I Know What I Did Last Summer

FOUND(LING) POEMS
for Joel

Always something to catch
your attention
rarely something done by you
other than to capture
your admiring
envy.

God's grace
thwarts every calibre
of creation
for which you
could claim authorship.

The dream does not
give up
on the life
in which it is posited.
It learns to haunt
and hound
every situation
where there is an 'I'
aware of things happening
or an eye to see
and recall every detail
of these nunaced hours
called the days
and nights.

It's only your life
in a custodial sense.
Someone shows you
how to tend the grounds
like the last keeper
and encourages
small, distinct liberties
of management
called style.
Then when it comes
your turn to teach
maintenance
your every touch
becomes
substance.

The dream will stand at
your graveside
or pyre
heaping dirt
or branches
on the last
containment
of your remains.

"The long retreat"
is left to others
like yourself
to prove worthwhile
through sheer
all-engulfing
embrace of
sustenance.

You learned to become lost
not hidden in
the work.

No way out
once work is worship
once history becomes
this moment
of flesh
and its labors.
No way out
once the mission
is soft emission
of light from eyes
or gleaming sweat.

Earth life
is just another safe keeping
once you learn to live
by your own light
in the long dark corridor
called the belly of the whale.

First light
risen at dawn;
Last light
rose at dusk.

Once you have learned
to bow deeper
than the ocean
your skin is shroud
you have worn
since birth
to relinquish
like a robe
of breath
and blood
shed.

In your poems
you are capable
of ready repose,
your language
is elegant and sweet
a coffin you lie down in
for practice burial
before the summons
to stay at rest.

Of course
you know this man.
But the man with the sword
who asked you if you did
wasn't asking about him
as a man
whose hands you kissed
and whose feet you washed.
From hand to toe
that man was now a criminal
some son of god
forsaken
and someone
you had every right
to deny ever
knowing.

Make good your escape.
Make good come of it.

Now that you've come this far
to die is to pass on
the love of truth
and the truth of love
in just about everything
you do except
when reading
the newspaper.

Breath braids life
as intake on the inside
and outtake on the outside
of your softly shining
ceramic-glowing body--
a boundary
a demarcation
only as waste
of thought.

The epitaph,
if you are lucky,
is the unforgettable thought
of you and the God
you worshipped
for once and always
one and
inseparable.

July 20, 2007