The Book of Commons

Dearest Mo,

I awoke from a dream that was intolerably vague and purposeless, thinking I was wasting my life because it did not lead to clear dreams--and should by now. Then I thought of Hayden Carruth's poem about men turning this world into "God's grave" and immediately felt that somehow such atheism was really devotion because God must be more than an inescapable, hounding thought--but a thought worthy of thinking once the scarecrow has a brain. My musing straw man's mind jumped in at this point and said something about how the mind has ceased to be proper housing for the thought of God (my current story line for The Fall of Man). I wondered in what sense I had meant that. Was the mind as a house for God poorly built? "You don't even have a building permit," the wise-ass part of me said. "This hovel you call a mind wouldn't even pass inspection." I then chastised myself for what I will now call "metaphoric intemperance." Still lying in bed, I decided to seriously, and with great focus, pursue the thought of God, like Descartes pursuing the "I am," as a necessary occurrence. That's when it happened--a thought unlike any other I have ever had. "What if God Himself is the last act of Creation?" I asked myself. "And what if we as human beings are sent to bring His name into the world by pronouncing it?" Impossible, I thought. Essence (God) precedes Existence (Creation). But something in me then said, "Things are their opposite in the world of matter. First is last. Last is first." I had no idea what I meant. The humbled wise-ass part of me suggested meekly, "Things are different on this, the other (Created) side of light. Things are different when the light slows to the lower frequency of song. There it seems Night until bird calls make the world worthy of Day and Light. Like the birds of morning, you are a receptacle for song--a Logos of song that slowly fills the trees with points of light that chatter and swirl like stars buried in a Rothko blackness dam-burst into a Van Gogh night. What would you have that erupting song say about God?" That's when I dragged myself to my computer and wrote what follows, perhaps as prelude to bigger (housing) project.

David (of later life)

P.S., Try to imagine the faith necessary for a God his subjects have bifurcated from His Creation to believe that His final bestowal is to be a name among names, His native flowing regained in the emergent/merging life we have been given. Try to imagine this Creation as an inseparable act of faith like "a river that runs through it." I realize now that what happened this morning is the result of watching that movie for the first time in years and re-reading the book on which it is successfully based.

THE BOOK OF COMMONS

for Mo

1

What if the last act of Creation

in the story we most commonly tell about it

is of a God dispensing life like seltzer

whose name is to appear like a signature

in small scrawl on a painting?

And what if the painting isn't finished

and the artist still unknown?

What if the subjects of this painting

have yet to satisfy the maker

into signing His name

at the bottom like rocks

along the floor of a river?

What if the subjects are to appear first and foremost

as sailors braving the rapids

of a wild river that moves like a deep, wide crease

through a land which stranded men

would call the Valley of Death's Shadow?

And what then if the Creator's brush is driven

to depict a river bed that is now a dry basin

representing some perplexing second thoughts

about the abilities of men to cruise those crushing waters?

What if Creation has become a subject whose original excitement

has quieted to sadder shadings?

What if the rapids of this uttered world

have become too dangerous for men to ride?

And what if the roar men hear

is no longer a matching hum?

Monkish Commentary:

Om is river rush, neutral no matter how powerful--free to become h(om)e to dwell in but just as

free to become (om)en of destruction when reduced to cascading thrill ride or wreckage-strewn flood tide

risen from unkempt, torn levies. O, men, make of this world what is best for house keeping. Let the gods

enter each perception, thought and dream as if the sentience that invites them is a national park entrance.

Do not give into fear and greed that turns each door into a fire exit. The world is made for embrace not escape.

2

I struggle with the world

in its defrocked complexity.

I struggle with the world

as if it is a church whose founder left it.

I struggle with the world

whose first place is a public garden

where, rumors have it, sex scandals

and oil drilling have turned it into a hiding place.

I struggle with the world

whose nights still bring a scented wind

that flows through the trees

with an estuarial grace

and a tinge of honeysuckle.

I struggle with the world

and God's discarded dreams for it

in the unworthy shrine of troubled sleep.

I struggle with the world

as a birthplace like Stratford-on-Avon

where we are permitted entrance

only as groundskeepers--

all other rights and reasons

but reverence through upkeep

revoked

for the time being.

Monkish Commentary:

The grounds need tending. They always need tending if they are to be true grounds for being.

This is not meant as a pun, although it started as such. See into the adjacency of meanings

when the same words can be used to signify birth and death and the life they share in common.