Flowing to the Sea

A couple of years ago, I posted the poem below, "Flowing to the Sea," on my blog In and Out with Jeff. I've revised it and posted it here because this is my poetry blog and I think this version is much better. If you want to see the old one, you can check it out here.

The differences between the two versions may not actually be worth the time spent comparing to anyone besides me, but the old version, posted on a blog that is essentially political commentary, sprinkled with an occasional family story, has gotten more page views than any other piece I've ever posted. On either blog.

I can't explain that. The old post has no labels except "poetry" and frankly there's just not a huge audience for poetry. The average post on In and Out with Jeff gets about 10 times more page views, in general, than does the average post on Outdoor Poetry Season.

If you google "flowing to the sea," you won't turn up my post. Not, at least, anywhere on the first 10 or so pages the search engine offers up. So why would this poem get more hits than a post about Octavia Butler, say, or Mary Oliver, or my dad, Bernie Epton, or a polemic about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Maybe some lone computer somewhere, left unattended, got stuck in some kind of feedback loop and visited that post 250 times. Otherwise, I can't say, but, as Jimmy Cliff might say, "it's a wonder, a perfect ponder."

Flowing to the Sea

At a spot slid from memory,

a tiny bulb nestled

in a frosted glass bowl,

a glowing egg cradled

in a translucent hand,

light seeping through

a flimsy black disc,

cast only dim shadow.

A distant display,

in focus, then out,

circled and spun,

an arrangement of lights

eyed the traveller

crossing a threshold,

passing beneath a sky

dripping rain,

backlit by stars,

radiant in haze.

Passersby long forgotten,

size, face and gender unmarked,

oblivious to the figure traversing

to places unmapped,

caressed by nocturnals,

gentle as rose petals,

finally to stand

in a garment soon shed on the sand,

toes drinking the lap

of the primordial sea,

awaiting what comes.

Three more from "Wild Once," including the title poem

Wild Once and Captured

On Hearing Annie Lennox

A whisper full of rhythms,

an echo raw with power,

a people spilling outward

in tidal flows of fever.

Here music summons silence,

here longing a language,

touching an allure,

dancing a passion play

and searching leads us

one by one

to stories all our own,

and to stories told in common.

Here smolders spirit

rich and ripe with promise,

peace and legend.

There drums yammering in clearings

where we are jamming with justice

who was wild once

and captured

and has broken out again.

Looking for More

{SVF seeks GBG}*

Lonely, infinite universe

seeks mature god to give

meaning to existence

Must enjoy communicating

across vast distances. I can be both

plus-sized and infinitesimally small,

hard-surfaced and sharp-edged. You’ll

find me coexisting with wet spots on

sheets soft as clouds. You show

great tolerance for small beings,

are a tad impatient with whiny

humans, other troubled species.

No promises, but this universe

interested in eons of relations

with a god of generosity and

justice. Must be polymorphous

perverse and committed to

evolution, welcome disorder

but tend, in small moments,

toward something like

order (a teasing little

trait that promises more than

it delivers). Sense of humor,

negotiable.

No long absences.

*Single Vast Female seeks Great Big God

The Smell of Eternity

On the heels of the hurricane,

recently stormed through,

comes aromatherapy for dogs.

The middle-sized black one

tracks the wounded,

follows fresh tears.

At the pure small pool

formed in the hollow below

the fallen tree’s root ball

is mudbath magic and

where the sun strikes home

rises

the smell of eternity.

Three new poems not from Wild Once and Captured

I put so much effort in trying to get the poems for Wild Once and Captured ready, I didn't write very much, at all. No poetry, not much else. But here are three that I managed to scratch out and aren't in the book. One, the last one, "Ourselves," came to me on a long walk when I didn't have pencil or paper. It was entirely written in my head long before it got to paper. Maybe that's why it's so short and so predominantly one-syllable words.

Unexpected Joy

We never talk about bliss.

She thinks I can’t remember.

He thinks I’ve never been.

You guess it never happens.

I know it takes big space

here and there and inside my head

and comes easier in daylight

than in darkness.

But unexpected joy in

simple and in silence

and clarity that I know

so little after all

and suddenly okay with that

makes me want to share her bed

and hug him to me

and send to you this way

what little it is

I do know.

Line of Descent 

None of the men

who came before I did,

not my father or his brothers,

nor their father or Dave, his brother,

or their father or his

back to Isaac

and to Ishmael

or more precisely

to some bastard on Dublin streets

sat in his car at sixty-five

staring at the field

across the road

listening to Who sing Baba lyrics

thought that the last quarter

of my life looms ahead

and I don’t know

what I will do

with it.

Ourselves

We have it

within

to be

where we are

so why

so often

so lost