Sands of the Well Book

Sands of the Well


The golden particles
descend, descend,
traverse the water's
depth and come to rest
on the level bed
of the well until,
the full descent
accomplished, water's
absolute transparence
is complete, unclouded
by constellations
of bright sand.
Is this
the place where you
are brought in meditation?
Transparency
seen for itself'
as if its quality
were not, after all,
to enable
perception not of itself?
With a wand
of willow I again
trouble the envisioned pool,
the cloudy nebulae
form and disperse,
the separate
grains again
slowly, slowly
perform their descent,
and again
stillness ensues,
and the mystery
of that sheer
clarity, is it water indeed,
or air, or light?


which passed us
in immense shoals, glittering
in the Sea, like fire …

As the Moon Was Waning

Small intimations of destiny wove
a hammock about me out of fine
wiry fibers, a steel gossamer swaying
calmly in chaos. What I needed
was to examine it inch by inch,
discover it true or false, shelter or prison.
Instead, I lay low, evasive,
imagining mortal weariness that it's not yet time for.
Only the neighbor's new, very delicate, distant,
mercurial windbells promised,
if not tonight, then some night soon, to recall me
to that scrutiny, that obligation deferred'
as if their music,
sparse, random, uninsistent, nevertheless
would prove, in time,
a summons I'd not resist.

A Gift

Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.