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?
