Janus Poem, or That Truth Has Never Left Us

A door spins on granite dais, gateway
     from nothing to nothing,
          the plenary gate

made from lodestone -- what passes its field
     the aperture attracts,
          assumes.

All the maps mark this hinge
     as start and end, the summation
          of navigators' work:

for here the compass points to itself
     in a spaceless labyrinth,
          the door a mystery and a trap

blind and exitless.
     Thus we swivel through
          to the void elusive,
       
illusive, and invisible
     that, though empty, fills us.
          And as with time
         
we have our lives inside it,
     though for all our charting
            we have fallen into both --

duration and the living-gate,
     an absent place
          turning cloaked in the universe.




 
     What flies around the gate
           is the wind elusive,
illusive, and invisible --
     we cannot keep hold of it,
          but it carries us through
and, as with truth,
we have our lives inside it.

Cricket for Cricket's Sake

In the case of a cricket
keeping house in my coffeepot
I am impatient. Its chirping is a language
so inflected with sameness
that its legs, tireless, sing day-long arias
in the same tone.
My own tongue is variable,
and my own, and I do not speak it
to insects. Why then such insistence
on its own terms, cricket for cricket's sake?

Janus Poem

discord inky tarantula gate

Portrait of the Young Buddha

Siddhartha leaves the baths
ashine with jasmine oil
and jewels, seeking Yasodhara

as she asked. His feet,
like silk, are tender
and he walks tenderly.

Opening the lotus vines,
curtains to her rooms,
the prince offers his wife

a chilled mango.
She thinks his hands
well-shaped, golden,

finer than the fruit.  
With twin-lotus palms
she cups his forehead,

orchard of bliss,
to kiss away an eyelash
fallen dead on his cheek.

He blushes. Her lie uncaught,
he remains unawakened
and she has him yet.

Armature

How an arm lives, brown arm
ending in a hand
(pencil extending the fingers)

how the ligatures of this arm, its binding
tissue and gristle
amble along the bone

how the arm's lines blend
barrel shape with tensility
(hard pencil so foreign)

how a limb, by bend and stretch,
plows into all dimensions
grasping, grasping.