Poetry

The grade surmounted we were speeding high
Through level mountains nothing to the eye
But scrub oak, scrub oak and the lack of earth

The road at the top of the rise
Seems to come to an end
And take off into the skies.

Let the downpour roil and toil!
The worst it can do to me
Is carry some garden soil

Lord, I have loved your sky,
Be it said against or for me,
Have loved it clear and high

It took that pause to make him realize
The mountain he was climbing had the slant
As of a book held up before his eyes

There’s first a gloveless hand warm from my pocket,
A perch and resting place ‘twixt wood and wood,
Bright-black-eyed silvery creature, brushed with brown

“Make of yourself a light,”
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning

On the quietest days,
when the sea just hovers in the background
and the light is no particular color
I forget summer,

Inside
 that mud-hive, that gas-sponge,
  that reeking
   leaf-yard, that rippling

Is this the very face
of an angry God, or simply
his instrument?