For Mr. Lennon

ABSENCE NOTES

some hallmarks for John Lennon's 70th birthday 10/09/10

1

You could get used to love

with or without desire.

Soul stem or cock root

your choice of pivots for

the one-trick pony of the needy heart.

2

Guess who I saw in my dream last night?

Nikita Khruschev.

He came to borrow a book

circumstances implied only I had.

"Glad I had the last copy," I told him.

"It's the first copy," he corrected.

3

The earth needs to haunt our dreams

to unfurl through all of space like a parachute

that lands us softly

in a life on earth.

4

John Lennon went 5 years without writing 1 song

then 15 of them in 3 weeks

sitting on a Bermuda beach

talking to Yoko every day on the phone

back in the later days of sky-high long distance rates.

5

You could get used to beauty.

Global warming

that stops at room temperature

and leaves any boiling points

to be reached by teas

served to stop wars.

6

This body is a haunted house

filled with ghosts of ambitions

for riches, women and

Buddhahood.

7

You could get used to splendor

standing still as trees

on windless days.

You could get used to splendor

stopped still as breath

the morning borrows

in reciprocal awe.

8

If the best of you is birthless

then deathward is not exactly

where you are headed

as you retrace your steps

back to the owning light.

9

Full moon matches full sun

in less glandular eruptions

and less grandiose efflorescence

of light to read by.

God is man-sized salience

on the surface of the brain

sharing all he knows

in continued perceptual prowess.

Praise is whatever is seen

once desire becomes wisdom

in no need of causation

or in any danger of cessation.

Night is an intimacy of day

passion focused to a single fruited flame

bursting with sweetness

from the sugars of sentience.

10

Guess who I saw in a dream tonight.

Nikita Kruschev come to return a book

of prayers common to moments

beyond hot pursuit of joy or despair.

"I liked the part where heroism is hearing

and hell cools to a heaven of cliffless heights," he says.

"I liked also the part where the drowning man rises

and bobs like a cork

on the surface of a sea with towless depths."

"You always were a sucker for happy endings," I tell him.

"What ends well must have begun well," he says.

"Thanks for reminding me."

--David Federman, Ardmore, October 10, 2010