddy, makeshift roads,  
crated onto misshapen barges,
then barreled down the Arno River.

Last stop: Firenze.

2.
In his hands, marble beams
as the body of the beloved,
draped in splendor and light,
draped in radiant form — form
of the sculptor, not the sculpture;
of the master, not the slave.

Beneath the rock-rough surface
of his métier, his soul
struggles to emerge from stone,
rising in rapture toward the divine,
rising on wings of beauty,
rising on wings of desire.

In his hands, marble melds into a mirror
of the making mind.
He levitates, an embodied ideal,
rising higher, ever higher,
toward his immortal beloved —
yearning to be made real,
to be made flesh,
the “coarse and savage bark”
of the artist’s first art.

3.
We come late to all
high lofty things,
he wrote.

And so we peer at the pit of Purgatory,
into its dissonant, disturbing discovery
that art cannot save,
that art cannot rightfully claim the artist’s life,
that art cannot breach the infinite reach
of divine love.

What happens is what is real;
but what is real is what we make happen.

The only choice, then: to go down, down, down into stone;
down into the blood-stained marble;
down into the rough-cut corners of regret.
Inconsolable, sculpture crumples into dust.

First, the patina falls away,
then appendages and organs —
everything but the sightless sea-surge
of skin, the seamless sanctuary
of pagan heroes and gods.

4.
The ideal — immensity, enormity, infinity —
ignites in unrequited desire. The heart strains in vain
to bear the weight of stone.

In Purgatory’s pit,
the master stumbles:
art cannot save him.
The body of his beloved crumbles.

Chiseled above his tomb:
Ripeness is all.

silver sea recedes
pink horizon plunges
black boulders full frontal

I thirst fiercely in the desert;
I spy oases in the sky.
I've come to the edge of Mosaic Canyon.
There's nothing to drink
but the surface of stone.
I try licking the tiny pools
of rain water filling cracks
in the boulders.
But they, too, are illusions
packed tight below the sky.

If I could survive on colors, I would
be sated. Reds, browns and tans.
A subtle gray graces the front
of the stone where I sit.
I must try to **** it dry.
Foolishly, I set out hiking
without my water bottle.
Now I hallucinate streams
and gullies in the sand.
I can't go on; I must go on.

Cirrus clouds swirl around
palm trees. Camels linger
at a bubbling pool, settled
on their knees. Cold water
spills from their gnarled mouths.
They have forgotten nothing
to survive. I have forgotten
everything. Soon I hear
my name being called.
It echoes down the canyon.

I stumble backward, ankles
slanting on the stony path.
All along, I keep my eye
on the sky. The vision never
wavers, only intensifies.
The canyon walls box me in.
I cannot catch my breath.
Behind me, my wife calls
and calls me to safety.
In her hand, a cup of cold water.

The yellow cross
beams out white rays,
splayed into splotches
of orange red.

The blue edges bloom,
soothing, But deep inside,
I am color blind. No
harmonious hues will do.

Discord haunts me like
a ghost at its grave. My
promise is waxing; my
life a pale gray.

I will die by my own hand,
despondent and betrayed.
But before my misery ends,
I will cling to the yellow cross.

purple clouds swirl
in calligraphic patterns
no one dares mention soul

rivers of ice melt
from our vast carbon footprint
greenhouse gases ****
we must exist without coal
centuries of history
point to our eternal shame

orange dragon clouds
swirl in the dusky, baroque, winnowing sky
the once brilliant day dies within me
I cling to a rocky pinnacle        alone
one more step and I will laugh
my way toward heaven and
count the teeth of mountains
empty space my only confidante

The orange-pinkish horizon slips
into the silver sea.
We sit side by side
reading.

Soon night slides into place,
infinite in scope.
I take your hand,
squeeze it gently,
as if to say,
"I am still here. I am not lost
in this book, but
am ever present to both
you and its pages."

You squeeze my hand back,
as if to say,
"Yes, I know."

The moon disappears behind clouds.