It is crumbling
Succumbing
Transmuting
Transcending
Shimmering in the sun

It can pulsate with
Music
Poetry
Prophecy
Grief unrestrained

It can be quiet
Memory
Mindfulness
Meaning
Being maintained

Emerging into light
Mostly blue
A slightly brighter hue
Than that at Saint Denis
Or Our Lady of Chartres

North transept in ruins
South never started
Crossing betwixt absences
Converging beneath curves
Entering our darkness

Byzantine beginnings
Hyperbolae extending
Gothic perpendiculars
Gently contained
Set midst a purposeful grid

Revelation

It is unfinished
Complicated
Inconsistent
But I would insist
Not incoherent

Amavi
Amavisti
Amavimus

Where is the ego in that?

We hear the past with our ego
Pseudo-scientific for Das Ich
Screams still rising from Teutoburger heath

There (then?) a personal ending
Attached to a verbal stem
Action perfected i subordinate

Here ego separates
Self from action
Time neatly divides

I came I saw I conquered
The I preceding verb
Past is simple self asserting

Pre-Freudian Ego

Veni vidi vici
i following verb in
First person perfect

Most berries peak
With some arid heat
Tart and sweet

Days later blackberries arrive
Big and beautiful seldom best
Taste undone by too easy affluence

By early July wine berries ripen
Spear tips bursting bright red
Yellow stars where already fed

Picking Berries

Snake berries pop in late spring
Close to the dewy ground
Cute but tasteless dots

Hardness softened
Flatness complicated
Resistance absorbed
Applied vigorously
Revealing a spiritual simile

I think it needs another coat.

It took three gallons
Where one had sufficed
For white, but that
Was before covering
Concrete with burlap

Valspar 3003-2C

After buying a gallon of enlightenment
I soon found more was needed

In less than brightest light
Enlightenment cannot be
Distinguished from creamy oats
Champagne or coconut cream
Quite a cuisine

Late Afternoon

From beneath the berries
Twa-twa-twa---twa-twaaal
A turkey calls for its mother

Mighty mayim
Creation’s consort
Still flowing flooding
Reflecting deep and dark
Bring us finally to the sea.

When reality arrived
Personified
A river’s water
Symbolized
Persistent paradox

When unreality reigned
Four jars of water
Poured thrice
Claimed the meaty sacrifice
Power proclaiming

When freedom
Was threatened
Water parted
Past from present
Promise preserving

When corruption
Needed correcting
Heaven did burst
Water prevailing
Cleansing the earth

The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

Before light
Before wind
Before creating began
There was mayim
What we call water

Slightly sulfurous egg salad
Saffron yellow on crackers
Scant taste of salt
Reminiscent of shore and sweat
Each crusty creamy bite
Conveying another creature’s
Fertility for my possibility.

All of which suggests several
Pseudo-Sibylline stanzas
Comparing that fawn’s frantic
Prancing to Brownian Motion or
Predicting fractal unfolding
From each furious fluttering.
Instead I eat a late lunch.

Becoming Summer

On summer solstice eve
Butterflies mate in mid-air
A lonely cicada vibrates
The days-born fawn dashes
Hither and yon, full moon in
Sunlight bestows a spectral
Silhouette to the last sky of spring