Uncertain Ends

Who says a place has wings and sings of its slow drip 

and its hurried cavern carried inside us. 

It’s the best to drop the fence of existenz and leave the naming to sky and fortune.

Old sleeping breath and the young cross reference of the woods and the waterfall.

Some have come to drink, others to lend a note.

The presupposition that we have something to say comes from talking on and then

turning down the bus noise or radio or tourists.

We try to concentrate on a drop of falling water but we are a water fall,

a super fluid of first elemental moments.

How come to love and such uncertainty, 

to be turned away by distraction is a condition of being conditioned, 

no longer one but many drops falling from the river

to rejoin the river on the rocks.

If you are tired and yourself is the same as my self, 

partial, awake for a few minutes and 

then lolling like tired legs at the museum.

One could be tired even of beauty, intrigue and selves without end.

Before the face of a date, framed and beautiful, 

how self-conscious the flight to doubt and nothing to say.

How lonely to squander all times.

Not a hero but a here and now, the Buddha lifting his tiny finger,

the river pouring over the rock, 

the tent flapping and tapping 

with the start of light rain drops in the heat.

Even when we seem to have time to talk, there is the pressing other,

the glyph of infinity giving pause to meek and tiny feelings.

How can such tender flowers unfurl, bashful and tentative.

No one can love me enough to have blooms come from my open eyes,

roots from my soles and tepid tea to warm in a cup.

To be in that ultimate place of memory, 

calling it something else, 

like talking of the weather when so much is on your mind.  

So much is come down stream and even more waits in the highland 

with the weather starting to drizzle.

With you sitting in my tent, how rare,

with the Buddha believing that water is falling, that lakes are still and 

the poor Universe suffers its uncertainties like being alone,

wanting badly to go out or sit and talk with her.