Cosmic Stripper
We strip away
those vainglorious hours of youth
until naked
old age, like infancy,
cloaks us in the truth of Time
.
Escaping into the cosmos
a flame of consciousness
billowing into a cloudless
pristine sky
clean in the one first burst
Light sleeping in infinite consciousness of forever..
LOSING HANDS
for Judy
"My husband and I own a tailor shop.
It's quiet today : I'll sew these buttons and tell you about my sister.
She is a baby doctor
in the noisy emergency room of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
Some of her patients and their parents call her, 'whitey doctor.'
Here, let me catch this hem..."
"today two sisters came in with knife wounds,
gang warriors whose parents must accept their children's fates ;
they were very close, the mother said ;
one I sewed up ; the other died.
I was relieved I didn't have to tell the dead girl's sister.
I feel a responsibility
I call my patients' parents on my day off ;
they are rarities - small time winners
with a losing hand.
often my white coat is covered with blood."
Och ! I've pricked my finger ; but let me go on,
blood flows freely on our streets,
the doctor's fatigue lights the death of the flower, civilization ;
here all virtue that buds : black, white, brown, and yellow
is obscured by the pretty colors of the blossoms
with which we mark the milestones of our lives
as we pass the homeless and the beggars by.
My husband and I work as one in a busy shop,
There is peace, but, but elsewhere : no."
"midst the clatter of death
there is another reality, and
there are those who do their job
others who really care.
most of the people trapped in the barrio are too bitter to care ;
most people don't want to see the children, abused and neglected
Crack babies and those with AIDS
This is the collapse of our common humanity-
there is a war going on in our cities"
"all around is the
devastation
we try to hide from what really
touches us all-
we cannot long escape !"
The Great Human Gathering
I am not alone
Poets of long ago speak to me :Li Po, Tu Fu, and Du Wu
Likewise Aeschylus and the Zen poets are my brothers
What I keep saying, they say to me
Through the centuries
Across land and ocean, mountain and desert
That aweful wisdom, accepted :"I am going home."
Passage
I try to make a record of our lives
On a passage into tomorrow :
We all try to live out this existence
Not exhausted of meaning.
I want to stop time
Call you back
making today to be a great ship
Delivering her voyageurs
To a place the hours cannot scar---
A land yesterday's hunger, and death, cannot reach.
In the end we know this cannot be,
It consoles us that we are not alone in this life ;
Only a great storm can sink this fleet.
We hear the cold winds of winter rise.
We hear them whistling from out these portals
Gathering strength at whim
To crush our oh so foolish, little Armada.
Little Man
As we in our canoe
Pushed out on the lake
The littlest one squeeled
Though in his fear
He could not tip the boat.
We returned to shore
To leave him to his own vision of safety.
Only an hour later
Returning for the second time
We found the same small boy waiting
In eager anticipation of a journey over his lake.
Richard braced his hand
And he climbed his Mt. Everest
Into our canoe.
A family now of four
Our small companion completed.
We gawked as one
At turtles large and yellow-spotted,
Egrets by the shore
And a forest of barely conceived pines
Beginning to rise from their lake
Into the fresh, stirring
Soup, primordial as we and our sky.