the Never-Ending Poem by the Poets of Everything

"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

This stanza was to be for you

a sunny affirmation to shine through foggy doubt

but last night she climbed into my dreams to play

hide and seek with moony memory

tumble with my rhyme and meter

then chose to stay in quilts and pillows

leave me here to blush and fumble empty headed

but she's still there just waiting to be led to daylight

to meet you and hand you my words

She places words into my hand

I fear clasping too hard, but if the boulders of memory

tickle my palms, I may loosen letters letting them fall

between crevices or into wells where women

chant songs of enticement promising

the good luck of a copper penny wish

with this closed palm of words, I choose a path

to pass into the inescapable landscapes of love and sorrow

in unforeseen measure and wild wild metaphors

We arrive

believing in the drama of our lives

but we are dancers between acts

who kick their way across the stage

a brief time tapping our way through the lights

helping the audience pass the time between

the main and ancient show

Dreaming of thoughtful snakes

coming through the slatsf my bed frame,

I am afraid, not Eve-like whose bite

cast her and all after out of paradise,

so the story goes,

but what would we

do with all this glory and no pain

and we continue wondering
   riverbeds of implication
sleepy stanzas blinking in the light
   straining to see the relation
of logic to passion
of seconds to centuries

what can it mean
   that my upraised hand blocks out
   a thousand million stars
    each with their own world of poets

We wander about,

not aimlessly

in our metaphoric landscapes

Rivers made of eddies of thought

dragging boulders of memory

through gravel beds of experience

and dreams of doubt

Weaving the warp and weft

with the rhyme and meter

of love and sorrow

into the comfort

of our anticipated arrival

Can it be

there is a place

to be touched

stirred as if with a spoon

that creates an eddy that swirls open the place where sorrow

and love interchange parts yet always fit

a place

one must pass through to arrive

She places words into my hand

I fear clasping too hard, but if the boulders of memory

tickle my palms, I may loosen letters letting them fall

between crevices or into wells where women

chant songs of enticement promising

the good luck of a copper penny wish

with this closed palm of words, I choose a path

to pass into the inescapable landscapes of love and sorrow

in unforeseen measure and wild wild metaphors

We began this journey,

wanting to re-wild our words

we masticated our metaphors,

abstracted our allegories

building songlines

criss-crossing our inner landscapes

wayfinding through the known and unknown

landmarks and wear marks au natural

Can it be there are no secret truths or slippery paths

all we need do is slide out of our protective covers

unloose the bag we’ve carried since

those first steps, erase those “no no’s”

forget if our story is a life or our life is a story

be the next plain gray rock or weird shaped

formation

Do we sneak up on our truths

or do we stand casually looking away

while they sneak up on us?

Or is it more about forgetting

unlearning all that was taught to us

let go of the righteous and sacred

In favor of whatever dust motes

of reality land in our hands

when we are very, very still?

Life is what happens while we are making other plans

what is it with all of our intentionality?

are we human be-ings

or human becomings?

how much is enough?

just this much?

in baseball, they call it "the Big Show"

in the Circus, "the Big Top"

New Orleans is "the Big Easy"

juxtaposed with NYC's "Big Apple"

are all these superlatives just a way

to pass over the minutiae

which are our lives

Minutia?

fairy gardens in the mountains nestled betwixt stones

we look up at the loudest

while we step over whole worlds

the full body stretch of the preemie baby

lasting dozens of long flowing slow seconds

her fists the size of small walnuts her toe buds curling

in the minutiae, a glance to see a set of brows

dart together than apart showing two

opposite reactions one sincere one safe

80 circles around a blah blah star in a ho hum galaxy

feels like a lifetime

a barefoot toddler pees on mom's flowers

to kill the weeds

a full of himself adolescent strikes out

to find himself

a midlife sketches a young woman

to become his companion

a busy universe, for no special reason decides

to provide the old man

with a comfortable life

I want a coming of age story at 65,

no bucket list baloney unless ,

the bucket comes with holes to slip

through and be washed from --

arriving in a circle of cucumbers

lush cool, seedy green-ness,

in the splas of a whale's tail

or riding the sails of a rose-breasted

gross-beak's song.