July-August 08

July 13, 2008

Dome

Isn’t there a conflict between the floor or foundation of a house
and the surface of the earth upon which the house rests?
Doesn’t that surface approach the middle of the floor
since the earth’s surface is circular (discounting irregularities
of topography, such as those of mountains, floodplains, or deserts).
But the dome, made of tiny isosoles triangles, danced upon the earth
it mocked, a little planet skirting the big one, all the while it leaked,
all the while the voices of its inhabitants echoed, beamed back to them
with a clarity that was too truthful to the listener, who would have had
nothing else to listen to except the drip-drop of rain leaking into the
dome because a panel, a thin piece of plastic that could be molded
into any shape in nature, was cracked or leaking. Pray that the frame
of this Mundane Shell doesn’t break as its owner hangs from it
with guy-wires, caulking the leaky triangle with a compound of silicon
or gutta percha, or some such substance, for window frames.

8/3/08

What will the weather do? The rhythms of the seasons. Thunderstorms nocturnal, wind in the trees, deer crossing, crickets singing, birds chirping, flies buzzing, dogs barking, dogs replying to other dogs with more barking, the rare passing of a vehicle, a call and response and counterpoint between the birds, and then between the birds and the crickets or the frogs in the pond, or between the birds and the beeps of the idle fire alarm low on battery power. Seek not to perceive the world through musical terms.

Looking at her, pert and buxom and compact and coy, you could see how he attracted her: he was lanky, naïve, expert in mechanical things. He could fix her car to begin with. So he complemented her—naïve and practical hands-on knowledge of machines suited keenly observant ambition coupled with an appetite from luxury, for cars and houses in vogue.

The density of vegetation in the valley a river makes before it has been dammed—a floor of ferns, a cloud of spores among the vines that crawl the sides of dead trees, seasonal wildflowers on the roadside, grass blades, reeds, cat-tails, hollyhock bushes, the fattened leaves of white oaks and maples pulling the very branches that support them down with their dampness. The park ranger has an easy job—he mows the path to the bird feeder, he feeds the birds.

8/9/08

Age should make a place for youth. I return to trudging through the city of Portland, as apartment complexes are raised along the arterial to the interstate, a maze of concrete thickening with time. I drove to the Oceanside to submerge myself in seawater for a few seconds before I drove back to the mountains. I bought a ticket for Richard Branson’s spacecraft soaring out of the atmosphere into the blackness of space for a few more seconds or enough time to photograph the space before the craft descends. The hell or heaven in a handful of seconds.

Wet and sticky hermaphroditic child, wiping the albumen on his belly to dry in webs. A layer of lithium molecules bonds above the treated surface, protecting the surface from abrasion. I lack depth although I ruminate, and the past for which I cannot exercise retribution angers me. I float or my memory does in slights to which I cannot respond. If anything, I lack enough surface to apprehend the absolute present, or live in the moment, or be the moment. Unexplained shifts in thought become new sentences the connections of which are even less likely to be made the more the future becomes the present. The metaphor of depth or profundity—depth implies scrutiny? Why can’t the shallow scrutinize? Sure they can scrutinize someone other than themselves. Could what we are accustomed to call shallow be a virtue, this word meaning an aptitude to be fruitful and to prosper, not so much admirable self-abnegating behavior void of an effect upon some part of the world? To the shallow the spoils, to the deep nothing or next to nothing, only reputation at best, if others even notice the virtue of the deep, who are too reflective to communicate either virtue or vice, who do not have the horse sense to advertise their virtue when it would benefit them most, who do not, in other words, bring it to the marketplace.

The auspices of the skies
Point to a dry and sunny day.
How could the forecasters
With all their indicators
Be so wrong?
All their instruments
To foretell so faulty?
Faulty all the indicators
Of weather.
They were not the word of God.
In the beginning was the word
And the word was God,
More Greek, more logos.
All began
In some ineffable place
Not with the organs
And fertilizers in the ground
Nor with lightning
And the initial violence that followed
When lightning hit the ground.
Later, the planners said:
What a mistake.