Whatever we make of whatever
Is found elsewhere depends on
What we make of these pieces
Already intimate. Creating what’s
Wondrous or accepting the ponderous.

Here and now, in these atoms
In this moment abides the
Precise potential with which our
Universe began. We each are
Made of them.

Imitation of Thomas a Kempis

“What can be seen elsewhere
That cannot be seen here?
Behold heaven, earth,
All the elements
Of these all things were made.”

Dying in his bed
But we ought not forget
What Willie heard and said

For daring tell barbed wire was readied to bind him too
So Willie made his exodus. Living in perpetual witness to the
Possibility of healing violence and deadly care

Willie spoke soft but he was clear enough if the jury had
Wanted to hear. Instead they adjourned to drink strawberry pop
Then, as expected, quickly voted: acquitting two white men

And Willie told the white judge and jury who he saw leave
The barn where the gore of a young colored boy was splattered
His blood soaking the hard clay floor a deeper blacker red

Willie also told he heard a young voice cry out,
“Mama. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy”
On that hot August night in middle Mississippi

A prosecutor asked, “And what about those licks
Was it just one lick you heard or was it two…”
“There was a whole lot of them,” Willie replied

“I come by the barn I heard somebody hollering and
I heard some licks like somebody was whipping somebody.”
They was whipping the fourteen year old body of Emmett Till

They gouged out an eye tore off an ear
Cracked his skull bound his body in barbed wire
Dumped him in the Tallahatchie’s muddy flow

An Obituary

Willie Reed has died (I just cried and cried)
When barely eighteen Willie testified
Against the men who did kill Emmett Till

Death is walking with me
Seeing hearing knowing
What I might otherwise miss
A connoisseur’s five senses
Perhaps even a sixth
For goodness truth and beauty

And their opposite

I am striding toward death
Across the meadow
Through the trees
Along the road
Being with my body
Asking about its day

I am reaching toward death
Touching toes
Stretching this torso
One hundred leg lifts
Two hundred sit ups
Stupid looking trunk twists

Daily Exercise

I am unfolding toward death
Taking a deep breath
Body bending
Finally feeling
Hard places open and
Crimped places crack

V

Individual ambition incrementally

Transformed from hope for singular success

Into something very close to holiness

Pride traded for peace
Failure for understanding

Paradox finding fulfillment
As foolishness is wise

IV

Purity unraveling into compassion
Clarity converted by color

Pristine deferring to profound
A place for darkness and light

Mixing means and methods even ends
Toward constructing a space wherein
Individuality unfolds into grace

If ambition matures
Finding opportunities in
Previously unseen possibilities

Resulting in outcomes
Organic rather than ideal
But reflecting context

Discerning what is possible today
Even accepting long delays
Adapting function and form

III

Ambition if it persists is
Unlikely to be stupidly stubborn
Finding virtue in compromise

Achievement and its reverse
Also depending on war and
Peace, poverty or prosperity
How sudden and strong the storm

Leading to stupendous falls
Ambition seldom surviving
Or in wounded recovery
Fundamentals reconceiving

Astride a strong foundation
Ambition tends to soar
Sometimes too soon with
Mortar still too wet to set

Rarely finding ground
Most of these buried
While digging what will be
Ambition’s crypt and grave

Even then fading
Round by round
Into favorite fantasy
Distraction or delusion

II

Beginnings are fragile
Not many make the turn
From tired or typical to
Something close to beautiful