Metaphysical 1

Awoke with the sound of His music today,
I knocked on His door and asked Him to turn it down
Although His neighbors seem to like it and His
Ex-girlfriend was telling me, "Whatever."

distich ix

The pilgrims passed a man about his plow and cart,
And rolled their sight away from plowshares twice as smart.

sijo 4

I sought to view my own passions in the foolishness of
Family. I returned from the festival like a migrant
Tern who is refreshed from futile, ordered flight to other climes.

haiku 5

The harvest draws near,
Invited my tired son-in-law.
He is so foolish.

haiku 4

Niece's miscarriage;
Brought her a cracked tea vessel
When she wept remote.

haiku 3

A gilded coin-piece
Chipped off a flaking blister,
Just greened copper.

haiku 2

Clouds convened above,
Glancing the holy summits.
A cloud's mystery?

haiku 1

A bird bit the core
From out a dropping cherry -
Alas, motherhood!

sijo 3

The shoreline where the twilight of July broiled soft listens,
Unquiet from groans of the expanses breaking yet unbroken,
Flaming, while I search for grass growing in her absent footprint.

tractatus 7

The property whereby multipliers augment their multiplicands, which extends to that of denominators, is like to the manifest of the Godhead - our infinitesimal passions reflect the Beloved's gentility only when observed from collation. One must also note, astute reader, that this selfsame property allows the mind to consider the numbers one employs when counting. One recalls that an ended quantity of cubits describes the dimensions of Noah's Ferry - man's first encounter with Arithmetic. How would God have informed the Sailor of his duties to life on Earth, given the Sailor's due unfamiliarity with numbers? I expect God told the Preserver of arithmetic by saying that a man's elbow to his forefinger measures a length, proceeding that this length remains ended, closed. Then, continuing, that a length adjoined to another can be called 'two' lengths, and so on. A summation parted by a unit is the very essence of counting, and thus the Number is revealed to the Sailor by divinity - that is to say, the aforementioned property. I often think to myself, in admittedly wanting for patent substance, that the Hellenes fell to their geometry first in considering the Temple of the Firmament; that the posture of the Great Bear toward the Lodestar developed Euclid's definition of a line.

sijo 2

The bovine scythes mow down the patient grassland in those days
When winds besiege the infirm clouds and my lake-mannered
Stillness stirs like sailor-weakness, though I sit upon the ground.

tractatus 6

Should the mind of man, so far from that of the Godhead, therefore rest upon his own manners and accustomed platitudes that numbers must presuppose mathematics? Nay! With regard to my own method, I assume the personage of the saint who takes Divinity to his actions and passions; therefrom, I have found the fountain of numbers - entities so ugly to Horatius. Numbers rest immutable amidst the rows of seasons and the implacable cycles and epicycles, though our understanding be recombined with new learnings and enterprises. Neither the Greeks, Romans, nor Hebrews - as are available to my esteem - conceived of zero, in spite of its utility to the sciences.

sijo 1

The cleft-footed mule split a persimmon under the step
That fermented for an entire winter long
When my remorse had left me distraught beyond counsel.