Prose

Sept. 2018 ZMH

Words. Letters of universal power, in Hebrew that is–the building blocks of creation, the Aleph Beit. But English, a bit dead, a bit contrived, ruined by too much use in situations without meaning, worse yet, where words are used as tools of deception. Then words smother the soul, ruin us like rotted fruit, and we contaminate what we describe.

Adam knew the purpose of every animal and so named them accordingly. Adam knew the purpose and function of all created entities and so named them. It was not about popular sounding names or socially acceptable terms. It was raw, it was roots, and it was of the earth. It was truth.

Now what we call tree is not native to our heart. What we term stream is not cherished as breath to all. But then, then in the wonder of creation cycles, Adam, the man of the earth, the red man, the man and woman of water knew, they knew the garden was holy.

How did we forget or never know, or fail to feel our origins in our heart beat – who like the earth’s resonance, keeps tone with galactic stories that like meteors, streak thru the consciousness of the cosmos. A life well lived streaking across the night sky, or a life lost in suffering– a meteor shower. Who is to know which of us becomes a star before coming back as humans once again? In what constellation do we stand, sentinels of heroic pasts? What planets do we race by as though a tourist on train of galactic proportion? Who is to say which of us yet might tend to the earth’s axis, or the pole star moving from Bear to Shepherd and his dog. Who is to say as the precession of the equinox follows its 27,000 years of rotation, that we are not the music those passings make, that our first cries are not staccato for the symphony God conducts, that our existence is a fact of creation requiring no theories simply cherishing?

Their voices like birds
a melodic twitter that would die down to silence
then to suddenly swoon
in loud calls
someone’s name
a history would puncturate space
and for a moment
song would stop for story

Their dresses like the wind
when it sweeps under the
boughs of willows
hid any weeping
the wind embalmed them
a sanctuary that uplifted them
a weave of women’s hearts
to celebrate water at the well

tears of prior moon
on tides of solar light
flashing in their eyes
bearing water’s reflection
in their hands and arms
and on their heads
laughter blessing the water
joy filling the jugs
love was the song
sung by the women at the well

JZMH

I love Autum because the half dressed trees are radiant.
The way one imagines an older fat woman is, who is content in her skin
and how she has used her body.
Honored it in the using of it.
Something lovely in her bones, which are concealed, and in her eyes.
Seasons of fall and spring in the crevices of her smile.
Winters frost left behind on her head, a mountain top where holy things happen.
Branches or bones rejoicing in even their losses.
A foot tapping in the air, her head tilted back.
Light winds slide through her fingers
and auburn leaves go airborne
having forgotten already what it was to be attached.

JZMH

the wearing on the outside of the right shoe’s sole
made clear he had pain when he sat
one wondered if it was from his job
or some child hood fall
from a tree or a bike or
a deeper wound of abuse

and the other foot
whose toe evidenced scuff marks
a kind of dragging
as though from sadness
of caring a burden on one’s back
his satchel though invisible was full of hardship

it seemed best to let him walk
even though I wanted to offer a ride
a ride would have made the pain
of returning to the walk
more unbearable than the
moment of being burden free

a man who thought he was donkey
to his own misery
i realized he would not have fit in my car
somehow though we both understood that
without relieving each other
of our desire to keep moving
in the same direction

JZMH

Babies touch the hem of God, each facial relief a permanent etching of light in a dark universe illuminating.

Eons of whispers, gently breathing, exhalations as sweet as lillac in bloom. What form so demure that even to think harshly of them beckons angels for absolution.

Baby, my child, what heavenly architect should on each ocassion create such totality. Eyes behold an antiquity from life time’s unions , where he and she find bones of belonging crafted. An inking of immortality in what is mortal.

JZMH

When younger, unrequited love compelled the heart and strained the throat. A salt water harbor. There the crashing waves keeping tempo–a melody set against the moon of prayers filling round — fate’s dancers in gloss and silvery web, walking on water in an arc.

But when the pull of love goes out, her costumery become the tide’s undertow, tearing, taking, violent winds ripping at sanity. A naked organ beating on the sand.

I learned seasons of love later that it would have been easier , true less enigmatic, to let love’s rip tide claim another on another shore. But I of moons’ cast, was drawn without hesitation into the net of love’s lost in darker recesses.

His hands were bold in the way stone boulders are against high seas. His eyes a melting candle against the flame of some godly match. I felt him dripping on my body, burning inhibition off the personality as easily as I plucked and skinned the grapes we ate. Purple mist we inhaled.

In the pitch of beginnings, the anticipation of endless climaxes, we are anesthetized by pleasure –a lover’s grace, an immunity to the common place. Addicts of love we become, the fix the love itself –an unequalled high, we rise in love pretending not to notice the precipice we are navigating towards.

If I had learned how, I would have curled up inside his body and perished there, though it was not womb hunger. It was the fire there consuming. Chants that surrendered flesh into sighs and lips like coral reefs, swaying and sucking. His hands were bold the way stone boulders are against high seas. His eyes a melting candle against the flame of some godly match.

Years stretched between us, sea upon sea of emotions taken and given to others, high and low tides unending. Millions of places of port and daily log, our life journies catalogued a part.

Yet in the moon’s reflection, still l see there the shadow of this love. A love that rose and fell again. A burden not on earth but a blessing, a single wave of deity cresting in two places. How deeply written these dramatic territories of blood and spirit, undulations of souls finding each other on earth and then forgetting. Arriving and departing at seperate moments.

Touched by this nocturnal fire, the soul consumed after lightening strikes, illuminating deep love well hidden, salt water purifies.

JZMH

the wetness of the air was
made obnoxious by the fact
that stale pipe smoke clung to it
like a vine that is merciless in its steady devouring
under the veil of its greenery
unmerciful killing occurring
under the guise of life

the smell of the street’s
garbage left from a few days living
rotten food uneaten
how many others
it is right to ask
would have eaten it nonetheless

it was only the ball bouncing
some kid coming up the street
his hat on loose
his walk casual
he didn’t notice or atleast he did not care
that the garbage
and the fowl air and waste that surrounded him
could not drown out the miracle
of life
bouncing down the street
I thanked his youth
for saving me
for offering me his oblivion

JZMH

It was late but not for eternity
to scratch its name across their bodies.
Not too late for wet dew of love
gently misting perfumes
and body caldorns leaving scars
to find them – to tattoe them
with imagery of
where the seas return to the caves
where deep wtaers and hallowed chambers sing
where men are drowned and women become mermaid
swimming, dancing handmaiden
kissing and being kissed until he is swallowed
and she resurrected

Floating in rythme
across the boundaryless scape
sunglight enshrouding their flesh
wet veils of pearl and venus’s lace
undulating in terrestial tempo
not once yelling to surrender
but begging for mercy and then begging for more

Somewhere betwene twilight and day break
somewhere between ocean and imagined end
a sharp edge between water and sky
a quiet line
eternity’s caress for their climax
celestial bedding for their love making
eternity’s catch

A simple epoch of lover’s bold adoration
an ecstatic annihilation –
two golden figures riding out to sea
ebbing out of reach of one another
not in desperation tor diminshment
but in revrance for their bliss
separating

JZMH

It was the light that held
a suspended note
an echo from one range to another
in between universes
like the pitch between sleep and falling in space
steep with a cushion
how one imagines weightlessness

the echo was melodic
first a chord that hearkened sounds of apple orchards being picked
and baskets being hauled
and heaved to the back of a truck
whose start up sounded like a drum
keeping everyone aware they were leaving

after the orchard was culled
after the last was chosen off the branch
after the gate swung tight on its metal hinge
a cymbal ending the stanza
leaving the orchard to the sound of branches
calling for their blossoms
a celebration and a death
in sunlit dust

a solo flute’s call
like a bridge between two caverns in a mist
from one world into the next
undulated gently
anchored at each end
by faith alone
an etheric station of tenderness
where weeping and dancing
delighted deity
where sweat was the taste
of his seed
and steady the hollow
of his call

JZMH

the field held a silent note
suspended as though by eons
which carried
was impregnated with
the message of divine things
whether by whisper, by touch
or delight of laugh released
showering as though a star fall
they fell to earth
landing at each other’s
finger tips

it was more than the flesh
brighter than spirit
a showering, an effervescence of soul
fully exposed
unveiled
glimmering in the calmness
of the silence which held them both
at the distance of a breath

the seas of other eras
boated travels and by train
and echo from the journey that stretched
into the distant past
there where their ceremonial robes touched
a brush of the hem
a light nod to the gloved hand
a sword fight
to the end
love fought for and rewarded
life time after life time

like the hay when it is rolled
into bales
and the song of the sun
is chorused by the workers
whose hands
touch the earth’s bodice
her harvest
the skin of our maiden gone golden
inhaled as though a perfume
a bounty and a passing as well

their lives had been harvest
and here the tithing of love
here the tilling of hearts
here the crossing that centers
into the stillness
where everything can be known

their touch was less like flesh and more like light
though the flesh rumbled with the sense of an inner thunder
and lightening in the distance of the organs
where earth arises and
fire in her consumes
or his life fountain held back
against the waiting of their spirits

a godly act
deserves a godly setting

found and found again
each finding as though a new tunnel
each meeting as though a recreating
no moment trivialized
no glances without awareness
no touch without deep listening
to the song of the cells as the
blooded river of heaven in them shown

a dance of etheric light
found on earth
a quiet reverent act
of loving the peace that love enables
bringing order into
incarnation
a new spring