August 29, 2012

The morning light is late getting started;  the cobalt blue of the dawn before dawn lingers, a rare occurrence.  As I have been looking out this morning, I realize I see more of the inside reflected from the room's brightness on the glass than I do the outside.  You have to really look hard to see what is out there as it is still mostly dark.  The faint orange moon of the streetlight winks in and out of the leaves because of the wind, which comes and goes in bursts.  We may be getting the edges of Isaac, the very ragged, faint edges, still enough to bring us this wind.  The disk chimes are clashing together, but the ones that make music are still quiet in their sheltered spot, only an occasional note escapes their pipes. 
Sometimes when you start looking for a poem, one just falls right into what you were thinking, like opening a door to something that draws you in.

Credo

I believe at the root
in breath as a first
principle. Breath --

the intake, the giving
out -- is our signature
onto the air.

Next I believe
in the business
of seeing and hearing,

the processes of light
and sound whereby
we inhabit the cracks

and corners of the earth --
the guarded scrutiny
of strangers, the ear

cocked in a waiting room.
Incidental revelations,
accidental wisdoms.

As for mortality,
the cricket ticking
in the long grass

is timepiece enough
for me. Wound up
by the sun,

his spring uncoils
at night and
he dreams in black.

But, as a final article
of faith, I believe in
the heartbeat certainty

of two adjacent hands
on the parapet of
a bridge somewhere

touching, finger to finger,
and breath quickening
to mingle, and this

causing the sun to rise
and the moon to wax
and all the tides to run.

Dick Jones

I can believe in some of those things as well, in the breath, and . . . inspiration.  That's what the word means, drawing in the air, breathing in, what you have to do to create, take in the world and breathe out something new.  Seeing and hearing, looking at things that slide by every day, that appear briefly and vanish, or that hang round and become familiar, all those cracks and corners that make up our every day.  I am always fascinated by the processes of light, of how it moves and changes, how it makes its way over all we see, creating color and ease releasing us from the dark.  Here where we are, we have crickets, but over the summer it's the cicadas that mark our days with their sounds, and after days of not hearing any, last night just before sunset, I heard three or four of them in a small, very loud chorus, which did not last long, kind of like the last hurrah of their season.   While I think that the world would go on, sun rise, moon wax, tides run, without love, without the human touch, that touch surely gives the world a lot more meaning to us.  The place where we get our morning hugs, stand smooching in the kitchen, get the hugs that send us off to sleep each night, that is the place we breathe in, that inspires us to go on, to take the world and find it good.