The Past is a Bowl of Water
The Past is a Bowl of Water
Like the music of the far shore glistening,
The absent landlords, the high fees and
Grimaces of people in line, thinking,
Shuffling their feet and the air
When still there were many insects alive.
Vast majorities are dead now.
The phone book is full of them and
No one recalls to tempt them with honors
Back into the living stream.
The dream from deep behind your mind.
The climb, in line on a high shelf of Everest
With wind ripping thin air.
Kangchenjunga, deep from the sleeping multitude,
Polyphony of forms and format and reach.
The timid begin best to question things.
On a day off, swung like a hammock,
Strung like a delicate web of macrame,
The spider webs of the minds,
Both alive and dead contributing.
Wishing at times it were otherwise.
Some opaque sphere of gargantuan stoppage
Like a stroke constipating the body politic.
Other as asking the arts for thin answers,
Brochures, history, can do attitudes and hands.
We will never get there this way.
High string, memory, hieroglyph,
The sound of murmuring from other rooms.
500 lions “harvested” from Colorado.
Wolves, bears, bob cats and man sleeping deeply,
Woman barely better – wanting what she wants.
Portraiture, sand painting,
Chips from porcelain, sharp as obsidian
For use of tracking, skinning,
Amusing ourselves to the Winter of tales,
A million years, another half thousand,
Just as we got here from there, alive.
Barely breathing and feeling poor from the operating table,
The feast day, the festival of the dead with actual blood.
Pulse level, sea side swoon
She travels like grass,
Forward everywhere the wind blows and back
Where it becomes still, bare as rock,
Blue as sky.
Heaven hears her clouds traveling by and
Daily brushes, blushes pink.
Still warm flesh, still transpiring in minute (minoot) links,
Tiny grievances with our existence and
The accurate perception of burdens, miracles,
More timely as we are gone,
Going away, marking the recollection.
The past is a bowl of water.
An ocean is as big as its bottom and shore and tide
And pull and time, self-adhering,
Claiming as we say, to be.
By Rolf Stavig
1/28/2024
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