His Watch

(Dedicated to Richard Wilmarth)

 

And what we see is not our own existence, but earth rotating beneath us.

Visible and expressible         shift      massless mind    line and rotational     air fall

displacement      forms relief    spacializes    river   crossing           light materializes

outside of doubtful frontiers        and       captures       a      chain serpent of   inconsistent

philosophies                     this          acceleration       is a         parabolic     flash-field

 

And in every foot-fall nothing changes — this becomes this again.

 

Collision course with a sycamore tree and a cup of green tea

near the Trident coffee house.

Sweep down workless blue.

Divide moments of unmeasured monotony and know that time

is a serpent: a strange element stuck in hermetic magic.

 

We come out of light and return to light,

with some tiny bit of experience meshed in between.

at some point there is no movement. At some point, time stops.

 

Break down and reflect, receptive moon rule.

Grains link nights and our sleep becomes a protection from life's nightmares.

Snow meals. Tooth meals and the evening room glows.

For good luck, a candle's flame floats in a window nearby and

a bed's white sheet covers a ragged mountain.

 

The transparency of the void to come

is a party

held under a blue

tent of sky.

 

When we fade, we wonder what our thoughts

had

been . . .

but what happens,

is that we give them to someone else.

Sometimes our minds begin to sound

like a piece of cracked porcelain

when tapped by a fingertip.

At others,

as ideas float

a sequence of events,

only possible in eternity.

 

5/3/2003