—Poems and Photos by D.R. Wagner, Locke, CA
THE ENSEMBLE OF ETERNITY
Come make the room around me.
I will touch your body and we will
Know the sun at midnight and repeat
All that we have known when we were one.
Look at my hands. See how they move.
They are like Spring around you.
Hold me in your arms. Use your lips
On mine. There is no deception, but
Time lies to both of us. It has its own crimes.
It asks us to choose the treasure,
Whatever we might imagine it to be.
Love will be love and climb
Our bodies to find that light we carry
With our personal pearl-like angels,
Full of landscapes of the delta
With its far views and secret water.
What is uncertain? What do we choose
To see that no one else is able to see?
If I put my name in this arena, eventually
Everything will become my fault, a thing
I overlooked while seeking to touch you
In the most intimate of your many hearts.
Forgive me, I find myself uncertain
In every argument I have with time.
Sometimes it is like trying to read
A book in which none of the pages
Have been slit, a difficulty in shepherding
Splendor as it pours through our agony
In attaining grace as we attempt
To approach Heaven.
Come make the room around me.
I will touch your body and we will
Know the sun at midnight and repeat
All that we have known when we were one.
Look at my hands. See how they move.
They are like Spring around you.
Hold me in your arms. Use your lips
On mine. There is no deception, but
Time lies to both of us. It has its own crimes.
It asks us to choose the treasure,
Whatever we might imagine it to be.
Love will be love and climb
Our bodies to find that light we carry
With our personal pearl-like angels,
Full of landscapes of the delta
With its far views and secret water.
What is uncertain? What do we choose
To see that no one else is able to see?
If I put my name in this arena, eventually
Everything will become my fault, a thing
I overlooked while seeking to touch you
In the most intimate of your many hearts.
Forgive me, I find myself uncertain
In every argument I have with time.
Sometimes it is like trying to read
A book in which none of the pages
Have been slit, a difficulty in shepherding
Splendor as it pours through our agony
In attaining grace as we attempt
To approach Heaven.
Lower Niagara River
TOWARD EARTH
We knew that if we travelled by roads
That those who were tracking us
Would surely find our communities.
So we put the dogs out ahead of us
And began cutting through the forest
Toward the highest truth.
The blood.
The lakes.
The frantic bird voices like
Joyous fireworks exalting and warning
The knowledge that we were near
The Earth.
Twice the open meadows were filled
With the golden smooth buzzing
Of the honey bees.
Some of us wandered away toward
Flashing lights.
Others, sure that the ghosts
Were their children,
Chose the forest as the best of places.
We continued into the rain,
The chilling nights, knowing
Somehow we would reach
Earth.
The faces fading.
The fields where
The shadows greeted one,
Looking for things to occupy
That had yet to be heaven.
Upper River
A BLACK ANGEL
O the night singing on the balanced air.
The golden panther still walks
With paws of silence down
Into the miraculous solitude
That has no beginning or end,
Only a present, into life.
But this is not seen by man. They feed
From the treetops. They become murder,
Empty hallways in dark hotels,
Slashes across the body with
Keen knives, the only shining thing they know.
So quickly they fall. They become
Arguments, then skirmishes, then war.
The morning cold.
The readiness of the day.
The perfection of a cat or dog
Crossing a street at sunrise.
All of this never glimpsed.
Only, still, the black angel
Closing every gate but that of the heart
Till there is nowhere else to go.
Mountain Range 1
SOUL CANDLES
The sign at the motel was
Burned out.
We were
Hanging out in one another’s dreams
Just so we didn’t have to do the dishes.
One of us always busy.
In the other room somebody
Is trimming souls to make for
Candle wicks. They seem
Almost disinterested, but you
Were explaining a song lyric
To me and I went back
To my own dream. You
Showed up for a few minutes
Later with two soul candles.
“These are for you," you said.
Why did this place have to look
Like it was in the middle
Of the desert?
I looked up.
The motel sign
Wasn’t burned out.
It just looked like it at that
Point of the dream.
Mountain Range 2
THE ADOLESCENCE OF GOD
Thread. Rose. Shoe. Membrane
A bird. Two. Fence. Music.
Diamonds. Snow. Vision. Cup.
Twilight. Sticks. Pearls. Stone.
Next stop: Claremont.
Breads. Friends. Machinery. Bridge.
Sample. Staff. Break. Sparkle, Dim.
Just keep riding;
Parkhurst: Next stop.
House. Inks. Reflection. Jump.
Outside. Bees. Funnels. Orange.
Robot. Glow-In-The-Dark
Snow. Tear. Fight. Release.
Play. Build. Walk.
Small. Green, Grind, Space.
Cloth. Song. Breaking Bright.
Shadow. Precious.
_________________________
Today's BiggerNip (apropros of D.R's current case of pneumonia):
THE SONG OF ANTIBIOTICS
—D.R. Wagner
A shaft of light on a blue
Green mold. The tiny flower
Heads of this same mold about
To burst into a snow of bacilli.
And here from a tree bark,
A wisdom of contention
With healing, finally won by
A tree fighting off insects.
A collection of broken mirrors
That somehow are able to explain
To our bodies a set of instructions
Needed to address an infection,
Trip a disease into thinking something
Away from our soft selves.
Praise for the mold and the small
Things lurking near the edges
That go unnoticed except by a very few
Who see the light come in, thin
But still able to form prisms, still
Able to open channels of waves
And point directly to the words
Of a song we eagerly await to hear
The lyrics of, learn its sacred words.
_____________________
—Medusa
Between the Sister Islands
