Cover image: “Canal Reflection (Burano, Italy)” by Roger Camp
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Tributary
on the marsh stream
where one thing turns into another
stream to lake
man to marsh
these analogies are soft
enough to stand on
why drive the hour here
to understand such simple things?
why take a 1.5 mile loop
around your inner self?
we have no choice, really
when it comes to water
it collects where it’s meant to
as we are collected
and one thing turns
into all the others
Between Too Many and Too Few
When I find myself lost in a forest of thoughts,
when I am anything but isolated from my mind
no matter how hard I try to disengage, I question
the true intentions of summer, that seductive
opaqueness of green piled limb to limb, tree to tree
in the attic of the canopy, that prevents me from
seeing clear through to the beyond. It’s always
the same—nothing prophetic about that—when
there seem few enough leaves to count, yet the
sum of them still lies beyond the grasp. Then—
as if mere contemplation can alter perceptions—
I find it’s all suddenly gone an instant after
the tenuous equilibrium between too many and
too few, when I sense I can see, but actually can’t.
Who Is Hearing this Bell
Inside this house, the temple of self
I keep falling off to the right side,
my crooked spine
Something straightens me up
I listen
Waking I enter life
I sleep in life
My bare feet love each other
They hold one another
as in infancy in old age
A thousand thousand things
come to meet you
The engine sound of a passing truck
is in your path
Who is hearing the sound?
Something is speaking into my ear
when my ear is no longer here
patience
Overhead and all around
is a tree
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