The Day in Stages

Morning Solitude...
No skunk grass, no blades of sun
just February's caves and the cavepeople of New England
who boil up the slugs inside their skulls' cauldron
never to be other than a smile or word, impermeable
yet making of all dropped around them a world, to be shared:
the jerky, the gumdrops, the paraffin...
"Tell me who you are
so I may know
myself.
"Tell me who I am
so I may think of you
- what you do."
Birds and squirrels plunge their noses to the snow,
there's something unseen that nourishes
some scavenging needs to be done.
...How quickly the flesh turns to spirit,
one touch and it's gone.

Afternoon Conversations...
The pigeons on the snow,
unknowable pigeons, unknowable snow,
still hypnotize with gentle coos
of nonsense soon transformed
to consolation from the One,
for even the forms are sensing organs,
the containers are alive,
the 1's dance with zeros,
the cells birth the truth of the whole
by staying in borders
and letting the beautiful illusion flow -
everyone I know
is disidentifying,
letting go of the wheel
what they know of control -
for we have to learn the lines
and there's no script.

Evening Entertainment...
Love is too pure, too much the essence of who we are
we must, down here, turn it into a contract
with iron-bound laws
that break at the slightest of whimpers,
for when two become one, there's always another one
waiting to be torn from the wholeness,
to be taught about the body, how it must be fucked and fed
regularly (something that is not true, apparently),
and be sent, because the love of a couple is too urgent,
to the wilderness of does who go looking for the one
who will pay them enough attention, and the bucks
who pursue those easiest to lure.
Nature abhors this vacuum it created,
the desperate hunger for love,
the odds are greater when two anyone's can hook up
at random, any connection is perfection
when all can find the one,
but the secrets that are shared
in secret sacred places
have a way of staying secret
and the words turned by loving into poems
turn to grocery lists and therapist notes,
and the search for the beloved never ends
but in the meantime you can love,
you can live your vast desire into truth
and learn the limits of what is allowed,
for love's gifts are not contractual,
there is nothing there specified for you,
and when the ink you signed in turns to blood
your needs become a weight you must shake off
like water droplets sloughing from a dog,
a purifying turn
as the veil slips off from
your true, eternal lover.