Afterglow

An immense chord
Struck with a final fury 

Like expanding thunder just behind
A  lightning strike.
The resounding euphoria of our bodies
Sustaining, sustaining this one note...

This rippling overtone
Of our interlude
Echoing still
Through the room
Into the night.

The amplitude
Of our passion

Still revberberating 

In our blood.

This animal plenitude
Of afterglow-

Overtones upon overtones
Echoing in our blood.

Our bodies all of the soul
That the five senses can perceive
Fuse as fire and its outline,
Riding overtones of overtones
Into the space
We have expanded to
In afterglow

Fractional Fevers

Moist, delicate fevers
Kiss the brow and cheek
Like lovers
Quickly undressing lovers
On torrid afternoons
In illimitable midsummer

Tracing hot fingers
Down flushed breasts
Laying quick, eager kisses
All over soft, ardent flesh 

Perfumed sweat
Spilling like dew
Down the spine 
Of a rose

In attar streams

Cut in half 
By febrile thorns,
Cut in half 
By a sudden storm
That cuts in half 
The jagged thrust 
Of groins
That cut in half 
The sultry air
That cuts in half
The fiery light

Pouring through the windows
Of blue boudoirs
Drowning in an aphrodisia of shadows,
Sundering their coolness
With hot, rampant breaths, 

Breaking them
Beneath the weight of entwined bodies,

A fire flash of torrid heat-
A rake of nails

Down the back

Like a cat's tail

And the ne plus ultra 

That cuts in half

Life 

In frenzy and spasm.

Fevers unrelenting, searching for a vent
Heat channeled in all these spoonfuls of sweat
Spilling on torrid afternoons of midsummer
Unending, peaking in climax...

Six times crimson, twelve times vermillion
Twenty four times the day and night
All multiplied by desire
All fractionalized by fever

A fever engulfing all that breathes
All that seeks relief, all that desires to sweat 

All that desires to couple

All that desires to breed. 

Ah, conscupiencia! Oh, veneria! Concupidissimus! Superbia!

Flash Flood Of The Infinite

Within the sudden deluge 

Of the infinite
A flood  of uprooted stars
Cresting against the receding  banks 
Of mind

Torrents of the empyrean
Carrying me like a leaf 
To the sea
Down endless waterfalls
To a floor submarine

Carrying me down, down, down

Near the bottom of the sea,
Down to the bottom of me

Drowning in space...almost breathless...
Arising there into the air 
Again to breathe and see once more 
That rivers
Are only rivers

The Whiteness of Night

Winter sunset

And the summit of time

Burned on

The pinnacles of mountaintops,

The pinnacle of sky

My soul

Crowned

In the whiteness of night

Blazed alpine inclines

A thousand transcendental palisades

Atop the visible Nevadas,

My mind knowing only up

The thrusting edge

Of an avalanche of ascent

Overturning the horizon

In a blizzard of stars,

My vision clouded in platinum drifts

Burying the trails of earth in a whiteout, staggering

Back to where I had stood

When only moments before

Mountains had been just mountains.

Spirit of the Waters

From within the first winds  

Of spring  

Until the final winds  

Of winter

I gazed into a mountain pool,
Steadfast there daily
 'Til I gained an Audience
With the Spirit

 And from these Waters
At which I'd stared so long
Now at last the moment had come
To request admission 
To more deeply enter 
The womb of things.

I spoke silently this question
That had weighed me to a rock 
On which I had gravidly sat in meditation
For three whole seasons when  
At last the Waters within me
Burst

"Why am I the Answer?"

The pool lay still and mute,

Not a ripple upon its face.

Totally absorbed,

It absorbed this outflow

Of thought, of birth,

Of birth of no-thought. 

Yet herewith

My reflection interrupted, 

Mirrored on the still pool, 

My face,

He who had sired this meditation 

And who quickened before my eyes as its child. 

Semi-opaquely spoke,

"And why am I the Question?"    

I moaned as if in labor

And my pain sank to the depths. 

"I've been trying and 

Trying to Answer 

That Question."

Every surface my eyes weighed  

Seemed but to grimace

As I strained to give birth to 

A new understanding of myself

Hereupon
The Spirit of the Waters
Arose from the bottom
And in utter stillness said,

                                "The Wild Geese do not intend to cast an image,
                                  The Water has no mind to reflect them".            

I sank into these words

That ushered from the depths of the pool 

And saw myself and said, 

"My reflection and I 

Are confused in our mixture. 

Which one is real?

Thereof
The Spirit spoke again saying,

                                  "Both and Neither.
                                    Not both and not neither.
                                    Travel the middle way.
                                    I support you both
                                    As I am the Source 
                                    Of both of you. 
                                    This is always immediate, always present. 
                                    Do you question this?"

Hastily, my reflection spoke forthwith.
"Can you return us to
Our Source?" 

Slowly and deeply
The Spirit of the Waters
Quietly gave this sentence to my reflection.

                                   "That which can be returned to sources
                                     Is clearly not you.
                                     That which can be returned to nowhere
                                     Is none other than you". 

The Spirit paused.  I strained to hear below its surface 

 As it again intoned:

                                     "Only you, sire-child of reflection, 
                                       Clearly understand this
                                       And that is why you are so close to me."
 

And my reflection smiled.

Thereupon I said,

"But you never said which of us is real. 

You never answered my question."

Thereat my reflection interposed, 

 "Yes, you never said why  

He is the Answer 

And why 

I am the Question 

And why it is 

I understand his Answer 

But 

He doesn't understand my Question."

 

Once more, yet final,  

The Spirit of The Waters spoke hereat, 

Saying,

"The Question is a mirror for the Answer.

Together you always

Question the Answer

And

Answer the Question."

 

"Know that your are both

The Question and the Answer

And thus,

Arise dependent upon One Another

Until the moment arrives

You should come to share the same conclusion."

"In the interval before then,

What it is that is

Between you

Is the solution

You should turn to 

That you both might at last

Come to conclusion in me,

For only I am

Beyond all Questions and Answers."

And I arose from my long meditation,

Many seasons having passed

Along with perhaps many lives 

In an instant

And I looked into the pool in the stream

 

Which now shone with emptiness.... 

I stood up and walked on,

The reflections of the World sparkling in my eyes...

 

Note: This poem arose after reading the Surangama sutra and attending temple lectures on the 

 

100 Verses of Vasubandu. 

 

It was written at the conclusion of the Winter of '93 Practice Period at 

Tasajara Mountain Retreat, San Francisco Zen Center.

                               
                               
                                

                               

     

 

                               

                               
                               

                               

                              

                                
                             
                               
                               

     

                             

    

                           

     

                            

                             

  

     

Cardinal In The Guava Tree

                                                         I

                                              (Cubist Vision)                                               

A strip of guava branch
Floats on the summer sky
Three days past solstice.

Floating in the middle

Of the Pacific Ocean, 

My mind swims in the sky

Over Hawaii.

Crystalline clusters
Of guava leaves
Inflate
With a light Hawaiian wind, lift into

Fractal spirals.
Glycerin of deep emerald leaves
Twisting inside
A pale sapphire sky, now yellow topaz

Of fruit rising to the surface of one-dimensional blue
Splashing in the golden wind
Swimming in jewel-glare
Inhaling sunlight in oceans of breath

Guava

Like Picasso brush strokes-

Cubist in the tropical glare,

Multifaceted perspectives

Like revolving jewels in shivering cubist passage,

The synthesis of forms

Across shattered, flat geometric planes of jungle

In the blur of the day's flames

 
The hypnotizing
To and fro of branches,
The completion of fruit

The alchemy of fire in water

Seen in a passing glimpse this moment

Now,  
A streaking spark
Plunges into the heart
Of the Guava- alights, immediately balances-
Ignites in colors of blood and fire

Ruby burst of feathers congelating from fragments of flight,
One wing of Imagination, one of Perception
Conjoined in stillness,
Fixed before my eyes
To the Mutable branches
Becoming again Cardinal 

In the rotations of stars and seasons.

A cardinal:
Strutting flame
Charcoal black eye
Crackling into a song:

Chigo! Chigo! Chigo!

                                     I've heard this cry before
                                     On occasions when I've sensed
                                     The cardinal exalts

                                     It's no small victory
                                     He exists
                                     Nor I.

                                                               Guava blossoms

                                                                       II                 

                                                           (Unicorn Blossoms)
                                        

Fine, white
Rays
                      Bursting from
                      Tiny stars

Lunar incandescence                  blazing upon pistils of                    rare  Guava blossoms
                      inflamed in showers of moonlight

                                                                                   Nearly impossible
Sight
                      To come upon
                      The child-fine hair
                      Of luminous, white petals

Wisping
                                                                                  As the faintest star
                                                                                            Wisps

 Into your eye
                      And vanishes                                                
                                                                                            Inside you

                                                 Unicorn blossoms, they
                                                 Drink their fill
                                                 Beneath the moon
                                                                                         Disappearing
                                                                                            So quickly
Into the beginning 

Of new fruit
At sunrise