Seemingly seamless

Telluric entanglement

"To write a text" (Roberto Juarroz)

"To write a text

and leave it abandoned on the page.

Not to read it again,

nor to show it to anyone,

not to send it anywhere.

Let it remain the text's repose.

And let it find its reader there,

as all texts find their readers.

Even the text we carry written inside

that seems impossible for anyone to read."

― Roberto Juarroz

St. Petka

"How can one love otherwise than in this finitude?"
― Jacques Derrida

Temple lights

Ominous

The trees aflame ―

an ominous sign of winter

looming in;

because I have learnt
to know

Wisps of wind
I see engilded leaves
twirling down ―
an ominous sight of winter
looming in

I close my eyes
hear rain in the distance
sense the imperceptible;
after all these years I know
what's next

"ignis fatuus"

“I exist in two places, / here and where you are.”
― Margaret Atwood

Sunday vigil

“But what can be done, the one who loves must share the fate of the one he loves.”

― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

Aberration

Portal

"The mirror is, after all, a utopia, since
it is a placeless place. In the mirror, I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal,
virtual space that opens up behind the surface; I am over there, there where I am not,
a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself
there where I am absent: such is the utopia of the mirror. . . .

But it is also a heterotopia in so far as
the mirror does exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position
that I occupy. From the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence from where I am
since I see myself over there. Starting from this gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me,
from the ground of this virtual space that is on the other side of the glass, I come back
toward myself I begin again to direct my eyes toward myself and to reconstitute myself
there where I am. The mirror functions as a heterotopia in this respect: it makes this place
that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real,
connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order
to be perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there."

― Michel Foucault, from "Of Other Spaces"

Vortex

Boundary Bay

_ _ _

Daybreak

How sweet

O, how scrumptious-sweet this season's apples
picked by hand from heavy branches bowing down

and how bitter-fowl in a month or two
if left uneaten

Basketful of apples

Out of sight ― a basketful of apples ―

imagined in my lap. 

Blind be_Fall_en

rose bereaved, blind be-
fallen by Sun's departure

Happy Autumnal Equinox!

Welcome Fall 2015!

At the old table

At the root

I acquire Grandmother's eye-

glasses wrapped in a handkerchief
place them on the old
kitchen table, watch them gaze 

at what she might have seen last

(with) her heart weakening

a wavering light abruptly quenched

some thirty years ago ―

through an open-wide window
a black bird in flight

a bare upside-down tree

planted in heaven by winter

dreaming of spring

to invert /

What's left behind

We will gather again

at the old grandfather's table

as an ancient thread-

bare hand leads [me] forward

whence I came ―

By the grace of our age
and the blessing of an earnest soul
this does not end here
not now, not yet
(except the pain)

Constellation

raindrops on a rose leaf ―
heaven at the root

Figs

(to my Grandfather)

One by one, seeds between my teeth

a handful of sapid figs straight from the tree —

melliferous drops sticking to my fingers

burning my lips, nature's goodness

biting my tongue —
.

Thank you, Grandfather!
Seldom are the things
you left behind, mostly rubbish

piling in the barn — rusted century-
old farming tools, twisted metal, warped wood
under decades of black dust) barren fields
once lavish-green, bent heavy with crop
tirelessly worked from dawn to dusk —
these are not
what have you remembered daily, but the promised
house you built from the ground —
a beating heart-h for the lives of others to happen
the laughs, the sorrows, the many
fruit-bearing trees you planted —

apples cherries pears plums

vines laden with clusters of crazy-sweet pearls
that one fig tree in the corner by the fence

reminds me of you, Grandpa, with fondness
as I pick a fig, fill my palm with season's ripeness
taste the heavens in my mouth, at the root
today tomorrow
each day at harvest I bow to you
and say: Thank you!
.
(and to myself: It's time. You must start planting.)

Well-nigh th[r]ee

Morning Glory

petals to feathers

ruffled like lace — a quaint sun-

flower raising head

Arcane presence

This place

This place
I will [re]call upon arrival : august

in the shadow of a blazing sun-
flower steeped in saffron
serendipitous dawn ―
unrequested unannounced
quietly expected evermore welcomed
then and there, laconic sun rises in earnest
above a hazy lush-green cornfield
sinks in a palm of dust
tossed over a wavering mountainous sea
and behind my shoulder
.

there! ― so far away as to forget my fear
of not ever turning back

"These are the days that must happen to you."
― Walt Whitman

Every now and then

Every now and then
I weep at the sight of a sumptuous
daylily in tears ― rejoicing in the quick
unexpected evermore welcomed
mid-august rain

"The Stranger Stumbles on Himself in the Stranger" (Mahmoud Darwish)

We are one in two /

There’s no name for us, woman, when the stranger

stumbles upon himself in the stranger. Of our
garden behind us we have the force of shadow. So slow
what you want of your night's land, and conceal
what you want. We came in a hurry from the twilight
of two places at one time, and searched together
for our addresses: Go behind your shadow,

east of the Song of Songs, a shepherd of sand grouse,

you’ll find a star dwelling in its death, then climb a neglected

mountain and you’ll find my yesterday completing its cycle in my

tomorrow.

You’ll find where we were and where we’ll be together,

we are one in two /

Go to the sea then, man, west of your book,
and dive lightly, lightly as if you were carrying
yourself at birth in two waves,
you'll find a forest of water grass and a green sky
of water, then dive lightly
lightly as if you were nothing in anything,
and you will find us together . . . 
we are one in two /
We need to see how we were here, you
stranger, as two shadows opening and closing on what
has been shaped of our shape: a body disappearing then reappearing
in a body disappearing in the mystery of the eternal
duality. We need to return to being two
to embrace each other more. There is no name for us, woman,
when the stranger stumbles upon himself in the stranger!

― Mahmoud Darwish, from The Butterfly's Burden

tr. by Fady Joudah

Under the fire rainbow. Fishing.

"How do you know when it's the right time?"

"Well, you just kind of . . . know." ― he replies.

Linear woolgathering

Forget time, [re]collect love

"The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths."

― Anton Chekhov, Gooseberries and Other Stories

Sunlight replete

This Road, My Road

_ _ _

July's Blue Moon

Some things may have a chance of happening once in a life time ―

perhaps at the sacred hour of a Blue Moon rising. 

Eastbound

upward and onward
goes the sun turning west

and so do I ― incessantly pulled
in the opposite direction
by the stone of the earth
and the depth of a restless heart

toward the sun's inchoation
the nacre of havoc
where a phoenix rises

Restless depths

Yin-yang

"The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable:

through embracing of one of his beings."

― Martin Buber

Bubbly blooms

sunlight
condensed in clumps
of yellow bubbly blooms
skirt the longsome
dusty legs of summer

Floating dreams

"There are mornings in our lives when beauty falls into our hands 

and when that happens, we must do what we can to nurture and protect it. 

That we sometimes fail must never preclude our striving."

― Patrick Lane

Fluid abstractions

                                             in shades of light ~

Water drapery

To frame a flight

Dilemma: frame a flight, or

let it be, and break away, break a-Way

at sunrise.

Rising wings

On the grace of wings

extant dreams [re]turn, raise me a-

bove the orderly

Tis the open Road

Tis the open Road ―

astounding the mere proposition

of distance and destiny merging

in the grace of light