The Virtues of Subtraction

 

“Make very little of yourself if you wish

to see clearly. Shut up, deeply, if you

wish to hear. Stop your preening and

disclaiming. Pour your bottles of

perfume into the dirt.” ~Lewis Hyde

(On Butterfly Hunting)

 

i

Lord, let me be content

to be small.

There’s virtue in the lowly.

Consider the violet, ant, pebble,

every abandoned leaf.

The sky bows down

to uphold them all.

 

Let me strive to be silent

that I might hear

the cumulus clouds

accumulating,

to know

the bounties that flow

ever downward,

or comprehend how

a seed births a self.

 

Think of the trees

reaching every which way

for an answer

when what’s true

lies in the asking.

 

ii

A part of me fell away today,

falling from my mouth;

a memory dislodged

from a tipsy sentiment.

How I am

to live without it

is beside the point,

sublimity being achieved

not by adding more

but by taking away.

 

What is the labor

required to return

me to my 

nakedness?

 

 

iii

If you can’t visit paradise

without putting down your bags

then you will never be

an adventurer, a traveler, or journeyman.

You will only be a tourist

because you put yourself first

and can’t put yourself down.

You encircle everything

by building a wall

between you and it

with your requirements,

minutiae, mind's detritus,

your self-importance.

Learn to put yourself aside

for the sake of being present,

in order to connect,

in order to take part,

otherwise no matter

where you go

you won’t be here or there.

 

If happiness is no more

than a beautiful moment;

beautiful moments

are everywhere.

To arrive there,

prune away your

anticipation and frustration;

impatience with those you love,

jealousy toward a friend,

anger at your family.

Learn to take away

until there is nothing

left to remove.

 

What is left?

Only an action.

You are in it,

whether in art, or sport, or in love,

with clarity, intensity and solidity.

You adjust quickly and deftly.

No longer bound by addition.

You are free to act.

 

10/1/23

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colossians 5:18

 

Climbing down from

the watch tower of my mind,

lasso looped round my shoulder

for pulling down the moon,

I catch sight of promontory

rose-tinged clouds

populating the sky

outside the window;

a delicate, natural light

in contrast to

the blood curdled blues

radiating from the tv screen,

aglow, yet unable to enthrall.

 

My cat,

having sat in the dark

for who knows how long

staring into a space

few of us will ever

have reason to enter

sits fixated (as is her way)

on everything and nothing

at the same time.

 

It dawns on me

in this single moment

that every minute is

as numbered

as a holy verse,

yet we

take no notice,

even when each minute

 unfurls easiest by

our getting out

of its way;

a tick

without need

of a tock.

 

At 5:18

someone’s water breaks

to pour from a mouth

like a stone fountain.

The flowers

(outside where they once belonged)

rise up an unruly crowd

freed from their pots

to wriggle ecstatically,

roiled by an unseen wind

only to smash

the glass panes

and abruptly enter

my home!

A congestion of green

encircles the television

bent on strangling it from behind.

Tendrils thick with thorns

head straight for the voice boxes

snuffing out their speechifying

mid-sentence

as the pretty faces

choke and flame out

bursting in close-ups

like cherry tomatoes

under a broiler;

all for the crime of

having refused to give

us back to ourselves.

 

In the real world

the weak are born

in the wee hours,

breach babies

refusing to suckle

while the rest

lie recovering

from yet another

surprise assault.

Someone is heard shouting:

I want to see my baby!

fearing the worst.

 

What if life is unfolding

simply to push us out

like a sliver?

How is that beauty?

Or is it?

 

We enter the nurseries

in search of our own face.

telling ourselves not to panic

 if there’s no smile.

Life is life

no matter what color,

or shape of leaf,

piston or stamen.

Do its tiny fingers

comprise a hand?

Twice?

Does it have a mouth

for wailing, singing,

or both?

 

There you are.

There there.

We press our ear to your heart

listening for its gentle morse

like a drumbeat in the distance

dictating the rest of

all our lives.

 

9/10/23

 

 

Confessions of a Town Crier

 

I was 6 the first time I cried at the cinema. 

I wept so hard the sobbing impaired my vision, 

so hard that my poor mother leaned over 

and asked if we should leave.

She thought I was unhappy, but I wasn’t.

Not at all. 

The minute the movie was over 

I wanted to feel whatever that was

all over again.

 

So began my love affair with 

crying amongst strangers in the dark. 

I don’t mean being reduced to tears,

because that’s no reduction.

Crying for art is an honor. 

It’s applause with mucus and salt.

I suppose it falls to the actors themselves

to guide us away from any awkwardness

we might harbor over  their

dissolving us into tears.

The willingness to be vulnerable before the world:

a kind of ritual sacrifice.

Tears as holy water.

I’m thinking of that lone tear that Denzel Washington

releases as he’s whipped in “Glory”;

two centuries of exploitation in a rivulet

of vicarious mortification.

 

Less and less we are attending

the cathedrals of crying. 

Instead, I fear we’re numbing ourselves. 

Even our lacrimal surrogates in Hollywood 

have been turning their backs on us

towards age-defying procedures that 

culminate in faces that can no longer 

approximate our sorrow. 

 

I see a crisis of deadening being passed down…

Why are we running from ourselves?

Evading the inevitability of emotional difficulty?

What if my mother had yanked us up that day

at “E.T.” and insisted that a boy inconsolably weeping

was somehow inappropriate? 

What other beauty would I have become dead to? 

What truths?

 

When my dog died I cried so loud 

I worried my neighbors might call the police: 

It’s a peculiar experience, crying that way: 

undammed, with your entire self, 

with everything in you, roaring out.

If crying distinguishes us from the animals,

it also arouses the animal IN us. 

I didn’t know such a creature,

a werewolf in my case, 

resided in there.

Not a hulk but a hurt. 

You won’t find it on your “to do” list.

In other words you don’t access it. 

The wolf finds you. 

It proceeds to drag immense sorrow

through the tiny openings

of your nostrils, eyes, and mouth. 

Its release as healing as any peel of laughter.

Think of all that’s happened to us

in the last few years.

 

I think it’s the animal inside us that needs to speak now…to cry out.

IT’S waiting, ready for a mass howling.

I know I’m ready, what about you?