THE THRESHOLD

not a place to stop 

but a passageway  

an invitation 

a coming forth and through

a welcoming

without hesitation

that carries you over

into appreciation

acceptance, the ultimate 

greeting, a deliverance 

into an all 

embracing YES

 

THE HOLLOW

There is a question 

I keep turning over 

and over again

in my mind.

It is like the oak

inside the acorn

that branches

in every direction

while asleep

and dreaming.

Oh, if I could just bury 

this query into a source 

and soil 

that wasn't me

I'd be free

of the worm of worry,

the What if I was wrong 

about everything?

that knocks incessantly

against the shell of

of all my thinking 

trying to get out.

If the worm wasn't there

maybe then I'd be 

happy and a hollow 

I could hear.

 

SONGS INSIDE HAMMERS

Start and end 

with red.

The eye will see 

the signs, the hazards

no matter the color

as borders, boundaries

to be crossed on  

the long  journey home.

Do not doze, though.

Let coyote do the dreaming.

Stay attentive. The horizon 

is fast approaching 

and has been, with its

mischief, the past 

shaped into present, a field

for grazing, a world 

without bloodshed.

Listen for the lightning.

Songs singing

inside hammers.

REMBRANDT'S TRIANGLE

Arranging the blaze

is an expression I’ve heard,

that I love. Everything 

we do in life, I believe, 

is an interplay of

shadow and light

on the face of things.

A kind of portraiture 

we fashion, create 

and capture as we go.

Where the light falls

and how it falls,

and how we arrange it all,

in our minds,

and then see it, 

(minds and faces 

are so impressionable)

is, in the end, what life 

actually looks like. 

Rembrandt knew this.

“Life etches itself into our faces

as we grow older, showing 

our violence, excesses 

and kindnesses.”

He said this and painted this.

Photography—which literally means

“drawing with light”—

owes so much to 

his little invention. Without 

it, the inverted triangle, 

placed so surreptitiously

to the side of

another triangle,

the upright pyramid 

of the proboscis, photography 

wouldn’t know what it knows 

as well. This poem is

my way of sniffing 

out answers. It’s a pulling 

together of ideas, vectors 

of thought, a writing 

with light, a blaze 

I'm arranging

down the page.

It is my way of seeing

what's what. Of showing

myself something

I already know I know,

or think I do, 

while picturing, through

subtle affirmation—a quick

touch to the nose-tip—the tell, 

that I am on the right track,

when the truth is

hints and guesses 

are all we really get.

They are all the nose

will ever know.

THE VENUE WITHIN

I believe

there is 

a venue 

within you

and a venue 

within me

that is waiting 

for the chance 

to be the center 

of attention, the chance 

to step into 

the limelight,

where stage fright isn’t

keeping it from being

the presence and the performance 

space it can be,

that lives inside us

after all of life’s rehearsals

as “such stuff that dreams

are made on,”

where the lines come

without any prompting.

It’s all a matter of suspending

disbelief, isn’t it?—by simply 

believing in belief, 

by being Brechtian 

and breaking through 

the fourth wall, 

and in the breaking 

of that wall

are broken 

open, and when we are 

we become the venue 

we were always meant to be,

the space where acceptance,

love and forgiveness 

arrive on the scene,

with little drama, 

and are finally ready

to have their say, their soliloquy.