by normal

“I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
          and I have been circling for a thousand years.
          And I still don’t know if I am a falcon,
          Or a storm, or a great song”
                         — Rainer Maria Rilke, I Live My Life

The garden
is quite bare now, you know.

There are a thousand
blind eyes
searching for a soul.

I have
wandered to the gate
admiring
its well oiled hinges,

my umbrella
securely strapped
close to my hip.

In the clouds

the rain

is sleeping.

normal

the last jungle
“ — bang is the meaning of a gun”
                         — ee cummings

some fires never die.

there were 2 old ’boes & me
left that yr, in the spring of ’68
up near redding ca
in the last jungle
on the american river,

boxcar Jimmy
adam ydobon
“that’s ‘nobody’ spelt backwards”
both veteran riders
from the rail wars of ’35

& me
the wilted refugee
following the fall
of the summer of love.

not much to be said.
it was easy
the 3 of us;

martin luther king was dead
the cities had finished their burning
robt kennedy was not yet dead.

they ate salmon from the river
i ate miners’ cabbage & lentils.

life was good.

one evening before sleep
jimmy told me his story;
i went to sleep dreaming
of steam engines racing
thru the mountains
filled with laughing mermaids
& merry hooligans.

later that night
a gang of drunken cowboys
ran a herd of cattle
right over the top of us —

the last thing i remember
was looking over my shoulder
& seeing the flames from our camp,
the last jungle

reaching up & into

the early spring sky.

by Jack Myers

After I am gone and the ache begins
to cease and the slow erosion I felt,
being years ahead of you, starts
to invade you too, you’ll come to see
that desert is the memory of water,

like remembering when we were walking
in beautiful Barcelona you said you thought trees
were gods because they were rooted in earth
and flew in the air and magically made food
out of light and gave us the air we breathe.

I was stunned you could open up a God-space
just like that.  Like when my 2-year-old dug holes
in the yard and fit his face into each of them to see,
as he explained, if he could find where the darkness
came from.  Then you asked me why I never prayed.

I believe whatever disappears or survives
or comes into being is a prayer that’s been
already answered, and that we feel alone
because we won’t let go of what is gone
or has changed or hasn’t happened yet.

Waking this morning with my arms around you,
the dogs snoring, and a mourning dove cooing
I felt I had awakened in a peaceable kingdom
where the fear of death turned itself inside-out
into a love for life.  If I prayed, I’d pray for that for you.

Note: Thanks to the writer Jim Cornfield (“Living History,”
Continental, 8/08) for the title.

by Jack Myers

is a quality of attention,
the way color says how
light feels: yellow for the
aerosol of happiness, black
for the zero of what isn’t;
the way light, lined up right,
can cut through steel.  Anything
is art if the mind’s flawed right:
how soup feels being stirred,
how silence, broken open just so,
releases its essence and graces
the mind as a mint leaf in the air.

It’s those who can’t understand and
are dumbfounded by the obvious,
who thrive on dissonance and
subverting the ordinary into the
extraordinary who end up being
artists.  What good is that, you ask?
No practical use as far as I can see.
In fact, Archimedes could’ve been
bragging about art’s uselessness when
he said “Give me a long enough lever,
a place to stand, and I will lift the earth.”