I was locally grown
Humanely, sustainably raised
In a very small town
Among small farms along the Pioneer Valley
Where the Connecticut River wanders
Wearing out-of-state plates
Through Massachusetts
Our home sat streetwise not much above the lower than sea level sogginess of Lawrence Swamp. I remember standing in the front yard, waving to cars that passed, almost never. There was a pond behind us where my older brother and I floated on rafts, makeshift out of whatever few throwaway objects were left around in years not too far past war time austerity, jousting with neighbors in the bog, small soldiers playing games of war learned from a society recently, and frequently, compelled to battle.
Our dad, who flew Wildcats off small aircraft carriers in the South Pacific, during the war that came after ‘The War That Would End All Wars’, nailed number 10 cans between boards to devise for my brother and me, an upgraded raft. It looked beautiful, and sank a little, like the rest of our puddle crafts. Some years later the pond died, choked by plant life, reabsorbed into the fields.
As a kid I was a victim of identity theft
Swinging from the monkey bars
Chinning on the pullup bar
Hanging from a thread
Finding out who i was
From who they said i was
Who I came to think I was
Nowadays you’re supposed to reinvent yourself
I didn’t invent myself
How would i go about doing it again
I was eight when we moved down from the Pioneer Valley to the mouth of the Connecticut River, where it blends into the Atlantic through the cocktail shaker of the Long Island Sound. In all, the River flowed past me and through me for my first 23 years.
Her hydraulic majesty exerted a subtle pressure beyond her banks,
into the microscopic turbulence of my body and soul.
The serenities of North Cove gulls,
The deafening ecstasies of the frogs in Cedar Swamp,
if you listened closely,
could ignite revelations
about the energy of life; where it comes from,
whether people could possibly be personally responsible for it.
In high school we tried to understand the river with those methods of research available to pastoral hooligans: shake-weed and Rhode Island beer, occasionally a highly polluted hit of acid where Christmas lights ignited and undulated in the deciduous trees of a springtime graduation party.
I read Hermann Hesse, chopped wood and built fires in a blackened colonial fireplace, instinctually seeking to strip the veneer of words off a surpassingly peaceful silence.
Years later, back upriver in the Pioneer Valley, in long shadows cast by a soft buttered autumn sunset over Hadley fields, my brother and I felt mushrooms telling their story to a college boy and a college graduate, a story extracted from prehistoric sunlight into a plant that never expected itself to open eyes or hearts. Maybe psychedelic in plants evolved alongside hubris in humans, as a balancing spring in the terrestrial pinball lever.
__________________________
In my early twenties I started to experience a certain ecstasy in quietude
It pulsed
Finely but intensely
Shimmering through me
Dissolving the pain of my daily efforts
I had no teacher or spiritual community
Just this anonymous
Rejuvenating song
In retrospect there might have been signs
Of what was to come
The peace of quiet
Had begun to delicately subvert
My aspirations for anything else
In favor of this uninvited, unearned blessing
Not much later
I was ambushed and hurled into grace
Thrown into the game without a helmet
The boundaries far outside
Of where I had felt joy arising
I didn’t recognize its face from the mug shots in churches and temples
The thoughts i had learned to watch come and go
Had gone
Left the building
Taking my dimensions, my location
With them
The cramped square footage
Of my self sensation
Could not hold
Having apparently been scheduled for demolition
There was tremendous energy everywhere
But no body for it to happen in
Nobody for it to happen to
When thinking came back online
I found myself in a catastrophe
I thought I might breakdown
Or die
I tried running
Did my best to hide
After a few months staying away in my room
Hoping not to stumble on another viewing of endlessness
I understood
There was gonna be no unfeeling what I’d felt
I went to see an Indian guru
Then a Taoist master
And a Sufi Pir
They all had their initiations
The Sufi gave some sacred syllables
The Guru gave some Shaktipat
The Taoist master gave an energy transmission through the sacrum
Come on people, give me a break!
I’m trying to get away from this shivering, shuddering cyclonic power plant
That I stumbled on in an unfamiliar wilderness
Not get more electrocuted
Please don’t give me your energy bailout!
But I learned the intricate Taoist system of cultivation
And began to feel some control
Till i was able to start facing quiet again
Without being so afraid
Then I met an old master
Of no particular denomination
Formerly a vaudeville singer
And Wonder Bread truck driver
Who hollered the dharma
With fearless humor and exquisite friendship
I got a straight job, married a radiant woman
Who labored in pain to bear our three beautiful daughters
Life screwed roots into the soles of my feet
I learned to be a carpenter
And a software engineer
Whatever it took to make new rooms in our house
For the growing family
And a paycheck
For the many bills to devour
All the while, the undocumented energy grew
Stroking my spinal cord and bone marrow
Like they were strings on a cello
Once I woke up at my desk
Being churned helplessly in a wave of unbearable pleasure
I saw my heart from outer space
My body breathing out and in
Like some captured creature
I couldn’t tell where I start
And where i end
A feeling of love expanding
With unlimited trajectory
I got up to shake it off
And went back to work
In the corporate office space daydream
Bewildered
Sometimes I’d wake up at night
To find my body replaced by a rip tide of paroxysmal joy
Overpowering me
Deafening my thoughts
By this time I no longer felt the need
To hide or escape
And came to welcome
Straddling the worlds
Of intoxicating inspiration
And roughshod routine
Lately, all I know is
If I simply stand still for a moment
Vibrations encompass my standard-issue body
Climbing my tendons and bones
Dissolving my skull in resonance
Making everything sing
Outside in last night’s heatwave
The friction of my blood
Flowing from arteries into capillaries and veins
Harmonized with the crickets
Who were scratching out their rhythms in monotones
The fig tree scraping together its leafy genitalia
And sounds I haven’t even heard yet
Like earthworms manufacturing the soil beneath my feet
Trunks and roots thickening
Joined the symphony
____________________________
Reality must be billions of years old
But doesn’t look a day over zero
A second sooner or later than right now
Glistening with brand newness
So much goes on
Underneath the Big Top of this circus
A clown trying to sweep the spotlight out of the ring
A short range cosmonaut shot from a cannon
A sideshow lady getting sawn apart
Cells reproducing in the audience
Without conflict
Planets spinning and revolving overhead
Without colliding
The colossal joy ride of the cosmos
Inside and out
Am I a receptacle of the unimaginably limitless
Packaged in a container that was designed to fit
Through a standard door jamb?
My soul was shaken out of a deep sleep
And woke up a trapeze artist
Working without a net
_______________________________
Retrospective counsel
To my twenty something self
Rudely awakened
Smell the roses
But give attention to the noses
On those stair treads
Or you might catch one with your big toe
And tumble or be wrenched into this grace
Becoming unable to locate the center of your small town
Among the lights and noises
The smell of engine oil
And burning brake pads
Of a universe expanding
At a hundred and eighty three thousand miles per hour
There aren’t seatbelts strong enough
For this adventure
Far lesser rides were banned from amusement parks
Long ago
_____________________________
Now my skull has a broken window
Through which the Big Dipper is ladling shine
Borrowed from sunlight by a bald moon
At historically low interest rates
Filtering it through the charred oak barrels of my tan tien
Aging and distilling it into the supreme intoxicant
Arcing into the balls of my feet
Transmitting megawatts through my trembling legs
And my shivering spine
Heaven loving earth
Earth loving heaven
Standing, silent I’m
A six foot-one tuning fork
Drenched in vibration
Or a filament
Plugged into starlight and stone
Humming with their charge
__________________________
Life belongs to the dancer
Who stumbles and tries it again
Learning to fly
Before the music ends
I’ve driven this track counterclockwise
Turning left for decades
Eventually my transmission will seize up
Engine fail
Gas tank catch fire
No matter how moderately or piously I live
Which i haven’t
And probably won’t soon
Someday my life energy will sneak away
Like the sleekest of cat burglars
Reverting obediently to mystery
Releasing my exhausted frame
Into the merciful custody of nature’s garden
Will there be a final feeling
How long will it last?
