Discovery Drafts

My Child, Tonight I read The Odyssey -- Book 11-- That trip to Hades Some call hell And I almost wept For Odysseus When he asked His mother Why he could not hug her After not one but three attempts And she said, Basically, Darling son, I am not here. Where imagination meets spirit, You are alone. Your flesh feels it; your mind knows it: My voice comes from your heart. All that sacrificing, Carving up those beautiful animals For the gods and for your feast And all that drinking of the blood of your victims So that I might speak-- What do you think that is about? Despite all your hard living, you cannot answer. I will tell you: It is in your living that you hear my voice;` Take life in your two hands, But be ready to let it go, To turn back from everything you think you want And remember what you love. Go back, my dear. Love who you love. Forget this illusion.   I am not here.

Six yellow roses in a water glass Are my company tonight. They are enough Even if I bought them For myself, Which I did Because they were there and I wanted them. They will die in a week, But in the meantime, they will blossom; I have willed this, Cutting off their leaves Trimming their stems Adding that white powder to the water And turning up the heat in the house. I bled when I gripped their stems To cut all six in one go Because I do things like that In a rush and without thinking Because I see the possibilities and find them beautiful. My blood made no difference, and it was a small price. In the morning, their fragrance will fill the room. The flowers will open; their stems will remain strong. It is not yet over for these roses. But when it is, I will invert them until they are dry And I will remember: I bought myself roses Because I wanted them And I could.

We invent time, And then we play with it, Taking it by the hand, Guiding it forward and back: A dance A tease A taunt. Yet we say we are happiest When we lose track of time Forget what time it is Feel like time stands still. The moments we love most are the timeless ones. I am thinking about time As I sit in the waning dark of early morning Waiting for change. I want to give up the cold blue of this sleeping world For the bright orange of day As it lifts its giant’s head and shoulders From the leathery pillow of last year’s leaves, Climbs the white oak that will also arise from the dark, And dissolve the uncertainty of this moment. I want daylight To take me by the hand And swing me around and around In a wild dance of right now. I want to burn with forgetting Every tease, every taunt, Every possibility.  To hell with it. What is here is here.  That is everything. There is no standing still.  No real waiting. Only waking