The Salt of Sorrow

“Have salt in yourselves, 

and be at peace with one another.”

~Mark 9:50

“I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow

and called out, ‘It tastes sweet, does it not?’

‘You’ve caught me,’ grief answered, 

‘and you’ve ruined my business. How

can I sell sorrow, when you know it’s

a blessing?’”

~Rumi

Sorrow is a salt, 

it flavors things. 

Better yet,

salt brings out 

the flavors

of the things

themselves.

It’s a taste that 

raises the bland 

to new heights. 

Salt endears

me to the world. 

It helps me

feel empathy. 

It provides 

context and scale

by its sheer

presence. 

It levels the field 

of my inner life,

disallowing me 

to become coarse 

or callow when 

life is good. 

When life is 

difficult, it

invigorates 

by preserving

the essence

of what I love

like an insect

in amber;

a lozenge

in the mouth

that sweetens

the world

by slowly 

dissolving.

Sorrow tenderizes

all it touches.

It acknowledges that

loss is the shadow

of gain, of

gifts that age.

It understands

all things pass

even as it

captures their essence

by enhancing

their capacity.

Sorrow, like salt,

came early,

a full moon

advancing stories.

The salt of sorrow

softened me

like a hide.

I can love

anything now

because I know 

that such grief

creates hunger 

for beauty

in the world.

March 31st, 2021

 

Switzerland

Everything was possible 

in the mountains of Switzerland.

Or so I thought.

At seventeen I found myself on a train 

leaving Zurich and heading through the Alps 

toward the monastery town of Eisendeln. 

My head shaved, my army-green Smith Corona 

abandoned back at the hotel, my feet worn-out

from wandering a foreign country as a stranger

to everything and everyone.

All I really knew of Switzerland was from

a calendar picture of the Swiss Mountains

that had hung in my mother’s kitchen

where a steeple rose up from a glade

beside a stream. That and having seen

The Sound of Music as a child, I knew

it had been over the Alps that the Von Trapps

had escaped to safety. Also Heidi’s crippled

friend learned to walk again 

because the mountain air and water

were so crystalline it had brought

feeling back to her legs.

In Switzerland, clouds were decidedly more vivid,

the sky able to make as much sense beneath you

as above. Reflection is the key to Switzerland.

Maybe that’s why I had imagined

a sanitarium nestled in a valley

surrounded by fiords where tubercular patients 

could rest in chairs beneath fruit trees 

after taking too much sun,

their sensitivities heightened by the altitude,

their perceptions becoming so in tune with the purpose

of the honey bees drawing sustenance from

the field flowers that it would cause their conditions 

to resolve themselves as readily as ice melts at the touch.

Here, away from the things of man

it was possible to live in a constant state

of astonishment, where miracles

were as common as the re-emergence

of caterpillars unfurling their wings.

Hot air balloons were surely the mode of travel

in Switzerland,

a place without magazines or cigarettes,

junk food, or car accidents, pollution or murders,

or robbery, wars or famine, or homelessness,

a place where no one is poor, starving 

or down on their luck, or ever depressed

because everything is curable

by taking a walk or opening a window.

Switzerland was where you went when

you’d grown tired of the ways of the world,

a place where thoughts found diamond-like clarity.

A place where I, muted by depression and emboldened

by heartache, was to find what I’d been looking for.

However, not before asking myself

if it were possible to run towards something

without running away from something else.

At seventeen I'd come to kill myself in Switzerland;

a place whose natural beauty

could never be more affecting than when

apprehended by a broken heart.

March 29th, 2021

 

                       "Spiral Staircase" by Paul Wright

Moon 

Descending 

a Staircase

“I am my own muse,

the subject I know best.” 

               ~Frida Kahlo

Eventually

all we’ve

learned will

have to

be forgotten.

Even you have

grown weary of 

passing the time

suspended in a sky 

of anonymous stars.

Don’t you fear appearing

hopelessly antediluvian?

You are

a paradox; 

an all-seeing pupil

as cloudy

as a cataract.

You could be

mistaken for

a balding judge

for want of

a powdered wig, 

when in fact

you make a

perfect muse.

In two weeks

you will be 

wall-eyed.

Your nightly progress

tracking our

whereabouts by

a homing device

buried within

every heart,

registering quakes

thump by thump

by thump.

Now

at last you

descend

from the safety 

of your vast ceiling

to perch in

the branches

of a yew tree;

silver oval owl

abandoning

the sky

for lesser climbs,

as if you knew 

Van Gogh

was right: 

starlight

spirals downward

toward what's lowly.

So why not 

replenish

yourself by

lying low?

You, who’ve

never needed

to take me 

(just another

spoke 

in your

revolving hub),

personally

have traveled

down

to see me

as I am.

My casual

nonchalance

hardly proving

us unrelated,

you will find 

us both

on a journey

towards

wholeness.

Seeing is 

believing you are

not too faraway

to follow 

me home,

let alone

hover over

every phase

of life,

even when 

you go

missing

you manage 

to go on

pulling the tides

toward 

your cheek

with a lover’s

abandon.

Thank heavens

you haven't 

any smile

because your

mouth could

never justify

curling upward

over so much

sorrow.

If nature

is ironic,

we have

no answers.

So why 

do I

still want to 

climb closer 

to your 

pale face

and scrawl

my name

on the

blameless

surface

of your

indifference?

In the end,

I may discover

it was

your distance

that kept

us close

all along.

That way

you could 

be sure

I would never

outgrow you.

March 22nd, 2021

 

The 

Hoarder 

Koan

You cannot solve me 

with your mind.

Nor have I 

any interest 

in being solved. 

My motto:

I will make everything mine.

I am ouroboros,

able to swallow

myself whole.

This is how

I keep my life

in place. 

I am Sphinx,

inscrutable God 

in perpetual hold.

I am koan.

You cannot fathom me.

Beneath and inside,

within and without;

my radius

is a burial ground 

for unearthed treasure.

I measure myself

by antiquities,

regardless of my trail

of unexceptional 

artifacts.

I need my sleep

to desire so much.

But I do

not sleep.

I am too hungry for

my next 

acquisition.

On the surface 

I appear as two orbs

but there is 

so much more 

to me.

I am both

above and below,

ascribing value

to everything

I see and touch.

My gaze

repeats a 

mother's promise:

I will watch

over you. 

I cocoon,

wrapping the world

in indiscriminate love

in order to

gently paralyze.

Quantum physics

tells me that

for every

anti-particle

there is a 

particle,

plus one. 

This imbalance is

ancient asymmetry

proving matter 

will outlast us.

So too

the elements,

stars, solar systems, 

planet Earth…

everything.

Now you know why

I must make 

the world

my own.

March 4th, 2021

 

Snow 

This furious snow

is a creation myth;

raw energy dancing 

in an animal eye,

milk thistle white

gone to seed,

blown by the breath

of a giddy God.

February 19th, 2021

 

                                         

    

Some Call It Sleep

Every night I fall asleep at the controls.

and that’s when I really go places.

Every night I’m kidnapped and taken

against my will to an undisclosed location.

Every night everything happens to me

when I can’t help but only do nothing.

Every night the paint flies off the canvas

leaving me to recollect it’s colors by heart.

Every night what happens at night stays

in the night like the negatives of lost photos. 

Every night I slip the bonds of my body

and head South of no North all alone.

Every night I take off my name

and leave my license on the nightstand.

Every night I find a moth in my shorts

beating its wings at the same rate as my heart.

Every night I close the book that is me

and read the history of what never happens.

Every night I toss and turn and in so doing

spark a flint beneath the kindling of my body.

Every night I pretend to die a good death

rehearsing by the light of fictional stars.

Every night I say a prayer but never say Amen

so that tomorrow will begin and end in devotion.

February 17, 2021