Rice

While you are gone
I think of
rice, the mystery
of this
substance, how
the smell lingers
days, weeks
later.
My hands,
still
covered by
you,
begin to speak
a soft language.
Who can translate
these words? They
sail by
so tenderly,
stained with love.

Innocent

And the war
the war goes on
with the sister of the war
and the brother of the war,
the war, the war continues.
Even with the mother of the war
grieving and
the son of the war
no longer with us
the war,
innocent in its own
way, the war
knowing nothing more
goes on
even if the sister wanders,
knowing nothing
any more herself,
the war continues.
Even with the father
hardly there
the war goes on
innocent in a way,
even if
the daughter sickens,
knowing nothing,
the war continues,
like the brother
who goes on bravely
or the mother even if
she knows more than
she wanted, the war
goes on, with the
son forever missing
with a sister who is lost now
in a different way,
with a brother who
has few words,
the war continues

though the daughter
may be sick to death
and the father
has gone
somewhere
distant in his mind,
the war is
innocent, and
it goes on
knowing nothing,
it continues.

                        Berkeley, January 31, 2004

 

New

Sometimes you
want a big word,
longer and
commensurate with
complexities,
histories that
are layered in your
mind, wedded
with your soul.

Totalitarianism
for instance, what
happened
across the ocean
in the past,
so dense and
different, how
Hitler and Stalin
were murderous
and strangely strict,
so thrillingly defined,
unlike the life you've
known.

But then
a time comes
(has already come,
perhaps)
when the term begins to
feel commonplace,
loses its sheen, and
turns
fearsome in a
a toilsome, grinding
daily sort of way.
(Am I on some
list, somewhere,
already?)

Though oddly
you can't help thinking,
(or is it hoping?)
the unpleasant thoughts
you have
must be
wrong. This
latest century
will certainly give
us something
new.

                        Berkeley, 2007

Evening

  The evening
darkens itself
or is darkened,
though the distinction
hardly matters.
What comes from
inside can
seem as foreign
and unwilled
as any
natural disaster.

  What
unseen
stubborn fragment
of being
has dictated
all this time
alone?

  Though in truth
there have been
many lovers and
a child
and that child's
children.

  This hour of
the coming night
can also be
said to hold
every last
bit of light.

                        Berkeley, 2007