Moon fragment with Galway Kinnell

To type the ambiguous is to launch into something new. Where in the outer stretches of boredom, does creativity lie? To talk about nothing is nothing—how it is a “no thing” thing. It balloons like flaccid cock, dangles from the lamp stem. La Luna esta brilla en El Mundo. There is no moon. It’s a cat eye. Venus in the sky is casting shadows before the sun arises. Galway said Jupiter and Saturn were so close together that long shadows were cast on the New Mexican desert last summer. And I spent years watching these planets, follow the stars across the night sky. They conjunct in darkness.

(No date, but I wrote a poem to Leonard on  4/12/82 So, close enough. I was a mess after taking care of Leonard, and Galway was reading at Sonoma State for me. If it wasn’t for Galway, I don’t think I would’ve gotten through that week.)

THE ADDICTION OF SIGHT

THE ADDICTION OF SIGHT

         … What appears before the eye is simple illusion.

              – from Double Sonnets from the Subconscious

                                  —Leonard Cirino

            for Leonard and those who have ridden the black mare

What separates the word desert 

from something sweet 

is the twin presence of slithering S curves 

of snake tracks in the sand. 

The letter S has no consciousness of desert sand 

or, of dessert peach.

One singular S stands alone. 

The second S changes meaning

gives plurality, gives possession 

and ownership to words.

Snakes go blind during summer molt shedding 

even the skin over their eyes.

In their hot blindness they strike anything warm 

with an accuracy surer than sight.

In the twin mirrored lakes of horses, 

verdant green blades stab at the sky.

Cows easily slip into the past.

Their prehensile tongues covet only grass, 

not the thrones of one eyed kings.

Cows carry the mark of Cain in their eyes.

Sheep pressed their lips to the earth, 

always trying to get closer to the source, 

and they forget how to move on.

They graze until there is no grass left 

and the cattle starve.

Horses tear at the tops of grasses, 

their eyes always on the next bunch. 

In the boneless desert behind the eyes,

we all carry the carrion crows within.

In the fallow fields where the grass is greener, 

the convex lens covering the eye, carries light 

to the arid folds of the brain.

The eye is the cistern in the arid boneless plain.

Yes, the same sheep graces in the same pastures

and need no eyes to find the turf.

Maybe it's the size and shape of cows 

on that always leads them onward.

Or maybe it's the cloven hooves of the goat 

and the sheep that carries the shape of death 

in its eye, bringing us still closer to the earth.

Still, it is a privilege to see the milk-blue eyes of babies, 

unfocused, half blind, closed, asleep at the breast.

As they gain age, the focus sharpens, 

clarity leaps forward, images fall into place, 

and the foraging begins.

King Lear said, "a man may see 

how the world goes with no lies."

Do we truly learn wisdom with our eyes?

What appears before the eye is simple delusion.

Reduced to the level of beasts, Gloucester, 

blinded by the pelican daughters of Lear, said,

"I have no way, and therefore want new eyes."

No, we can't return to that first sight.

There are no thrones left for one-eyed kings 

and beggars will never ride in the dry desert kingdom 

of the blind with the surefootedness of second sight.

5/1982

Revised 8/82, 10/82

Leonard’s revision of my poem

REFUGE OF WILD BIRDS

REFUGE OF WILD BIRDS

Like hearts of wild birds
riding the storm
or panthers defending sectors
of the universe
we seek shelter
before the visions of stars.

5/82