Hand of the Divine

Black bird flies,

Like a shadow against the trees,

At the wrong place at the wrong time.

Two black birds, now, I see.

One flies high

Against the trees.

One flies low

Along the ground,

Or is that a shadow?

Do you not see two of me?

Or maybe three?

Which of us is real?

Maybe none.

Or maybe I am some deeeeeep existent

Shadow Synchronicity.

Maybe I don’t exist at all.

Maybe you don’t either.

Maybe it’s true what they said long ago.

Let’s say it today.

Let’s say it tomorrow.

Maybe only the Shadow knows.

I’m not sure, but I think I’m being followed.

I’m not sure, but I think I’m following 

A Shadow.

—

A butterfly flew into my mouth,

And I swallowed it.

I could feel it flying down,

Fluttering around in me.

I knew just where I was

And what I was doing.

The sun was golden. 

The morning sun

Shone all about me.

I was five, or maybe four.

I saw it light the cottonwood tree.

It’s leaves were fluttering, too.

And that’s how I knew it was ok

To flutter inside.

But where were you

When I swallowed that butterfly?

Did you stop your morning run?

Did you consider that somewhere,

Someone

Might be learning that it’s just fine

To flutter inside?

I’m going to say this

Right out loud, 

“If you ever decide to swallow a butterfly,” 

I say, ‘Don’t be too proud,

And if you are, 

Then don’t even bother to try!’”

It’s not for the faint of heart.

There is no art to swallowing one,

But maybe you could just decide to know 

That it’s beautiful to flutter deep inside.

That’s not for the faint of heart either,

But maybe give your heart and mind a breather, and just see,

It’s the way that all the meaningful, 

Truly wonderful ‘things’ have ever gotten done,

And undone.

—-

I saw a black cow,

An angus heifer,

Grazing the winter grass.

The tall strands blew

Cadmium Lemon against a background 

Of leafless gray trees,

And behind the bovine:

A trail that led back to a deeper clearing. 

Two white geese waddled up that way,

Headed for a destination unknown to me,

But I decided to follow them that day.

Some of the shorter broadleaf was starting to spring,

Brand new green for the brand new season

Which had been announced

But had failed so far to appear.

She was waiting, I suppose,

For the overture to find its groove,

The Processional March to begin,

Marking time until

The attendant forerunners could arrive

And drop their petals along the way,

So she could be properly recognized

When she came billowing down the aisle 

Carrying her nuptial bouquet

Of roses, sweet pea, and calla lily,

So pale but showing just a blush of pink.

And when she comes, 

She comes as a goddess, nude,

Only a long white gossamer veil she wears,

To blur the lines of her exquisite female form,

And the purity of her regalia draws

Tears from every willing eye,

And not just those who always cry at weddings.

And therefore, as I walked the trail

Behind the geese,

Slowly I became aware of all these things,

And then abruptly, it dawned on me.

I perceived 

That I must needs be

Her bridesmaid.

——

But I had no flowers to tear for her,

To drop the petals,

To cause a stir in the atmosphere 

Of perfumed euphoria and beauty falling from my hands,

To light the ground before her feet,

And so I wondered what sweet thing that I could do

To make the announcement of her entrance known.

And so I tried to think of a kindness shown to me

By the Spring,  or by the vast unspeakable beauty of All Life

Emerging from the previous season,

And so I smiled with genuine sincerity

And cherished the moment of walking right into the Time of it all.

I walked with my head erect and upright

And a spritely step I deemed to take,

And make my feet lightly glide,

And sweeping my arms and gracefully extending my legs and feet

To the beat of the processional,

I danced a hidden and secret ballet,

Hidden, In the primal woods that day,

Just minutes before Spring herself 

Might come down the way to be married 

—-

The curtsy was a kind of test for females,

To see whose legs could bend the best,

The bow, a kind of sacred vow, for males,

To see how far their devotion went.

These forms are all but gone 

In modern society,

But they left their spawn to carry on:

The yes men,

The people pleasing women.

But all’s the rage,

And all the world’s a cage

Until it’s mating season.

Then someone has to be the one

To swim upstream in the face of death,

Just to “do it,”

And get it over with.

And I guess now it’s up to

The next generation to see through the facade

And get it ‘right.’

But night comes.

It comes.

Then comes day.

Then night comes again,

And what can anyone and his or her 

Grand philosophy ever have to say,

That says more than that?

—-

I’m fascinated with this time of day.

I’m fascinated with this time of year.

You and I seem to recur, too,

And by the way, when we do,

I’d love to say I’m stunned by you.

It’s tea time and the tea light candles shine.

Some cuttings I took

And put root hormone on

Have started to shoot a new foundational stem

Down into the essence of Life

To draw their nourishment from.

I have set a plate out for you.

Now there are placemats enough for two

And a cookie jar,

And a lantern,

For when it gets darker.

And it’s not fair for the tea light candles

To try and stave away the darkness

All by themselves,

And so, later still, we will burn,

When the night is even too much for our lantern,

For the suchness of our light is bright,

But even we may grow tired and dim,

And so about then, we may have one last cookie

And crumble our way to bed.

Or what would you rather do instead,

If I’m agreeable?

For maybe the cookies would numb our light?

But maybe our love would shatter the night into

A billion stars that return to us as shine in our hearts

With the glittering information of the formlessness we bare

Of the overcoming nature which is

Inherently our true virtue

And the mind blowing truth of the universe itself 

If only we were able to find ourselves together

And be willing to mature in a childish way

And set aside pride and jealousy

And engage in the mystery of Divine Angelic Dual Cultivation.

—

When formerly I walked into the sunrise,

I would only get so far,

Because the sun would slow above me

And lead me back the other way.

So I existed in zero displacement 

And never seemed to get anywhere.

Now I find it optimal, for myself,

To walk into the sunset.

The sunset sun is ever true.

It guides me past the light and darkness. 

I follow it til it descends below,

Then I walk in that same direction,

This is what led me directly to you.

Well, this, and those two geese.

They’d come from the east

Snd had waddled west,

Through the empty space of the cosmos,

Through the deep mysterious galaxy.

I feel the starry night approaching.

It rushes by me.

I cannot hold it,

But I am contained,

And still I continue to pursue 

The Trail of the Living and the Dead

That sometimes veers between the stars.

I fall asleep almost standing, 

Almost walking, like a horse,

But almost flying, like a pegasus,

Until I’m one with Orion’s course.

Then I fall asleep 

And dream through morning.

I wait for the sun to see it’s way

Clearly up and ready for business, 

Ready to lead me west again.

But sometimes I find it is just as well,

And sometimes better, to follow a goose,

Or better yet, two of them, 

Waddling happily on their way to crash a wedding.

———

I have nineteen hours a day of happiness 

But the other seven come with sweet duress

And I am blackmailed into writing poetry.

It pours like red wine from my heart,

But drink it, please,

And you will start to see the intoxication that it brings

Is like champagne.

It will catch you by the toe and pull you down

Until you all but drown in the sea

Of living sagacity,

Or maybe you’ll find the sargasso

A great place to run aground

And ponder the philosophy of poetry anyhow.

I have seen the fathoms five

Where your father 

Once so alive and young

Hung his hats on the corporate pegs

And found himself a beggar after all.

(I’ve lain dead on a beach, you know.)

I’ve seen the bed where your mother sighed,

Then cried in pain as she gave birth to you

(All is vanity, all, all.)

The fathoms deep where pilgrims sleep

And wake and work and shirk their true livelihood

Is all a ruse, a sea of delusion.

I know, 

For I, too, have lain aground 

On a harrowed strand of sand

At the end of town.

So let yourself drown sweetly down in it,

This poetry of mine.

For it will only seem to take a minute

Though in measures it is endless rhyme,

For it comes from dreams that unwind at night,

From untouched virgin timbers of the mind of the universe ,

And it may intoxicate.

It may rather sober you

And let you see through the mere personality you’ve acquired,

To the trueness of your true nature

And the integrity that is beating within

Every other essence that is truly you.

—-

When I saw the moon in the morning,

Full and setting in the west,

Wearing his dark hat, sunglasses,

Wearing his only one good vest,

I knew that you were going, too.

I knew that you were gone. 

I turned to the east

To search the skies

For the bright and morning star,

To search for her

To see if she, at least, was staying.

But the sun was already bounding 

Up, away, from the bleak horizon.

I threw my head back, 

Trying to carry

The weight, the burden of my grief.

But the sun was already shining,

Already burned through the morning veil.

With blinding white, it dissolved my senses,

And the first to go was sight.

Everything is gone,

Everything, including you,

And now the gracious sun has shone me

What alone is truly true.

What, alone, one can understand!

That one can’t understand as two!

Or three!

Or four!

Or five!

Or ten thousand!

What alone is truly true, 

That there is no self, no others.

There is nothing here,

Nothing to be gone.

——

She was the first woman minister in her town

And found herself followed 

All over town by good Christian men and women 

Screaming obscenities at her

And random quotes from the Bible.

Having studied the Bible in depth herself,

She knew they’d taken these words out of context

 In so many ways.

But it was only 1934,

So have no Vier .

Fünf! Fünf! Fünf! Fünf!

Now it’s 1935!

She went to the church

Early to pray

To intercede for her dear congregation.

One Sunday morning at round about nine,

The treasurer found her slain on the alter.

But that was only 1984,

So have no Vier.

Sakes alive !

Fünf! Fünf! Fünf! Fünf!

Now it’s 1985.

—-

Does anyone dare to say to the earth

I don’t like the way you spin

Is there a high enough authority 

To challenge earth with sibling rivalry

Compare it to... let’s say, it’s sister, Mercury.

“Look how Mercury goes, now will you?

Now that’s a proper revolution!

And mind your axis! Stand up straight!”

Don’t you just hate it when you hear

The parents telling happy children things like this?

Sapping the happy right straight away

So the youths can be somber enough someday 

To hold down a decent job,

Or maybe something more of a thriller?

We could raise little serial killers?

Have no Vier!

Fünf! Fünf! Fünf! Fünf!

Now it’s 2025!

——

Sailing on the ship with the others

To the island of misfit toys

Someone discovered my missing head

And screwed it back on properly.

Now I’m fixed,

But I’m here anyway with the misfits,

And while I feel such empathy  for them,

I also feel I don’t belong.

So I sit here in the Spring,

On this strange magnificent island.

Even the dead leaves are beautiful to me.

This year they have stayed in a thick layer on the ground,

And now the early spring ephemerals,

The jonquils and the daffodils, 

The tulips and the trout lily,

Appear almost magically amongst them.

But I repeat :

Even the dead leaves are beautiful to me.

Is this because 

Someone, or something,

Has screwed my head on straight.

—-

I never wanted to say to anyone,

“I’ve given you the best years of my life!”

Something about the very words seemed so untrue to me,

No matter what age they seemed to come.

For how do we know

That the best isn’t yet 

Still to come?

How do we know anything really?

The earth is turning all about.

It doesn’t seem to be.

What does it matter if I believe 

The earth is going around the sun,

Or that the sun might be 

Traveling so rapidly around the earth?

What does it matter if I know the random name 

Of some random star that shines 

From 200,000 light years away

From some distant galaxy?

If I can sit and feel the shine

Of the sun, the moon, the various heavenly bodies,

The cosmic rays say more to me

About the workings of the universe 

Than I could ever read or study about.

If something’s broken, it may fix.

It may not.

But if I sit 

Right here, I can feel the wholeness of

Each broken part.

Maybe that in itself 

Is some kind of valuable knowledge.

—-

One of the toys has found a cap gun ,

And I watch her pull the trigger.

The pistol fires every once in a while,

And the toy doll is carried away with that.

She came to show her good friend, Ken.

But Ken said the kid who used to own him 

Had one of those things,

And it fired every time you pulled the trigger,

Not just once in a while.

The toy doll gave him a disgusted face 

And stamped away.

She was very happy with the way the pistol would surprise her

By firing only randomly.

But Ken figured out the logic of the anomaly .

He’d count the clicks,

And then predict by jumping the gun

And saying, “BOOM!” just before it fired.

I think he and the toy doll had been girlfriend 

And boyfriend ,

But they’re not anymore. 

Funny that!

But as a matter of fact,

Ken and the cap gun got me thinking.

What was I supposed to do

Every time?

Was I somehow firing only randomly, too?

I believe that my head’s on straight,

But only occasionally I have a spark of genius.

Other times I’m as dull as dirt.

Sometimes I feel hurt,

And sometimes I feel so powerful. 

“Dull as dirt,” I say to myself.

I’m currently here,

Just sitting in it,

And as I look I start to see,

Dirt is not nearly as dull as I previously thought it to be.

——-

Maybe the helpful thing

About tv

For the human race

Is it teaches us

That what we see,

Both on the screen and off

May all be unreal.

Now we have the insight to see

The barrage of ceaseless images.

News that isn’t news at all,

Pictures that we can’t believe,

When seeing is supposed to be believing.

But we all see what we want to see.

What if we closed our eyes?

What would we believe in then?

—-

Always a bridesmaid and never a bride they say,

But this is what happens when we try

To make a deal with the divine.

We can only make a dumb deal.

It occurs to me as I walk down the aisle

That perhaps none of the toys have made it down 

To the clearing to be the guests at the wedding. 

I’m also suddenly aware of wondering 

Just who it is that Spring has decided to marry,

Or was her marriage pre-arranged?

Will she be a happy bride?

Do I have my head head on right?

I’m self conscious about it now,

For it seems I got here by following a cow

And two white geese.

Did anyone ask me to be a bridesmaid?

Maybe I’m just the most self-centered wedding crasher 

The entire world has ever seen?

Well I always wanted to be good at something.

Suddenly I’m having a crisis of consciousness. 

Am I where I’m supposed to be in life,

Or have I taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque,

And been off-track now ever since, 

Squarely ensconced in imposter syndrome? 

Maybe I should have stayed in bed today?

Maybe my head is not on straight? 

I can’t see it.

Will someone tell me?

Sometimes I think I thought a lot better 

Without my head on anyway.

——-

I once carried a nuptial bouquet 

Under my arm

On my way to an altar. 

I was running late

And slipping the strap of my ivory heels up

As I ran,

The train of my ivory dress

Flying wildly in the wind,

My veil of eyelet lace thrown over my head

Like a horse’s main,

My white fishnet stockings pulled thigh high.

I hailed a cab.

The driver asked me about my future mate.

I tried to think of what to say.

“I’m getting married today,” I reiterated,

And then proceeded to blurt out to the driver

About all the hell that I’d been through 

Just dating the man.

I started to cry.

“Why are you marrying him then?”

The driver wanted to know.

“I don’t think your head’s on straight,” he said.

“Your fair is paid,” he added sternly,

“And I will take you anywhere you want to go,

But please,

Don’t get married today.

Your mascara has run all down your face.”

He handed me a handkerchief.

In disbelief I stared into

The rear view mirror

At my disheveled hair and black streaks

Of eye makeup running down my cheeks.

I could run, too,

If I had somewhere to go.

“Maybe drop me at the beach,” 

I told the cabby.

——

Someone told me once that we

Have the power to co-create,

To change the narrative,

And if we didn’t lose the victim mentality

We would attract energy vampires into our lives

Who just might harm us.

Not to alarm us,

But to warn us, 

The pseudo-guru was trying to inform us,

She had said,

But yes, it was to alarm us, too.

And I had tried to climb up out of the ditch I was in,

Tried to re-invent myself,

Fallen in love with someone who

Seemed to be respectable,

Maybe a bit incorrigible,

But I found that endearing.

I’m thinking of the irony in this

As I’m walking deeper and deeper in 

Toward the mysterious clearing.

I’d come to believe my prospective groom was dangerous, 

And that day in the cab,

The driver had agreed.

I needed some time,

Just a little time to think,

But I had no idea

How little time I had right then.

The cabby had driven me to the beach,

Where with a rather screeching halt,

He had slammed the car to a stop on the sand.

He had jerked open his door,

And then mine,

And pulled me violently from the back

And attacked me!

In a whir, a blur of pain and shock,

A stream of life passed before my eyes.

But I fought, like a wild marine,

But a lonely marine

Who is all by himself,

Only one who is vastly outnumbered against an enemy,

With no chance against a man on a mission.

My spirit was already hovering out of body

When I saw him pull a machete and decapitate me!

“That will show you to leave a man

Standing at the alter!” he screamed

As he drove away.

——

“Always a bridesmaid and never a bride,”

A snide remark that someone had made long ago,

And the world adopted it as a saying,

But I thought I had shown the world,

Because I had only ever cut the cake 

At the weddings I had attended.

I’d never even been a bridesmaid.

So smugly I felt I had avoided fate.

So why did I feel like today had some 

Strange dejavu attached to it?

Why had I so easily fallen into this role,

Trying so hard to be a good little bridesmaid for Spring,

When she had never been that nice to me,

But a fickle beauty,

Who seemed to like to laugh at me.

And wasn’t she there, that day at the beach

When I lost my head?

She hadn’t lifted a finger to help me,

But I heard her laughing there instead

As my spirit flew away?

——/

I once swallowed a butterfly,

Once when I was just a child,

And once again when my head was off.

It was lying by itself

On a cold gray beach.

The butterfly flew into my open mouth.

It laid its butterfly seeds in there,

And they grew into a million caterpillars.

I watched them squirm around to find green leaves to eat.

That is meat for a caterpillar, 

And caterpillar is just a nicer term

For what could be labeled as hairy worms,

But that’s the way my spirit saw it.

Well at least my victim mentally was gone.

My spirit didn’t see anything wrong 

With caterpillars crawling around 

Using my disembodied head on the ground

As their childhood home,

Or with calling them worms instead of caterpillars.

But someone came to clean her room

And picked up most of the mess with a broom.

She put the good toys in a toy box,

And the broken ones went off 

In a bin to the sidewalk for big junk day.

——

Somehow me and my caterpillar friends 

Wound up on a junk bound for China 

Some of the other plastic ware 

Worried that there we would be melted down

And made into something lesser than we had been 

Because we had allowed ourselves to be broken,

And therefore our karma would be

To return as something even more meaningless 

Like candy wrappers. 

But I noticed the caterpillars weren’t worried.

There only hurry seemed to be to find 

Other things that they could eat.

And just about then a young boy

Was going through the broken pieces

And taking out those of us he thought 

Might still be good enough toys.

Good enough for him anyway,

And he took us out and played with us,

And when he grew bored,

He took a toy ship with its broken oars

And put us on it

And lowered us down to the salty sea,

And he set us a sail, and waved goodby,

Then magically he pronounced our destiny.

“To the island of misfit toys for you!” he proclaimed.

I guess he’d seen a movie about it.

And the best part for me

Was I still had a head full of caterpillars.

——-

I’m walking down the aisle today.

My poor head is starting to ache.

What have I done to deserve all this?

I’m dressless today,

No way to hide my scars and wounds,

My dirty legs, my smudged bosoms.

I can’t see my face, but why do I picture it to be

Exactly like it was, the last time I saw it

With black tear stains streaked across it.

I’m walking down the aisle today. 

I tried to see the beauty in this,

But now my heart has turned

As fickle as the storms that come in spring,

The lilac day, that gives way to heat,

That slams into a cold front that churns the clouds

With lightning bolts, smiting down from heaven,

The thunder that looms, giving fair warning

To any who dare to stare at the sky

And dare ask why.

I’m angry.

I have the urge to run away,

Or swear like a sailor and fight my way back home.

(But where, oh where, my darling girl is that?)

——

He’s the kind of guy that might

Kill you if you look at him,

But he’s just as likely, if not more,

To kill you if you don’t.

So what you gonna do?

What are you not lookin at? 

I hear him scream at someone walking just behind me,

And it reminds me of a nightmare I had once.

Now he’s coming up to me.

He’s going to take my shopping cart.

What is that he’s got in his pocket,

Or is he just happy to see me?

This is the problem with homelessness in America.

How is it with homelessness for your country, too?

While all of our radios, all tuned to sportstalk,

Babble on without cessation, 

Without emotion, without any reaction to

You and what you’re facing here in the parking lot.

The world goes on and the radios, too,

While you find yourself flat on your back on the pavement,

While you are raped and maybe murdered.

But this is the problem with homelessness in America.

This is the problem that we have walked on by,

Driven by in our comfortable cars with the sportstalk blaring,

Or we’ve just watched it on tv,

And got up to get more coffee

When the ads come on.

This is our double bind we’ve tied ourselves up with,

Fastened our puritan ships too tight. 

Our true natures wound in a coil that must spring,

And meanwhile, the radios sing out the oldies,

The sportstalk the state of the onion address,

And meanwhile, what am I not looking at?

What are you not looking at too?

——

I said I swallowed a butterfly once,

Then I said twice,

But the second time I lied.

A half truth or two,

Just like wrongs,

Don’t make rights.

But.. the second time what happened was

A butterfly flew into my mouth,

And that was that.!

Then the bit about the seeds,

Well they were eggs, of course. 

But what really is the difference,

And the worms?

Well, when my head mysteriously got reattached

On the toy ship the boy had sailed from the Chinese Junk,

The caterpillars crawled down my throat and into my trunk,

And there of course they made cocoons and slept in them.

And only now,

Walking down this strange spring aisle, 

I feel them hatching.

My anger’s dissolving instantly! 

I realize I have butterflies in my stomach!

—-

All is well.

All is well.

No one else will live to tell

Except for you.

So tell your tale!

And tell it well,

For didn’t someone else once say,

“All’s well that ends well.”

But now I come back to myself, 

And now I see,

I’m still following two white geese,

Deeper, deeper in toward some mysterious clearing.

It must be somewhere up ahead.

(Or maybe it, too, doesn’t exist.)

And I’m still willing to swallow butterflies,

(And give out loving butterfly kisses)

For whatever would I rather do instead?

The skies above me turn to black,

Then back to blue.

I wonder now if I should have married you

When I had the chance?

I wonder now

If there’s truly any difference between yes and no,

If there’s anything I like,

Or anything I don’t,

If it’s only morbid curiosity

And not these two

Wild white geese

That lead me ever on and on,

Deeper, ever deeper into 

The clearing that must surely be somewhere 

Up ahead,

Down this winding aisle I tread,

Sometimes with,

And sometimes, yet, without my head.

This trail that ventures ever in, or maybe out,

Oh this lively trail I’m walking through,

In various stages of wedded and unwedded bliss,

That may or may not even exist

Somewhere in the empirical bliss

Of this hallowed wary wood,

Where anyone can truly see,

That if there is any,

It’s barely there,

The distance,

The difference between 

Bad and good,

Or night and day,

Or even something for instance, say,

Like existence 

And non-existence.