Clambering Toward The Silence

I found
a very small
piece
of myself
clambering
toward the silence
at the edges
of life –
out
along the places
where desolation
has come to be
the lay
of the land.

There should
have been
no one there;
and yet,
it was
strewn all
about with bodies
and heaps of decay.
Who knew?

I came here to
lament the lunacy
of the city –

the madness of
the dwellers of
concrete and macadam.

They have taken
to passing a motion;
taken to passing
an unbridled act
of desperation.
An act of greed,
and of planning,
and of drilling,
and of blasting away
along the
edges of my Delaware –

among the basin of
our River and of
our very future and
the future of our Sister
Water.

She winds her way
along, and through
and among the land
and the villages that
have nestled themselves
on her banks
for countless ages –

Ages Unto Ages.

The echoes of the
thousand, thousand
voices
of time
carry themselves
across
her surface,
across
her skin,
across
the flesh
feeling ripples of her
dank and aroma’d shores.
First, mud,
then fish,
then shell,
then weed,
then mud, again.

Oh, my sick and
sordid love
of this ambient measure
of what it means to
be a man could soon
come to an end.
Would that others
would speak their
affair with
the earth, with
the rivers, with
the sky herself.
But, no. In the
place where silence
should tender the
art of wooing enamor-ment
it stands instead against
the affair of the soul
with matter.

What man shall stand,
what woman proclaim
the madness of greed
for more? In the end,
it shall all
be undone.

Time and the
whirling passage
of its core of
ebbing upheaval
will break apart
the matter
of who we are.
Barons will be
given to entropy
and decay as will
the pen, and heart,
and voice of this
unknown poet.

But, oh
the solemn risk we run
of coming to our
falling apart
in a wasteland of
disarray and toxic
calumny exposed.

Would we should
come undone amid
a beauty of resplendent
glee; a bliss we
follow – like a thread –
to the ground from
which we have come.

A Loon Cries

There is a deep sadness -
a cello in the heart -
that plays, and plays, and
plays itself out -
a river of tears
and woes
without end.

There is a note of sadness
even in the most
joyous moment.
It is all that distance. It
is the sadness of moving
away - of separation.
It is the recognition of
contraction, of making
the invisible
visible.

A loon cries and wails
its call of love across
the surface of the waters and
we, somehow, cock our heads
to the side and feel the
space open in the top
of our heart and we feel
a sad joy. The water there
is dark and the moon, the
moon is bright and full.

Sad Oak

I have stood here

for decades, for centuries.

I have felt that river wrap

her arms around my roots,

around this dirt

and then recoil - curving

and cutting in straight and

crooked lines.

I have watched her children

come and go.  I have watched

the First People - the Lenapi -

plant fish from her banks and feed

off the wild berries that push up

on her shores.  I have watched

the General and his men push

off from her edges and travel

by night to surprise their own

countrymen - foreigners all of them.

I have watched the farmers take

silt from her banks to till into

their crops, learning the craft

of fish planting from the naked ones.

I have watched the new ones

dump hot colored liquid into

her blood and make her cringe -

giving up her harvest of fish.  I

have watched these new ones

tame her and prod her with

concrete and asphalt, thinking

they could persuade her from

the rising she does with such pleasure

and rhythm.  I have watched

as the people have forgotten to

make offerings to her - asking

her blessing; forgetting to enter

her with love and abandon.

The turkeys, they have pulled back.

The deer have all but stopped coming.

The naked ones are gone altogether.

What will happen to her?

Of late, she does not smile

when I throw my acorns to her and

drop my leaves on her.  She used to

laugh when I tickled her with my

colored and dying hair.  Now she is silent

and I fear for what will come next.

My roots - my own roots - who have

clung so simply to the dirt that is

her banks, have soured.  Pieces of

me die as I drink her poisoned draught.

I am dying from her, from the one

who has been my life, my sweetness,

my health.  I am dying from her waters.

That she does not talk to me

has made me sad.  Where has she gone?

What has become of my thunderously

tender Delaware?  Why does she

get so very bone dry?  Why does

she not laugh as she lifts the debris

of life, carrying it to another place,

to another people?

I miss this woman, so strong

and so soft.  I miss the caresses

she gave me.  Her silence has

deafened me and I do not

care if I go on to see another people.

I do not care if I grow another limb.

Her silence has made me still.  And,

it is not the stillness I enjoyed after our

sister wind had forced me to swing and

dance and clamber.  It is the stillness

of being ill.

I have watched so much.  I have

watched too much.  I too must grow

silent, grow still, grow sick

and die.  My time has come and

I am sad.  I do still hope

that the naked ones will return.  I do

still hope that someone gains their wits

and cleans up her banks and makes her

waters pure to drink – again.