POETRY BLOG

You begin with the elements. You stand in a circle of oak trees and look at the stars in the cold night. This is all that is. And if they are simply physical radiance or the appearance of the physical, their physicalness appears likely to have life tucked in and among its crevices. And with the grace of God we can expand through the physical universe and know it. It is one of the problems of life. We know but we do not.

And anywhere we look nature reminds us that form is both stern and flexible; absolutely conditioned and infinite in variety. Even the names and classifications don't take away the splendor of this treasure.

Passing, passing noisily from one generation to the next, now through wars, now through tyrannies, now through masses, now through inventions, now through poverty, now through wealth. Now with slaves, now with machines.

And we laugh because we realize human nature does not change. And yet it is all we have. So we laugh or try to change things.

Great fears and great ambitions in the same people!

We see much and know little, that is the epitaph for our time.

The poetic imagination goes where it's told not to go. It goes where the human spirit is lively and daring. It goes to the selfless act that prepares for the future. It peels off so much in time and becomes, often, a heat-seeking missile through cities of the mind.

And below rages the world we know too well. Below that is the traffic. Below that are the people and their minor sins they will gloat about to whomever will listen. Below that are rods of the living with glass and endless rooms, rooms into hallways and more rooms. Below are the made things blue and black. Below are the clean and efficient machines. Below are the old fountains dying in the sulphuric days. Below are the fields of wheat and old men in the sun pissing slowly into the old Earth. Below are the crazy beliefs driving people through the crazy streets. Below rolls on a lit up planet, now dark, now a scintilla waiting some long death, the profound unfolding.

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