conversations with the eternal

 

conversations with the eternal

reporting home

  
in what scene does dialogue exist?
the moment of birth when you no longer
change your intent.  when you stub your toe
beneath the moon.  over the bowl of cereal,
breakfast they say.  when you sleep.  when
you ask for toast.  inside a perfect kiss,
perchance not even lips to lips.  maybe
with a glance.  the sacred.  the mundane.
here.

think yourself one grain of shoreward sand,
one solitary moment purely understood.
like truth laying side by side.  so it sounds
like this, truth truth truth truth truth.  neither
does tide invoke the merest change, even
while the world lifts itself to the moon.
close listening, as they say.

likewise neither do we walk or rest or
leap or hesitate or sleep or feast alone.
likewise the first voice we call out dusk
and dawn, I am here, I am here, I am here.
there’s the why of listening.  and respond.

nothing against the romance of mystery,
but.  would the eternal honestly really
really wish to be unknown unknowable,
only smoke?  a quiver minus thread?
follow the line of sight.  the answer
is you.

sin, it translates better as, not ripe,
not ripe yet.  good mirth needs be
applied.  so there’s a tree an apple
and a snake.  yea, and us.  now look
and how do we define everything?
get the joke?

sometimes it’s draped with an orange
cloak, or maybe none, standing bare
on the face of a wave.  maybe a placard
beside a passing bus.  simple does do.
like they say, miracles disavow candid
faith.

conversations with the eternal I have
tasted.  why else these ears like corn.
meaning no thing seeming grand, rather
only as real as dandelion self.  more
akin to dad asking you to mow the lawn.
alright?
 
 

neil reid © january 2012

 

commentary
apology? suppose not. however are these words we’re not supposed to say? but. here, done anyway. might say instead, could be better said, but then that’s just another vanity. consequence? you get to say. or not. and it is all still exactly as it is. even when I might mess it up. or not.

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the gentle art of making fire

poem for We Write Poems, prompt #48, the art of making fire

the gentle art of making fire

rub any two words together.
add salts, same as soil does.
imagine dance.
imagine molecules.
imagine no choice.  falling free.
whisper desire into ears of wheat.
be father like stone.  a seed.
be mother like rain.  illuminate.
imagine breathing sky.
imagine flood.
imagine tongue touching flint.
swim canyon like silt, chasing gravity.
sing fingers on butter face.
imagine children in pockets asleep.
imagine dreams like fruit then ripe.
imagine bare feet on a gravel bed.
milking sparks from summer soles.
flames were shadows first.
imagine the mouth of time.
the rakish nature of prayer.
splashing bright.  don’t explain.
say little.  ignite.
the way poems are coincident,
related to smoke.

neil reid © march 2011

6 April 2011 commentary:
I love to nibble at the edges of the real world dance of physics and chemistry (some say the natural laws of this reality we inhabit). Even to prepare for a poem by making sincere study of those “laws”; what do we know about the process involved. Maybe some of that will becomes bones within the poem, or maybe instead the first footfalls before imagination takes the helm, goes its’ own way down the road. Either way is fine by me.

I know (maybe it’s more belief) we are all deeply inside the process, like “fire” here for this poem and prompt. But I also want to feel at a visceral level the truth of such understandings, to know in my blood that it is so. That’s the connectedness I look for anyway. And I think there’s more to learn than only the physics of process, more than just the mechanical, but rather, how all that intimately relates to how we see and feel, how we participate in life.

I think science at root is poetic. I think truth at root is poetic.

All reasons enough to look and play this way.

As you might notice, the poem for me came first, and then by desire to see what else might come, the prompt for We Write Poems, so as to share this idea and prompt. We are all here, burning every day, consuming the very fabric of our world. I’ll hope what writers joined in this prompt find something interesting for themselves, maybe images seen now just for the very first time! ~neil

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A rake and leaves

A rake and leaves

Abstraction is why I ask, keep simple

words with me.

A bear, a fish, alone a creek in wildness

no one sees.

Crayon to palm expressed like milk

as a child sees.

More better unruled hand, only stray

wind drives.

Honey sun, lain like drying fruit, and

overnight the moon.

Sketches resemble hair because

your hand was there.

Like thoughts, like leaves, curled into

autumn prayers.

None need my gaze to seal, sanctify

spiraled smoke.

Burn those paintings, concealment

eased by flame.

That pile smolders in the backyard

and man-with-rake-attends.

Too many words to keep. Let sky

eat another meal, ours.

We’ll grow some thin, stand

on the edge of smoke.

Inhale.

Neil Reid © February 2010

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Second shade

Second shade

 

There is smoke inside the leaves.

There is lightning inside the weeds.

One ridge away outward of sight

a close moment awaits, when

     everything speaks.

 

Town folk walk upon what that canopy 

of oak inscribes, brittle summer’s breath.

Mounded shield leaves a rake will gather,

a match transform.  And tame,

     give story to listening sky.

 

Then slow, that milling scent wanders

blind to fences, makes ribbons of hosted

sighted limbs.  Certain whole lives by

so bare and slight a touch, all recall.

 

Second thought asks, what of these

to sweep on that pile, smoldering flame,

soon forgot?  I make a list.  Hesitate.

Surely, the bitter last of chosen lists,

unrealized love who walked away,

a child’s breath turned charcoal lies.

     Surely these.  Yet.

 

A mountain paw does allow, far of sight,

a fallen leaf to root, become in hand March

and sweet.  Redeemed of autumn’s bloom.

     Be no other heart than this,

     a prayer to keep.

 

 

Neil Reid © September 2009

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More like a sketch

More like a sketch

 

 

More like a sketch in chalk

they pass you by mid-stride,

in the middle of a page, one

immediate thought now smudged.  

Leaning on the back of a bench

taking what shade you shelter within.

 

Red and spidered, casting their net ahead.

Rushing the corner into rounder shape,

then passing a few arms length away.

 

Book folds into my hands.

Sound is the shape, the questing mark.

Someone’s dire need answered instead.

 

Pigeon viewed from a green roof roost,

unmoved, is it something to carry home?

Just big red things thrashing, blurred.

 

Singular unperturbed column drawn straight black,

rises high, says, come this way, come here fast!

 

Not for any of the obvious reasons,

but I want to cry, echo their sirens wail,

as red becomes reason why.

 

 

Neil Reid © 2004

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Uvas canyon fire

Uvas canyon fire

 

 

Smoke settles low in wrinkled valleys

reluctant to depart the sweet sage cradle

     where first blossom newly arose.

 

One prayer of oak and brush says,

     take me into blue sky.

 

Today the creeks folded, and all dreaming

said simply, I have no name in this dawn.

 

Said, I have found this way and go.

 

From where the men stood mid-road,

their cars in hesitant rest on the narrow

shoulders of the country road, back

from there, across a small angled bridge,

there, I too became still – and listened.

 

It was a perfect silence.

 

It could easily be mistaken for someplace else,

     yet beyond one ridge, maybe another,

     something wonderous was thumping,

     thumping, wanting to come close.

 

2002 © Neil Reid

 

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