PALIMPSEST

The earnest monastery scribe begins
to scrape: he must expunge, obliterate
a text of Archimedes. Tonsured pate
bowed over parched and pumiced skins,
stone bench stone-cold, to his chagrin
hemorrhoids, indigestion complicate
his task. But laborare et orare, so he meditates;
offers up his troubles in atonement for his sins.

Beyond clerestory walls descendant sheep
are growing new skins in a lilac breeze.
Fra Pennafolio envies how they graze
oblivious, while lately he’s been losing sleep
fighting dark avengers of Hippocrates.
For help, he rubs his cabuchon of chrysoprase.

He must not let it faze him.
After all, in frugal fact, parchment is dear
and perfect skins are rare. He must persevere,
erase and rewrite without fear.
It is a holy labor, surely in the angels’ care,
to cleanse away the pagans for a book of prayer.
.
.

PALIMPSEST

EPISTEMOLOGY

They never should have shown me
those pictures: the man who
wore a long white robe, sandals,
his moist brown eyes always looking up,
his long silk hair surrounded by a mist of gold.

They told me it was he who changed the world.
He spoke wise words but never wrote them down.
With time I learned he was the one
who saved me. From what, I did not know.
He had to be killed in order to do it.

After that, no robe, no sandals.
Nearly naked, limp hair matted,
head hung low, he was nailed
to a hideous wooden cross. I was
too young to not look, to not listen.

I put the pictures, the story, the cross
away in a deep place where
things never let go. Even though
all of it happened when I wasn’t there.
Nor was anyone who told me so.

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EPISTEMOLOGY
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Originally posted October 2013

SAME OLD, SAME OLD

Once upon a time
in a house on dry land…

after the fierce flood
folded into the lips of mud,
the door flung open to
the sunburned yard
where a woman of salt
crouched over her lost arm

long after sand
shifted the weight of time,
drifting over the litter
of the sandman’s bones
and a bird flew in
with a get-well card

when the overtures
were over
and the happy harm of
war, and two-by-two
were not enough to rhyme
with an immaculate
conception’s dovely tones,
branch bringing only
echoes of
the olive’s flesh singing

after all this and
the nerve-wracking babble
of lesser birds messing
the eaves of the unfinished
tower, the monument
standing broken-fingered
halfway to its heaven
when the hammer left
the hand, and below,
the dumb, nose-thumbing
rabble

even after
the black widow’s power
was washed from each
room where it lingered,
dead rainbows
clung to the windows and

….there lived a whale
in the belly of a man.

THE MUSE

The Muse is usually a she
according to art history.
More than once I’ve
served in that capacity.

I’ve also known it as a he
a love, an ardent kind
of sustenance, a boon
to heart and mind.

In the end I think
it is a voice inside
wherever the best
part of me abides.

It is ancient, bardic,
will not be cajoled
or come when called
or do as it is told.

“Do the work,” it says,
“and leave the door ajar.
Do not worry.
I know where you are.”

EPISTEMOLOGY

They never should have shown me
those pictures:  the man who
wore a long white robe, sandals,
his moist brown eyes always looking up,
his long silk hair surrounded by a mist of gold.

They told me it was he who changed the world.
He spoke wise words but never wrote them down.
With time I learned he was the one
who saved me.  From what, I did not know.
He had to be killed in order to do it.

After that, no robe, no sandals.
Nearly naked, limp hair matted,
head hung low, he was nailed
to a hideous wooden cross.  I was
too young to not look, to not listen.

I put the pictures, the story, the cross
away in a deep place where
things never let go.  Even though
all of it happened when I wasn’t there.
Nor was anyone who told me so.