The Quantumverse
I learned the nightjar
Whip-poor-will
Can sense a soul departing,
Its wing chord
Precedes the darkness –
A nighthawk shadow
Hunting down the light
Like prey.
Does it carry us then
Through the sidereal night
To the end of stars?
Where black as diamonds
Carbon sings its last,
And wings fold tight in a
Last dive past gravity –
Our final compact
With certainty.
“As with dancing you have to learn the steps”
– Jim Harrison (Day Three – 28 Days of Unreason)
Stairs like Rubik’s cube
Dance steps to infinity –
We are amazed
1.
Creosote darkness –
Refineries on the Turnpike
Tannin-colored skies
2.
Year draws short of breath –
Conspicuous consumption
Bright red Christmas lights
3.
Shattered streetlight glass –
Match strikes, cigarettes glowing
Darkness flashes teeth
Every afternoon now
I walk to the corner of 59th
And Madison Avenue
In New York City.
Which is neither
Here
Nor there.
Each time
I ask.
I ask the kebab guy,
The Uber driver,
The delivery man unloading
His truck,
This or that
Woman or man
Waiting for the light.
Of course they can’t hear me.
I ask myself too I guess.
Except I don’t really know
What my question is.
I want the world –
All the kebabs, cars, subway grates –
To make sense somehow.
I want to believe
That maybe one piece
Of life hangs together
With another.
“Everything is connected!”
You, my reader, just replied
In your head.
Of course. I say that too
Every day
In my head.
Why would you accept
Such an easy answer
That means so little?
I’m not interested in Truth.
Really just the kebab guy
And me,
And whoever walks by.
The light on sidewalk
Outside the shoe store.
Sure, OK,
I believe in kababs. I
Probably believe in you
Too.
And not getting run over
In the crosswalk.
That’s good.
Bitter wind scrubs hard
Exfoliates autumn skin –
Orange and yellow leaves
“Why does the mind compose this music well before the words occur?”
– Jim Harrison (Day Twenty-Eight – 28 Days of Unreason)
My salamander mind
Has nestled itself into place
So there it is
Cold-nosed
Like an inappropriate
Dog
There is a hole
In the bucket of hope
And we laughed and sang
As our luck ran out
The night unable to hold
When the rain you heard
Was not the rain you know
Time’s last few drops
In the patter of dust
Our swan meets Nikki Papandreou,
The Greek Olympic diver
Eye to eye and nose to beak
They keep their poise and watch each other
She waddles to the edge of grace
Submerged, he breasts for air
Wings cut through air,
Arms slice through water
How fierce the thrill
That twists as one?
How strong the force
That separates them?
Jackknifed time entangles
Their fall as flight through space
Becomes reunion of bone and skin and
Hand and feather, a merging and emerging
Yet such ecstasy, transgression,
Cannot queen the body long
This body’s reaching out for that
Still point, where rise turns into fall
The ancient moment, amphibian mind –
Zeno’s paradox suspended
A moment free of up, of down, all
Movement frozen in a blue eternity
Conspirators: qbit, sarasouthwest
qbit’s Renga Challenge – Swan Dive
For Jilly’s October Casting Bricks
Our swan meets Nikki Papandreou,
The Greek Olympic diver
Brandishing a cygnet ring
Bargaining with Poseidon’s wave
“Nikki” she laughed, “suburban demi-god.”
“Prove your flipcraft of the Argonauts.”
Oh, Siren, thought he, in the face of her derision
Fifty heroes shall stand and see
A white Medusa, her neck a downy serpent –
“For Lysistrata and the Amazons!”
“Apply the wrench, my lovely wench”
The Golden Fleece denied
Head over heels, they mirror the gods
Unbounded by the sea or heaven
A Promethean dive from dizzying heights
a mythological echo and splash
Their wild swan chase to raise Atlantis,
Oysters, smoked in their beds
Ocean crossroads deal carved in stone
Volcano ash scatters the sweetest atone
Conspirators: qbit, Jilly
qbit’s Renga Challenge – Swan Dive
For Jilly’s October Casting Bricks
qbit 