The Horizon

It is not so difficult to imagine
that a man can talk to shadows

Foras he nodded nearly napping
when silently there came a tapping
gently as if a rapping
rapping upon his chamber door

Edgar Allen Poe and a black raven
had a conversation
about a woman named Lenore


It's not hard to understand
that a man
can fall into an event horizon
defined by a woman
carried by her form
her shape and smell

We have all been to Paris
at some point
and remember
recent or far distant
the sound and feel of places that are alive

We can all belong to something
greater than ourselves

It doesn't have to be anything that makes sense

A soldier carries a picture of his sweetheart into war
A man who lost his female dog calls the new boy pup her
A priest kisses the statue of the blessed mother
A man caresses the metal of his beautiful old car
The assassin polishes his thirty odd six
The doctor remembers the names of the kids

he delivered
fifty years ago



All of us know the moment
our heart broke
for the first time

We all remember the shock when
that magic spell we saved for the end
fell to the ground

We learned
That quite like Oakland

There is no there, there.

We could not save
one from the pitiless wave

But by that spirit
the very adventure
the unbearable lightness of being
we saw who we were

and we let that pure and simple moment
pull us in

almost out of the corner of our eye
we caught it

And however faded the sight
we chose to see
if even to look at it by glances
to view it in a sidelong way,

We come to the horizon

when everything we see or seem
is but a dream
within a dream

where everything we see or seem
is but a dream
within a dream


Where everything begins
Where everything ends