House of Light

SOME QUESTIONS YOU MIGHT ASK

Is the soul solid, like iron?

Or is it tender and breakable, like

the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?

Who has it, and who doesn’t?

I keep looking around me.

The face of the moose is as sad

as the face of Jesus.

The swan opens her white wings slowly.

In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.

One question leads to another.

Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?

Like the eye of a hummingbird?

Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?

Why should I have it, and not the anteater

who loves her children?

Why should I have it, and not the camel?

Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?

What about the blue iris?

What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?

What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?

What about the grass?





MOCCASIN FLOWERS

All my life,

so far,

I have loved

more than one thing,

including the mossy hooves

of dreams, including

the spongy litter

under the tall trees.

In spring

the moccasin flowers

reach for the crackling

lick of the sun

and burn down. Sometimes,

in the shadows,

I see the hazy eyes,

the lamb-lips

of oblivion,

its deep drowse,

and I can imagine a new nothing

in the universe,

the matted leaves splitting

open, revealing

the black planks

of the stairs.

But all my life—so far—

I have loved best

how the flowers rise

and open, how

the pink lungs of their bodies

enter the fire of the world

and stand there shining

and willing—the one

thing they can do before

they shuffle forward

into the floor of darkness, they

become the trees.





THE BUDDHA’S LAST INSTRUCTION

“Make of yourself a light,”

said the Buddha,

before he died.

I think of this every morning

as the east begins

to tear off its many clouds

of darkness, to send up the first

signal—a white fan

streaked with pink and violet,

even green.

An old man, he lay down

between two sala trees,

and he might have said anything,

knowing it was his final hour.

The light burns upward,

it thickens and settles over the fields.

Around him, the villagers gathered

and stretched forward to listen.

Even before the sun itself

hangs, disattached, in the blue air,

I am touched everywhere

by its ocean of yellow waves.

No doubt he thought of everything

that had happened in his difficult life.

And then I feel the sun itself

as it blazes over the hills,

like a million flowers on fire—

clearly I’m not needed,

yet I feel myself turning

into something of inexplicable value.

Slowly, beneath the branches,

he raised his head.

He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.





SPRING

Somewhere

a black bear

has just risen from sleep

and is staring

down the mountain.

All night

in the brisk and shallow restlessness

of early spring

I think of her,

her four black fists

flicking the gravel,

her tongue

like a red fire

touching the grass,

the cold water.

There is only one question:

how to love this world.

I think of her

rising

like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against

the silence

of the trees.

Whatever else

my life is

with its poems

and its music

and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness

coming

down the mountain,

breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her—

her white teeth,

her wordlessness,

her perfect love.





SINGAPORE

In Singapore, in the airport,

a darkness was ripped from my eyes.

In the women’s restroom, one compartment stood open.

A woman knelt there, washing something in the white bowl.

Disgust argued in my stomach

and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket.

A poem should always have birds in it.

Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings.

Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees.

A waterfall, or if that’s not possible, a fountain rising and falling.

A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

When the woman turned I could not answer her face.

Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together, and neither could win.

She smiled and I smiled. What kind of nonsense is this?

Everybody needs a job.

Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

But first we must watch her as she stares down at her labor, which is dull enough.

She is washing the tops of the airport ashtrays, as big as hubcaps, with a blue rag.

Her small hands turn the metal, scrubbing and rinsing.

She does not work slowly, nor quickly, but like a river.

Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird.

I don’t doubt for a moment that she loves her life.

And I want her to rise up from the crust and the slop and fly down to the river.