“Like Oleander”, “Navigating Silence” and “Tiresias, the Seer (a poem in 9 Tankas)”

Like Oleander

The sun was blinding then,
across the eastern Mediterranean,
I watched her fingers brush the greenery aside,
going for the oleander,
I watched for movement
of a gloved hand adjusting a veil,
of an elongated leg brushing up against silk chiffon,
of honey curls swishing from side to side,
of that slight crease preceding a smile.
I followed her into the woods,
where shuttered village homes
stood in shadowed rows of cypress trees,
I walked along trails of scent, Samsara,
with a hint of citrus in the air.
I hopped along pretending I was
as ethereal as she,
dreamlike,
suspended,
as everything she touched,
as everything she breathed.
I watched her enter the winding lake
that afternoon in June,
transparent,
shimmering against the light,
she could have been fairy dust,
everything was just
too beautiful,
too fragile,
too much.

Navigating Silence

Beyond binary opposites,

the noise of corrosive dissent,

there exists the limitless

and the sublime

mass contained in the now

is freedom in lava flow,

seeping into bedrock

forming reveries of basalt

while mountains of rage recede,

frame after frame of flitting light

melding into calcite white,

glacial blue, volcanic black,

interwoven valleys of flickering gems

all within grasp

if only you’d listen to this stillness

of time lacking presence, if only

you’d listen to the prescient void

of heaviness in light, if only

you’d listen to the silence of landscape,

of sound stretched to its ultimate end,

drifting on vastness of smoky water,

mist rising into the glimmering sky above, if only

you’d listen

just listen

It’s the crack in the stones I brought home

listen

it’s solitude delivered on a black sand beach

it’s a wish in a sculpture garden one afternoon

listen

it’s where hopes stand erect

on the edge of heaven and space

listen

it’s the sound of surrender

listen