Driver's Licence

            Driver’s Licence


I’ll drive you to the Moomin Valley,
let’s celebrate.
Got a red car from my grand uncle,
l’ll drive since I can.
The neighbor cat does not wait
nor should we for a train.
You thought my name’s Sabine?
Hey Snufkin, it rhymes with dinner.
You come for the spring cleaning,
I for the fireplace.
I’ll draw for Ninny, My, Snork and Sniff
the pink sparks of Spring,
and I’ll drive them too,
in blue cutouts
across the yellow plain.

Nocturnal visitor

      Nocturnal visitor


Who lives that life --
a furrowing creature.
Who gets tangled in
the curtain of sleep
and tugs on it
with the heartbeat of a baby.
Who lives that flustered life
of a wild invisibility
of unrecognized squeaking
and passed over scurrying.
A faint wake in the carpet,
its demands unintended
like a vase knocked over
by a ghostly wind.
The feral one, a toll of shadows,
hugging its tail.




----
New title on March 7

"no suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlor;"

     "no suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlor;"


Nothing can travel faster than light.
Except shadows.
Except the perimeter of a comfort zone
in a vacuum transition.

Stories of your life

Spoilers for "Stories of Your Life and Others".




      Stories of your life


Being passed a book over a wall, reaching tall overhead,
a book of firmaments she fell into, or so I dreamed.

Through a city soaked by a punctured reservoir,
the adept of musica universalis travels to the tower.
Crushed with the news that there is no beyond,
she feels cloistered and unreal, and a tower grows in her heart,
a curse of many tongues, that she might never understand.

She drowns herself in the study, and surprised,
she recognizes the shape of words bubbling in her mind,
the rhythms of inner space, the logic of the contrapuntal forms
unfolding into the middle like a snail without a limit.
At her appointment to guide the pupils at the tower,
she can now perceive how their lives intertwine,
and how to tweak their trajectories to maximize
healing, growth, and the happy twinkle in their eyes.

With the insight, she deciphers the divine scheme,
and the angels arrive. She marvels at their octopus-like skill
to dance the eight movements of a symphony, one against two,
one against three, two against three, each pair playing off the other,
a ritual of relation, a form of the ultimate form.
They come for help, and they will have help from us,
they will have been saved. And she is serene, she does not regret
the pained back, and she will choose this day, as she had.

As she learns the angels' langauge, she analyzes life's circle,
the square of the triangle. The Canaanite letters guide muscles,
and the epicycles unroll like budding roses. She choreographs
the movements of the cooking automata, to let the tired folk
rest that bit more at night, with a gratifying nourishment.
She programs toys for little children, teaches kids the letters
as they mold the clay, and the sculptures play music.

The light scatters through the clouds of an abrupt storm.
A kind heart, a joyful ride, a quiet visitation of fallen angels,
a hand grabs one by the edge of a window, the floating in the air,
and she does not ask to give back, but to make your own decision.

not a poem

    not a poem


I write to you because of your blonde, long hair.
I write to you because we never talked.
But I don't write to part the blue sea.
I write to you so I don't guess stories that are yours to tell.
To meet you in the liminal space, at the skin of thought.
To let you step as a novice beside me.

[an offering]

            ***

Relax into the hillside panorama coveted by mist
with the courage of a pine tree, plunge into stillness,
ground the toes with quiet precision,
till the foot is grown over with muscle and moss,
get carried away by the mountain stream
with the lightness of gliding autumn leaves,
inhabit the doe leaping into the stage's legs,
fill the breast with another life, an offering.




---

With some help from D. and M.

riding the elephant

      riding the elephant


The man touched the trunk of the elephant and thought it was a rubber snake.
The man touched the leg of the elephant and thought it was a pillar.
The man thought of the bark that the elephant could eat,
of the roots. Of the crossing of the Alps.
Of the space elephants, cargo starships.
Of the false dawn that wakes you up for a shift.
The man thought of the brain of the elephant,
more transistors than cells in a human,
more dreams than from Scheherezade,
among them, a gentle game.
It's the man's move.
An option, touch the cold descent of his second orbit of Neptune.
An option, celebrate by inviting the woman for a drink in a French cafeteria.
An option, build more units to prop up the economy.
There is time enough
to plant willow trees
and soak in the rain.





---
With help from DSJ.

Earlier attempts for "to plant willow trees": "to plant the seeds", "to sow the tree seeds".