Taxi Ride from O’Hare Airport to My Hotel On the ride into Chicago from the airport I got into an off-license cab without realizing it until it was too late. It slowly began to dawn on me as I looked around and there was nothing you’d see in a regular cab—no meter, no license, nothing… Continue Reading »
She said, “Your way of seeing is neither allusion nor the way things ‘really are’ but what remains of the encounter of what is and your way of seeing it—what is immediate as well as what radiates out in all directions—the inert bursting into light, light embodied–the inter- penetration of the divine with what it… Continue Reading »
The life I should have lived I did not live. What I should have done I did as if frozen in midstep. I did next to nothing and what I did I did half-hearted— a snowflake disappearing into the black surface of a lake— for an instant luminous just as the clouds are, passing overhead. Continue Reading »
Frozen in the frozen washes of space bits of silver detach and spread across the sky like starfish in a black batik. Chalky blue shadows, the milky haze of silks and red wine, the moon’s stippling light, her bright red hair swimming in the bath. A blanket of embers reddening the room— shards of light,… Continue Reading »
If it was ever so, it is true no longer. The night is like a glass of water– those who treasure it most are the ones in flames. Continue Reading »
One Ought to Love Only Once Mate me with a virgin who will love her nest. —Ancient Greek Prayer I. In sleep her fingers grab my forearm— her life apart, her emotions more intense than mine. In the morning with her back to me, she sits up on one forearm and discovers herself in the… Continue Reading »
Waiting for a Cab When the music ended, it did not end.—Tilo Ulbricht The cellist leans back, her eyes closed, sways, her naked arms and slender black dress, her fingertips sliding up and down the strings, her other hand pressing into the wood— then a snap and she curls her body in upon itself, as… Continue Reading »
I. Who we are and who we’ll become are only known when we become them— the way mother-of-pearl is visible only after you’ve broken open the shell. II. Late Afternoon in the Gift Shop of the SFMoMA Looking at a Book of Allen Ginsberg’s Photographs Nothing is better for being eternal nor so white as the white… Continue Reading »
Crawling Out from Under Life is one long process of getting tired.—Samuel Butler What was actually seen and heard persists in memory, rising out of darkness unexpectedly, but how often the world remains silent or responds in a puzzling way or as random noise. Then the stage empties and we can’t even be certain any… Continue Reading »
It’s difficult to walk against the wind through the emerald and pearl shadows even though there’s nothing to it. Our first summer in Boulder we ate in this meadow 31 years ago. In any number of summers I’ll be dead. Continue Reading »