Weekly Poems: A Columbus Day Poem and More

CLEAR AWAY THE COBWEBS FROM YOUR EYES

Clear away the cobwebs from your eyes --
Old ways of thinking, doing, wanting, dreaming!
Learn that present truths are future lies,
Undone by what is now well past redeeming.
Make of life a vast experiment
Blessed by passion, toil, terror, pain,
Unafraid to scuttle what you meant,
Sure only that no failure is in vain.
Do this, and you will have a chance to be
A sailor at the edge of what you see,
Yet yearning for what no one can attain.

ACCIDENTS ARE RARELY ACCIDENTAL

Accidents are rarely accidental,
Nor can one sparrow fall but all is changed,
Giving rise to ripples rearranged,
Evidence, albeit circumstantial,
Leading to one's living less estranged
As one finds sense in something sentimental.

WHAT MAKES STARS ROMANTIC

What makes stars romantic? Is it the beauty
Of a night sky dark lit with diamonds?
Or the wilderness of blue-white witnesses
Staring wordless back across the abyss?
Or the fascination of forever? (For love
Is a fragment of forever lodged in the heart.)

Is it the need for two when one seems so small?
The desire to touch in the temple? The vast, lonely
Field of life in which love, too, is a light
Amidst darkness? (So many lovers scattered across
The black canopy like burning dust.)

Or is it the passion at a star's heart?
The heat of love lighting the emptiness,
Hurling its ardor across light years of sorrow
To tell us something about what yearns within?

HAVE WITCHES GONE THE WAY OF WONDERS

Have witches gone the way of wonders,
Asterisks of yesterday?
Life restores what reason sunders,
Lest we lose our mind for play.
Once we knew that what we knew
Was like a ship upon a sea.
Evil spirits wandered through
Eternity, and what was true
Never tainted what might be.

AS THOUGH I WERE JUST FLOWING, FLOWING

As though I were just flowing, flowing,
Leaving not a trace behind,
Zest for life not one whit less,
However blank the roving mind;
Emptiness the space for being
In the moving moment still,
Meaning nothing more than meaning,
Each ellipse elliptical;
Reminiscences like flowers
'Ere the garden was convened,
So sweet the disconnected hours ...

I DIDN'T KNOW HE HAD HIS WAY

I didn't know he had his way.
I only knew he stopped for tea
And found within a fair young maid
Whom later he would marry.

I didn't know -- perhaps I should.
All I knew was what was said:
That at first sight they fell in love
For half a century.

I didn't know that time would prove
A sea in which events would move
Like dreams slow-motion with the tide,
Drowned in morning's mercy.

But nearing death her undead need
Broke open like a sun-kissed seed,
And then I knew what choice she had
Endured for love of me.

CHANGES FIND THEIR AGENT IN OBSESSION

Changes find their agent in obsession.
Old visions do not yield but to a sea.
Life is myth undone by mystery.
Underneath the truth lies the expression.
Meaning is the mask of history,
Best worn by those in undisturbed possession.
Ultimately, there is no progression.
Sing, then, of change, and savor what will be!