Saturday, September 26, 2009

Love and Death


Death and Love


There are two questions in
Life
How to achieve lasting love
And how to die
All else is myriad pink 
blooms
On one camellia bush
The rest is approaching thunder
Deepening damp a
Breeze


All actions from the meditation of
Bodhisattvas
Rantings from Libya
Chattering of talk show hosts
Sipping champagne
Downing Irish ale
To slipping naked into a lake at
Night
Are questions of love and death
As surely as green grass needs rain






Sunday, September 20, 2009

Apricot Jam

Apricot Jam


My day began with cheese toast and
Apricot jam
Sitting on the screen porch
Our porch for eighteen years
I warmed my throat with French-pressed
Coffee


It was the fourth or fifth or sixth day of
Rain rain like never before here
Cool like the cure for melancholy
The Times had a long magazine article on
Jung
That now a dozen hours later I grow eager to


Read to take to bed our bed
To read as I let you go
San Francisco
Let you go as the ambien lets go my
Brain 
As solitude merges with dream


Jack 9/20/09






Wednesday, September 16, 2009

A Way

A Way
Recall our afternoon
Nashville
Napping abed
An embrace kisses
As we confess stress
Loss of temper we take out
On each other

In separate cities
We suffer still
Outburst hurt feeling
Resentment
Yet keep the
Awe
Twenty years of
Bare bones love
Inspires.

For Darryl, September 2009

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Starr's Porch

Starr's Porch

There is plenitude on your screen porch
Where the doves from Mexico sit 
As the wind chimes deep intone 
The smile of your Buddha
The tweet of small birds in your yard
While you are away tuning your car
Bubbles of Buddha effervesce
From my champagne
As the smell of your terriers
And the fly buzzing from screen to screen
And the yap yap of your rusty ceiling fan 
Make me laugh
You and your porch are
Pure plum happiness.

Jack-- Sept. 2009