hokku #3

today
in the voice of summer rain
a song without end...begins

hokku

at dusk
watching three planets
I will never see

jupiter, Mercury, and venus
PhotoCredit:  Dan Gauss, Earthsky
http://earthsky.org/tonight/planetary-trio-mercury-venus-jupiter-at-dusk-may-27

Rose of Saturn

I do not love you as I love the Rose of Saturn
whose beauty tantalizes from afar
a flame atop a vast ringed world
a maelstrom’s fury become a crown.

I do not love you like that curled dome of storms
circled flumes paint a deep flowered rose
in petals of powerful winds, raised
a distant sky to crimson, red as flame.

I do not love you as I adore this fiercest flower
like tenacious ruby orbs of high deserts and mountains
persistence for its own sake, alone and splendid,
stark and sudden, a glance bares its beauty.

Because I think of you, you are never alone;
because I keep you,  you are never distant.
Because we love, love rages like eternal storms;
because your rose is a fire, a fire burns in my heart.







____________________
Photo credit: NASA Cassini Spacecraft hurricane at the north Pole of Saturn, it has been speculated that the storm has been there for many years. My guess is that it has been there for many decades or more, locked in place by the gravity and magnetic pull of  the polar region.

On Interstate 94 ...

...just before the southbound swarm

fills the beauty of a warm spring day

with circle-form angst -journeys

for bills we need to pay-closure

of silly loops; we with brains and souls

chase the ever-moving goals-

debts have made.

On highway 94 an aroma unexpected

among flowered apple and cherry,

random wild flower volunteers

and my eye- that most tactful sense- finds

the wrinkled jowls and chain-dimpled sides

the tender look of tough hog hides

pressed to air holes along  coupled brides

of rumbled tandem trucks,  riders doomed

to be such as delicious, tender, Fathers’ prides

near the toxic charcoal grills; chemical-ed

meats spread with real gooey trans-fat, artificial flavors.

All will be invited to savor the relics

of an earlier time. When holiday

meant beer and smiles, haven’t-seens-for-a-while

All along 94 South, not a sound did I hear

from hundreds of mouths taking in petrol-ed air;

in loop close journeys there too.

A trek that began with survival of a cull

to end with snout and skull jostled

past a poet in a speeding car, watching

for the words they cannot further carry; a sentence

that speaks upon visions of  trucks that reek…

yet wrought a feeling of commonality,

such journeys have we(--)and for all pretense(--)

just as heedless of its certain destiny.

She, within...

There should be a word I could say

that would instantly let me know you

a word that would translate all –

your sadness and beauty, the tree of your life.

Transcend the mosaic of a woman

shell and marvels- the sense of she within;

when love is a forged steel, bringing

conquest and surrender to the most tender

enduring moments man can make.

There is mystery behind the eyelashes

the focused views they adorn, the worlds they  filter

vastness as within motes and specks

that float in a sunbeam.

There should be a word, a key from my lips

into the treasured vaults…  of your heart.

Dreams( excerpts)

There in tangled rail yards, on tracks of time

lines upon lines of them: Cars of dreams.

Dreams from south traveled north

laded from harsh docks and jangled chains,

dreams wet with woman’s tears.

Rainbows of dreams--

golden from the gentle kiss of sun;

pale shades --

Blacks like ebony night;

reds held in  dune songs.

There were dreams that came to sudden end,

dreams that roamed and meandered;

 slowly ...like bends of great rivers.

Dreams ... like faded sounds; echoed  train calls

in mountains- -

Dreams from deep souls of mother’s grief

in emptied hands of lost and taken worlds.

They were there in disarray- some,

in ordered files and closeness- others;

 ----

Full of cargoes that no longer have any use

relics now, signs of earlier times, abandoned schedules.

Dreams  ...that followed steamy night, 

still drift in wait like flower scents

for love and answer; all, all

are there in rail yards of disuse.

Upon overgrown and sunken steels

dilapidated stocks of life, and skeleton shells.

“If only” they say, if only… a wind,

a wrinkle in smooth sheets of time, if only…

and in sleep that comes to hold us

a way of time like ice awaiting thaw

in restless states of heart and memory

in place- they swim against the stream…they cannot be still

for if stilled, they cannot be; they rail upon rails

and stir within seasons, in gusts and blows;

in night storms that warm possibility.

Like great golden bolts that ease clouds…they believe

fire will overcome the gravity of night.

Inspired "Sueños de trenes," Estravagario, 1958

by Pablo Neruda

“Train Dream”

Translated by Clayton Eshleman