Tag: contemplative poetry

The Dervish and the Wave

Swirling waves, dervish-like in their intent,
divining direction beneath the moon,
the water neither wandering nor sent
but turning, as all turning things must turn
toward some still point the motion can’t explain —
the eye of every gyre a kind of prayer,
where salt forgets itself, freed of its name,
becomes the simple fact of moving: here,
and here, and here. The moon gives no reply.
She keeps her cold and distant office, draws
the deep in rhythms older than the sky
and older still than any naming laws.
So let the dervish and the wave agree:
to spin is not to search — it is to be.

Return to Morning

Hairs in the damndest places—
Sticking out of ears and nostrils,
Sprouting on shoulders too.
Yet suddenly sparse
Upon the summit
Where once the forest stood.

The trees that remain
Fade in color,
yet glisten pure and bright,
Catching light,
the darker growth once swallowed.

The forest thins.
The dome beneath
Opens to sky—
as if return to morning,
the bare crown
lifted toward first light.

Sans Tempo

A note—
E, D, C♯—
held, not going anywhere.

The rose at the window—
petal and spiral,
not in stages.

The notes fall like sand—
broken,
and whole.

Night Reading

The poem finally opened itself:
after readings enough, I saw
how the line broke, why
that word and not another.

The pleasure—self forgotten
in attending, briefly lodged
in someone else’s precision,
language doing its work.

Book to shelf. Poem to page.
The body turns to its ablutions:
water, soap, the day undone.

I glance up at the mirror—
it will not hold image.

Water still running. My hands, still wet, suspended.
The book already distant on its shelf,
the lines loosening, unheld.

The Year Begins Again

The year begins again, before we ask,
arriving as the light does—simply so.
We do not grieve what has passed.

Too few the days, the weeks, the months, the years
still allotted to our keeping.

We do not hold them, nor pretend to save;
we meet the hour as it comes, unadorned,
and give it back in care, as best we can.