isness

a foggy morning without harsh glare

gives clarity to visions that blare.

see the branch where the bird lands,

in the dead limb that fell into living arms?

contrast that oughtness in hands

grasp for an out-of-body experience.

relish this moment of isness…

of being. the sky separates from blueness, 

ocean divides from its wetness,

hue rises out on the solar barque,

all forgetting the aliveness.

on the back, once fair and supple, 

now flattened, eaten up by nothing,  

terrorized by the trivial after the noon

when knowing we die should be enough 

to make us love each other;

create, sustain, dissolve, always becoming.

stellar, tanager, gull, mountain chickadee, 

red-tailed hawk, dark-eyed junco,

the feather from a golden eagle, bins lifer.

calmed notes and phrases dynamic,

rigid markings before pianississimo.

slow courses, pump blood red crystal lismore

with the most unladylike instrument

the way, the Tao, turtles all the way down, 

squeezed between the knees.

wrapped in a box, the bow bites.

vibrant, fierce as destiny, honeyed kiss of light

touches the sublime. ungendered innuendo

iced music of sweet human obsession

dances towards its oneness…

life is the dancer, I the dance. 

swim back from the brink until the final hoped-for silence.

the high sierras stood rapt in blessings of alpenglow,

the most impressive manifestation of divine light

seemingly absorbed rossy glow pinks

into a fiery orange haze blending out

from a wall of arcus rolling in the blue

with electric winds of a southerly front

sending spine-tingling oscillations 

over the mountaintops and this opacarophile;  

left in this glow, bowing shadows of devout worshippers. 

existence.