Bodies tumbled together in reciprocity.
Fool that I am, the image
haunts me still.

Finding enlightenment is easy:
if you think you have it,
you don't.

Drawing in, drawing in
to suffuse subject
with object with subject,
but still the observer observes
and distance remains.

for Vanessa

Like a Colorado sky,
your eyes go on forever.

If I tear through walls only
to find a terrible freedom,
what choice have I
but to breathe this fire
and sear my lungs in it?

Enlightenment

Zazen.
Moon snagged by a branch.
Really, really having to pee.

If only I were writ small,
tucked away in tiny letters
like a footnote.

My sense of self strewn like autumn
and I find this thing called "me"
there and there and there.

Magnum Opus

Random thoughts
at random times.

Such is my great work.

There is neither east nor west yet
the compass still points.
Taxonomy
cannot be and cannot be
done without, for I define myself
beneath the weight
of this mountain of memory,
but hold my heart open to the sun
and I will burn no less
than the moon breathes between
these spaces of you and me.

My days unspoken,
so many leaves in the wind.
Is then not all
just as it should be?

Things and Ideas

Rather,
it is the possessor who is possessed
in the possessing.

Your slumber's steady-slow breath
the subtle arc of your back
those straying strands of hair
somehow explain everything.

Sudden spring air--
a snowfall
of dogwood petals.

Spidersilk, slight strands
wind-combed-straight
across the tips of grass,
seen only in the slanting light
of this setting sun.

To breathe the quiet wisdom
between these moments:
Neither loss nor gain can be
when having never is.

Paragenesia

(Noun) The successive order in which a formation of associated minerals is generated.

The passing of these passing days
in which we form, in which we are,
this chain of selves--
this sequence of associated states,
each flowing from the one before,
each flowing from the one to follow.

The trick of it

Love
like enlightenment
eludes the seeker.

But how to wait
without waiting?

This unconditioned moment
where the world flows
seamless with one's body,
unbroken
by skin or sense or self,
like fingers drawn
lazily across the sky,
dripping with sunlight and dew.

Four-fifths a sonnet

The question still will not abate,
for what is form and what is fate
that we should scrye and correlate
effect and cause? This chain of states
we seem to be, when glimpsed in time
subjectively, in which we find
no start, no end. Instead, a kind
of thread, conditioned cause, that winds
in both directions. Morn and eve
are linked, entwined, each to leave,
arrive, or stay -- however brief.
No more than spring's, then autumn's, leaf.
Do we persist? Were I to guess
an answer, I'd say no...and yes.

The pond's rippled mirror.
A falling leaf
echoes.

What is the weight of symbology
and why does it press on me so?
As if this or that day
should mean more or less than any other.
For what in it can purpose be
when I am neither here nor there?

To know and to be known.
Can you dwell in my smallest spaces?
Can I ease into you like the slow break of day?
An impossible equality.

As though love were not enough.
As though I would not flow into you and you out of me.
As though I would not swim this moment and never surface to breathe.
As though I have not been chewed and swallowed and digested.
As though I even exist.
As though you and I were not already mapped atom to atom.
As though you and I were not more real and less real than the thought of your lips on my skin.
As though you and I were not this sun which blinds me.

in the swaying
this branch this wind
not-one not-two

This day exactly this day
and without effort, yet
I wrestle with who
and what
and why.

Round and round, empty and full.

So simple a truth
still unfathomed, for
there is nothing, nothing
that I ought to be.

rising redorange
without meaning
thermonuclear
without form
this heart
without limit

Must we be as objects?
Is there no other way?
But in this abstract of distance
I would will my tongue to phrase your body so
and bring these selves that do not exist
into tangency.

There are still nights
when I tire of creating myself
each moment and each moment--
ex nihilo, as it were.

Fiat lux! Fiat lux!
Again and again and again.

And yet
is it not this knife's-edge existence
this cusp of becoming
that shows so clearly that everything is
and is not?

I have drunk of the vacancy of being
and not all the wine in this world
will make me sober again.

un homme du vide
je vois et j'ai vu
je vois et je ne vois plus
entre moi-meme et toi-meme

jamais rien personne

tu m'aurais
je te connaitrais
seulement seulement

unsubtle unsought truth for I am hollow
and I am hollow
an empty shell yes a shell
so ricepaper thin
that the shell itself is no longer there
being but a wisp
or fog of breath on a cold day
briefly holding form but not really
a trick of eye and brain
themselves illusion

Subject and object like a basket holding water
or my fist the wind.
Can this audacious heart love
only by analogy?
For beauty beheld is not beauty held
and you are no metaphor.

An Observation, in a slightly dated style

There is space enough, betwixt Me and Thee,
both for Love and Autonomy.

This rising sun
like my orangefire heart swallowing the sky.

Thoughts on a Conversation

This electric moment cannot be classified.
But who are you? Who am I?
Can we not unfold in this explicit space?