Einstein, the boy, on his bike
one day marveled at the rays
of the sun. If he could ride
on one of those beams
of light, he imagined, it would
change his relationship
to space and time. While on
my back on the grass
in a Nashville park
the other day, the view
above me had me feel
like a boy again, the one
that loved looking
through kaleidoscopes.
With an open focus I saw
patterns, textures, and colors
above, moving through
and across one other.
I saw shapes and densities
evolve into and out of
each other. All of a sudden
the idea of entering
the quantum, which I had
been thinking a lot about lately,
felt like a possibility
and a relativity I could
actually create, in my own mind,
like a boy on a bike might,
on a whim, decide
to travel at the speed of light.
after Dr. Joe Dispenza
I know a man,
or should I say
a mystic, who,
in the space
between sleep
and wakefulness
one night,
a number of years ago,
ran an experiment.
He imagined, in his
mind's eye, a red rose,
just to see if he could.
And he saw it.
It appeared straight
out of nothing.
He explored that rose,
every petal, every leaf,
every thorn, every inch
of its imagined
three-dimensionality
in his mind, until
he memorized it,
until he became it.
The next morning
he was awakened
before dawn by a wild
windstorm that threatened
to bring branches
crashing down
on to his ranch-sized
property. He decided
he had to cut those
branches down himself
to keep them from falling
on a ranch hand
or a family member.
So, he ascended into those
very branches by climbing
up a ladder, a very tall ladder,
with a chainsaw.
He began buzzing his way
through those massive
limbs, cutting them
until they fell
one by one
to the ground below.
All of a sudden
down his very long
dirt driveway
a puke-green
Ford van—you know
the kind I mean—
from the '70s—
whined and sputtered
toward where he was,
until it stopped
—you guessed it—
beneath the tree
he was high up in
and directly under
the very branch
he was right
in the middle
of cutting.
An older woman
got out of that foul
-colored car
and disappeared
behind the back-end
of it. The man,
or should I say the mystic,
got down from his tree
to see what she was doing
and where she had gone to.
He walked to the rear of
that rancid-colored van
to find her. Her back
was to him as he approached,
but then in one
swift motion she bumped
closed the double doors
with her hip and then
spun around to face him.
In her arms was a glass
case and inside that case
—you guessed it—
was a single cut rose,
the brightest red
you'd ever seen.
Before he could speak
she opened her crooked
mouth revealing
a broken tooth
and from that mouth
of hers she said: "Don't
ask me any questions!"
and then handed him
the case. The man,
or should I say the mystic,
under the very branches
he had just cut,
stood holding
the very rose
he had imagined
the night before.
In utter amazement
he watched the puke
-green van sputter
and whine back down
that very long driveway
toward the red
of the rising sun
kicking up a cloud
of dust and dirt
as it disappeared into
the distance, like a lucid dream
into the great unknown.
FROM FAITH TO FOLLY
Live oak lined
the marshland
on the road leading
to the Atlantic,
to Folly Beach.
In the twisted branches
were the largest alabaster
flowers I’d ever seen.
They looked like magnificent
magnolia blossoms
at first glance.
But they weren’t.
They were egrets.
This congregation
had made these trees
their temporary perch.
If I were an agnostic
ornithologist, I’d change
their flock name
to something more
frivolous and less
faith-based
so I could say:
I saw trees full of folly
on my way to
the edge of America.
FASCINATION IN THE FLESH
Mama is standing
in the aisle
of a Boeing 737
bouncing her baby
on her hip. The little tike,
a squirmer, not satisfied
with the jauntiness
his mother is offering,
reaches up and grabs it,
her ear. And she lets him.
All the boy’s attention
goes to the flaccid flap,
to pawing the soft
tissue, the ridges
and curves
mushrooming
from the willing,
tilted head. The tiny
toy finger: a mouse’s
pink nose poking
at the walls
of its maze,
is happy to be lost
in this labyrinth.
I don’t know who
is more transfixed,
the little hipster
playing with the putty
of his mother's ear
or me trying to fashion
a poem from a toddler's
buoyant, fleshy fetish.
