The Golden Pathways In the Skin

Golden lines run beneath your skin,

directing and yearning; we must have melted the ore,

for now the treasure runs like laughter in a child's lips,

the stream billows like a flag in the wind,

the lily entices the air and is moved.

Movement becomes dance,

one heart is gone and fills the soul,

the emptiness pools gold.

In martial practice, play push-hands

and greet what arrives, escort what leaves,

rush upon loss of contact.

Learn to play thus, learn to kiss.

Learn to love and teach the body all

the golden pathways in the skin.

Endless Red Field

Every time I touch that passage, I have to read it again,

and every time the wind blows by it investigates

that one deep crevice in the face of the high cliff.

When I see those blooms, I must inhale,

when I count the petals I must forget,

when I stir the waters they must rise

and ask me in a burbling tongue who I am.

If I reach that valley, I must run into it

and make some noise; if I hold back, what am I?

If once I hear the rustle like pages

of you, I am compelled to

I will never know, but I must, I must, I must.

When you drink warm milk with a golden strand of clover honey

swirled into it, spiraled, doesn't it slip down your throat

and land in the endless red field?

You Come To

You come to the home of Lao Tzu, where

even though there are no ornaments

you're weeping about the beauty.

You come to a very wide place,

to the One whose face you don't see,

and you're weeping.

You come to a mountainous peak

when the moon has waned

and waned and the circle of her visage breaks

at your weeping. You come to feel

what T'ai Chi calls dan tien,

the warmness and the full, close body;

being pregnant with your weeping,

like a many-petalled constellation of soft red suns

lifting their feet

and turning into the sea.

You come to realize that love is a void

into which is drawn the world;

again, weeping.

You come so close to the edge of you that, O!

the tension aches pleasure and the loss

shines momentously, but you retain

your balance for sake of your weeping.

You're sitting beneath the parkway

on a long piece of ratty carpeting

beside a concrete shelf on which a cabinet rests,

one empty drawer marked Clothes,

the other Books;

you're weeping

:

"Where was this when I was homeless?"

.

The Big Cats (of Autumn)

Tigers orange and red

and lions, lions golden,

climbing headfirst down the long soft trunks

of summer, vibrant into autumn,

fast-beholding hoary winter's encroach;

like a hand with a collar,

stiffening bark.

Claws like the claws

on the hands of a clock-face

telling time's dull toll, minute to hour;

the last laugh of the last partygoer

downing his drink in an empty room

of pale, pale trees.

Trees with trunks so high, who can tell

if the tigers started from the top before the lions,

kicking off the sky like the bottom of a lake

and racing the big cats down

to see who'd first be swept in piles

and pounced on?

Words for Abraham from a Descendant of the Sky

What a lovely, lonely-wondrous city

where Abraham's descendants would have been approximately

five or seven by the count of stars,

like blindly bought celestial cigarettes and match heads

circling around behind the clouds of rancid smoke

as this old sky pontificates and gestures.

Better, more beautiful to stare into the only working streetlamp

and pretend that it's the moon that isn't up there anyplace.

It flickers and burns, but it hasn't gone out yet;

hope it does, though: I'd turn and weep on no one's distant shoulder,

whisper at the empty crowded ocean of a city sky:

"

How the hell do I, do I get out of

sitting on the outside?

"

Sweet Old Vintage

Floorboards creaking in an old porch

sound like an omen to these ears

when coupled with the rippling rush of children

laughing as they run towards home,

their feet treading the wind,

pursued by leaves.

I say let the old pines groan,

to hell with wooden prophecies!

They'll support our weight until the spring,

just as the grasping, naked branches of the oaks hold up the sky

when the year grows heavy as a thick warm blanket,

cold as nights without you.

We'll cap our heads with wool, I'll stop your mouth with mine;

we'll bottle up this passing summer like it's wine

so not a single drop escapes us.

Then, love, when the thawing thunderstorms

and bright stars roll back round to us,

we'll wave at them and shout for joy

with hands full of the sweet old vintage,

the only leaves still bright upon the branches!