THE WELL

Take the hole you're in,

the deep, dark pit—

where the sun is

but a pin prick—

and turn it into

its opposite: a well

that you are now

looking down upon.

Let your gaze fall

toward the treasures

you pitched there

into the depths,

into the clean, clear water.

At bottom, resting, still

are your wishes

shimmering and shining

in the place

you once stood,

like stars signaling

in Morse code

this message: The darkness 
is what carries

our brilliance. So you must

carry the darkness.

But not as a burden, 
more like  

a newly minted penny 
in your pocket.

THE SCENE

     for my father on his 65^th wedding anniversary

We all have one.

A scene we revisit

The day my men and I,

nearly 300 of us in total, landed

in Thule, Greenland,

time and time again.

A story, a memory

after our six month assignment

of unloading a navy cargo vessel,

just forty miles shy of the North Pole,

we keep telling

because imbedded within it

who did I see on the dock

alongside the military band

the captain had ordered

is a message we desperately

need to hear:

to greet us but your mother.

The only woman on the dock.

All the way from California.

that we are loveable.

We tell it to anyone

I was literally and figuratively then

on top of the world. And more revered

than I had been the whole six months prior,

who will listen. Year

after year. And the older  

‘cause she was waving at me, her 

 husband, the commanding officer, a man 

barley twenty-one, and still newly wed.

we get, the more we tell it,

because we need to tell it.

INSTEAD

Once upon a time

a story ambled along

like an invalid,

dined like a castaway,

shat like a parakeet,

and labored like a leaf blower.

Somewhere at the center of it all

was a pipsqueak person,

captive to his own mangy creation.

Pay no attention

to the fabled construction, I say.

Listen, instead, for the beanstalk in the bean,

the goose inside the golden egg,

the hero in the ordeal.

Anything else would be like

rooting for the rival team

at a home game.

THE SPHERE

If it were really there

it would look like

a crystal ball.

But it’s not.

It’s an invisible orbuculum, 

an imperceptible

orb that obscures

rather than foretells.

It detracts, impedes

rather than reveals.

It is the thing you and I

are separately polishing,

incessantly burnishing,

most of the time,

like a misted mirror:

the desire to look good.

Let’s remove it altogether,

the sphere, shall we,

so we can see, scry,

what’s really there:

a mystery

that’s waiting for us

to shape it, constellate it

into possibility

empty, finally, of all our

orbiting affectations.

ARABIA

thirst and the beating sun

the fleas of a thousand camels

desert and more desert

an infinity of sand

as long as the dunes 

hide the oasis

the mirage obscures

the mirror