december

yarrow stalks —

donning dainty snow hats

"thicket"

"water's edge"

"rainy road II"

"Aware" by Denise Levertov

When I found the door

I found the vine leaves

speaking among themselves in abundant

whispers.

My presence made them

hush their green breath,

embarrassed, the way

humans stand up, buttoning their jackets,

acting as if they were leaving anyway, as if

the conversation had ended

just before you arrived.

I liked

the glimpse I had, though,

of their obscure

gestures. I liked the sound

of such private voices. Next time

I'll move like cautious sunlight, open

the door by fractions, eavesdrop

peacefully.

― Denise Levertov

_ _ _

sun-[melt]-down

А Вам я Небо напишу, 

И званый бал цветов и листьев, 

И свечи звезд не погашу – 

Ведь в сказке нужен свет их истин. 

Нужны надежды и мечты, 

Скользящие по глади пруда, 

И дар любви и красоты – 

Хотя бы маленькое – чудо. 

Еще – часы переведу 

На много дней назад и в вечность! 

― Уджал Ахвердиев

"same different blue"

"different, like you."

.

"soon or later, different scares people."

"off the path"

fall-[in'] prints

"red leaf"

of all the colourful leaves on the ground a young couple fell in love 

with precisely this one, eagerly took it with them right after I had a single shot, 

and not before kindly asking if I would be keeping it, to myself. "of course, not," 

was my answer, "eternity has it now." the earth blushing. I smile.

"forest"

eternity bound

innate blind 

eyes wide shut

an un-fathomable love pass-

age footsteps fresh in the dust

a room with no exit

I enter, and stay

"skeletal"

"vortex"

"woolgathering"

"God told me if I painted it enough, I could have it."

― Georgia O'Keeffe

after all this time

after all this time of

gold wheel spinning
treading silk yarn in

fancy dream-knitting

woolgathering

the spool in my hand is bare

my bed ― empty

 and I still wonder, what if?

what if I had pricked my finger

let it bleed, then what?

what then, love?
.
can you live twice
the same dream?

The old barn

"I don’t believe a person has a style. What people have is a way of photographing 

what is inside them. What is there comes out."

― Sebastião Salgado

ripe cherries

June solstice ―
e11even doves in the cherry tree

its branches swayed by heat
splintered light-

brea[d]th of wings, slender dreams
and ruddy-ripe cherries

_ _ _

Happy full-moon Solstice!
Welcome Summer 2016!

linden blossoms

oh, this heavenly scent of lindens blossoming ― 

how cherished now, what once was taken for granted

the walks of May

divergent diversion

"The mind gets distracted in all sorts of ways.

The heart is its own exclusive concern and diversion."

― Malcolm de Chazal

traffic

"To have an inner life, to think, to juggle and leap, to become a tightrope walker
in the world of ideas. To attack, to riposte, to refute, what a contest, what acclaim.
To understand. The most generous word of all. Memory. To retain, a geyser of felicity.
Intelligence. The agonizing poverty of my mind. Words and ideas flitting in and out 
like butterflies. My brain a dandelion seed blown in the wind."

― Violette Leduc

"this [stair]well is CLOSED"

scribble[s]

"Life, yes, life without sheets of paper to be scribbled on, was a masterpiece."

― Violette Leduc

"Leica"-sticker

Vertical reverb :
an un-pr0verbial v0rtex [0f mind], 0r this

preverbal v0id 0f mine . . .
0vertly present?

"fall to pieces"

"All means are impediment. Only where all means fall to pieces, encounter happens."

― Martin Buber, I and Thou

on a sunny winter day, in march

flowers! for you

"the encounter"

"every morning"

"Every morning

I shall concern myself anew about the boundary

Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No

And pressing forward honor reality.

We cannot avoid

Using power,

Cannot escape the compulsion

To afflict the world,

So let us, cautious in diction

And mighty in contradiction,

Love powerfully."

― Martin Buber, Power and Love (1926)

Stained Glass

"The Thou encounters me by grace — it cannot be found by seeking. 

But that I speak the basic word to it is a deed of my whole being, is my essential deed."

― Martin Buber

Spring in the city

in-verted
upside-down s/tree/t
an ominous sky gripped
in the barest
arms of a tree

vert-tical cliffs
dust glass steel
three subterranean limbs
webbing in
a piece of heaven?

that, too
is not what it seems
but a palimpsest of spring
in an intro-vert self-
absorbed city

I cross blindfolded

_ _ _

"To speak is to not see. 

So all speech is to some extend blind."

― Jacques Derrida

The Starry Sky . . . (Lars Gustafsson)

The starred sky, the fixed stare of the galaxies.

The universe stubbornly upholding enormous distances

against our just-as-eager strivings to see the world as small,

possible to survey, trafficable for signals and observations.

Quantum logic in physics and chemistry.

The same thing: matter's obstinate refusal to be 

       anything but probabilities,

shadows that sweep over distant cliffs at sunset,

sudden gusts that run through a single aspen in the grove

   and leave it almost still.

And our stubborn eager battle for a substance,

for particles, individualities, things that refuse to 

        exist in the physical world.

This world of distances and shadows

and random leaps between the spectral lines,

this frighteningly still dance

is what I mean

by the world's stillness before Bach.

― Lars Gustafsson, from The Stillness of the World Before Bach

(1936 - 2016)

_ _ _ 

Sunday sermon

Bare tree

In the bare limbs of a tree

there is certain irrefutable
[and deceptive] clarity ―

the eye piercing the stark
crisp-clear scenery

supposedly defeating blindness
believing in seizing the s/tree/t view

in its entirety ― free
of the exuberant burst of spring
lush blossoms, birds and bees
the idle chatter of summer leaves
eager butterfly wings
ripeness that swell
bejewelling the branches in gold,
soon to be stripped down
by the first frost, vanish in a blast
of a sudden winter squall, as if
nothing . ever . existed ―
if not for this inseparable
frame-sequence along the blue 

string of seasons ―
[incessant ancient love]
by which we live

upside-down s/tree/t (2)

upside-down s/tree/t

Moonrise

"We dance round in a ring and suppose,

But the Secret sits in the middle and knows."

― Robert Frost

White orchid

. . . "Perhaps at certain heights

questions and answers are exactly the same."

― Roberto Juarroz, from The answers have all been used up.

"each word changes"

. . . "And there's no hour,

not the most promising or lucid or impartial,

not even the hour that brings no announcements of death,

that can equalize reflections,

adjust distances

and make the same words

say the same thing."

― Roberto Juarroz, from Each text, each word changes

patched [multi]verse II

patched [multi]verse

(after Victor Vasarely)

blind[s]

"How you die out in me:

down to the last

worn-out

knot of breath

you're there, with a

splinter

of life."

― Paul Celan

: f[r]ame

f[r]ame : un-fathomed f[l]ame : fam[in]e