"Well, imagine that"

 

a lone fat snail, still in his grandad's boots, & with a twitch in both his horns
  had been going a mile a minute, pawing away
   at his neighbour's post,

 

greasing his ears with lies, two trusty ears that'd heard the lies before—    
  this snail who'd never leave without a trace,
   a sole proprietary trace

 

Ah! snail's life can be a bad one, at one moment flattening a verandah board,
  a shadow squeezed out from under his hot gut,
   & the next harassed

 

by the pernickety cat after all, after all whose shadow's greater than his gut
  But he thinks it would be great
    —the snail thinks!—

 

to lie flat on a cherry plank or slink along the grain towards a friendly ear of
  his mistress watering the azaleas
    & neighbour who digs alone

 

in his straw hat, behind the fence, content to hear more of his easy streets
  til the rooks, flustered and tail bristling,
    mistake him for a worm,

 

the hump-backed worm, and peck like mad at one then both of his silvery horns,
  snail rapt lifeless to the top of a tree,
   bitten in half

 

(a horn in one claw & another dripping from a beak,still twitching as he rose)
  hardly to be seen in a shadowless sky,
    greasy yelps unheard

 

 

A Face to a Name (5): "Alfred North Whitehead"

"Each creative act is the universe incarnating itself as one, and there is nothing above it by way of final condition." (Alfred North Whitehead)

Some reflections on Whitehead's remarkable insights into the nature of "creative advance", and its application to the poem.
_________________________________

See,

"each creative act" is  some--and let's say strictly unneutral-- matter of fact,
which is never in the same place twice,

god-oriented at its best (yes, of course) with enjoyment galore
  reserved for those with an eye for concrescent moons,
                                                                                                  
  whose function, at the base of their growing, is to feed on some matter of love,
    at least thrice-halved below,

   the urge towards fullness, i.e., moon's and ours, remaining the same, at the very least,
                   and amounting to love,
                                                                                                                              
     the poet then, i.e., taking hold and seizing it (but never in the same place twice),
         unbounded by the cradling thumbs,

     the poem more gladly appetitive than speculative, in any event
         (a nexus of ants and their endearing fora)

          a sanctity of self rather than dirty remarriage,
                 to be enjoyed more than done 

"Track and field" (or some minimalist surges)

As another Track & Field season ends I reflect back on things that always distract me from my officiating duties (like neighbouring forests, birds & escarpments)
_____________________________


In adjacent fields (to tantalize me!)  trails bronzing under an exposed breast of sky

A squalling light-tipped tree with chicks in its teeth--
                                                 no disc anywhere to match it for spin
                                             —
Mostly unseen in the forest, look, and lush still even when the winds pick up--
                                                 nests hanging like ribbons

At the fence, the bee's sadly unseeded who's both inside (here with me) and out there,
 ready to die sunless--
    the poor unobservable

For all it coveted was glory by the high jump bed, here with me--poor unobservable bee
  
My head up, reverentially, with both eyes hatched over in the insidious glare--
     at 50 meters geese bend like ripcord!

And just like light, wind & a leaf tossing over evenly (stem subject to resistance!)--
     dragonflies in the water pit

And down some escarpment (excluding the odd hatchling nosed out) is the mole's last jump,
    among millennia of gore

 

"Felicissima"

(for Mocha)

Always dear but curving close to the door,
  cats like this can peel the
    light off a star--

 

slip it slyly under an eye, & still sleep

  Calico cat dreams and moves
     outdoors, 

ears smartly smoothed flat to the head,
  mouth the usual moist pastiche
    of lips & razors

 

If she appears to be a bit too august now,
  after a splendid backyard shunt,
   and sits purring,

 

million to one she's got the dismembered
  jowls, tails to prove it,
    the grip relaxed--  

     

 freeing by degrees the bloody jay beneath
                                                  

  A sated cat's a very odd thing, indeed    

    & lies in odd places:

 on vents, in closets, over tawny pillows
  And even as she lifts herself up
     from my lap,

 

it's to peer stonily in direction of the door--
  sleepy, wild, free & every bit the

            equal of me

    who am just too big to eat

"A dream"

"The real conflict is not between Christianity and 'nature', but between Christian principles and other principles in the control of 'nature'." (C. S. Lewis)

Probably, and as night is night
  I was certain
to have dreamed (& torn out the
   antlers of)
a first view of its beastly grin—

  and crazy also
to have burst into a rage of cold embers
  with trying,
riled at first & then slowing to a trot:

 

  and crazier still
to have seen up close the dark sin
  such as it was
—for it moved from the very spot
  & spun like Naomi!—

Not the easiest thing I’d ever seen:

  stag without horns,
and tail coiled nicely down its throat--
   the sting!

 

And I followed like a coot, & ran
  down that maze,
racked with dark eyes & willow-lean—
  sin's dark lean

God percepta



"The concept of 'God' is the way in which we understand this incredible fact--that what cannot be, yet is" (Alfred North Whitehead)

__________________
     (For Father Loza)

 

In one way You feel like a tough goody (gopher-)wood
  of an Ark; the molluscs, of course
eerily jeered but the geese are the first to make shore,
  smacking the weeds.

 

Not any old receding lake will do nor a fawning mastless
  boat but geese who recoil

 from nothing and crack their jaws open—

 

                                        When You
  retreat catfish deaden dreams,certainly
or leave, belly up, drifting to shore, foam-churned,
  or long pike,
fins outstretching to You their warming source, who nose
  deep in the sensual mud
and grow old.

 

               A hardy rudder through sun-gleams You are,
  for skiffs fueling the tides
& mussels maddening a ship's tired sides will kick
  the lake bock green or grey,
and lay down shingles and timbers for another dirty
                                                                              day:
—   Maison sur la plage!

 

The rains and blossoms, too, that tenant You but dissolve
  hearts into a cruel mist; & shove
crabgrasses aside, mashing rhizomes into fine bee-glue.

  You dissolve in tears, too
as the groves loop in mire and loons turn silent as marshy
  inlets with thistly sides.

 In quite another way, You  still hang draping like Vimy moon,

  mother-weeping with obsidian
frown & star-dishevelled hair--
 

                                  You are, that is, a kind of
  drooping mother-eye
who peeps over teen sons:

 early scented, and carved in salt, You who march the clouds

  red with 'em  (don't You?)

sent always as a prowless Ark that runs aground even here,
  hulls stuffed with lads anemone-eyed,
feet to feet, scallop- brained & sadly disbudded as You who left
  & left the dead standing,

 

always cross-armed over the ones without boots, the dried, emptily
  drummed sons wallowing in salt.

Volta

 

Or even as (in another Eastertide), aeons from now, You'll
  hang in sculpted cathedrals,
canopy of crocuses and thuribles, of hosannahs slung
  craftily from leafy greens;

or sit like forsythia garlands on a sun's doddering brow

 

The sateen- or shagreen- folds of wrists & ankles,sides dripping
  red berry instead of court gold!

Herons jab at your sides-remarkable!-most likely and we'll all
  leave You behind,
and crane over the damnable world serving as gateway to hell:
  where You'll dare follow

 

discalced boys ferried in gopher boats to Iroquois ridges,
  and catfish dream the dead
and post-glacial hills will rise algae-like & flake and shelve off
  steeply into recoiling Times.

Outside my window



the one sits belied by his size alone
  (same dusky sky to be in)                     
while the other turns

  Eyes swivel from tree to tree--
then the inexhaustible spurt to earth,
  her cruel unusable joy!