X.
(Olonzac, Brasserie des Sports)
This poem is a song,
A dance,
Stone in the wall,
Church and theatre;
It is a picture with color, wind
and Rhythm,
A wild forest,
A film depicting the world as it falls into place
Crystallizing.

This poem stands like a rock in the river of time which bathes it.

Events line up
Since I first started sipping pastisse
Today at the Brasserie des Sports in Olonzac,
Or years before in the jazz catacombs of Paris,
Or in Fleetwood’s Jazz Club in Baltimore twenty years ago.

What is this ‘ago’?
What is this ‘now’?
What is this line?

How do words line up so that ‘road’
Speaks to all roads, but to none more than the very heart of this road?

“Celtic Radio” is an expression which captures this endless moving on.
The eternal winding-on!
Here we find ourselves in the eternal flashing.
Spinning like the kitten’s tail chasing.

Somewhere in this space
This time
This matter
We need to find a home, some anchor
But where, o where!

When I was a child I spoke like a child
“Life is so easy to see!”

From my window I search endlessly
For that child and the world he once knew.
Always growing, rising, falling.
Who is this child and where has he gone?

The light in the café has greater significance
Because we have been here before.
Is it “I”?
or should I say “he was here before”?
"In the sacred time" [or "in those crazy days" I leave you to choose]

Brasserie des Sports
With wind tearing seeds like feathers
From the Sycamore trees
Along Rue de la Poste.
Looking across the street
To tables the merry drinkers have left vacant.

XI.
(Lac de Jouarres)

{A.Antimirror}
My poem is an antimirror,
Chamber with too many doors going in
But no door going out.

My words are a cage which you look upon
You feel the clatter and scrape your fingers on this rusty shell---
Within silence recedes with my thought
Waves over rocks receding.

This poem is a lonely tower
And a boat passing to tranquility-bliss.
Death to the world that brings you hither.

No tourism.
Only blocks to build the inward cathedral:
Blocks of olive trees,
Blocks of blue sky where clouds race by
wind blowing round and round
in shouts and whispers through old pines
turning with my mind again;
blocks of emerald green lakes and ‘le promenade sur le canal’
blocks of white crystal from high hills and dark mountains
blocks of flowers,
tombstones…
blocks of morning teas---
boulders of theories
ideas of space-time
and Pasternak.
I am looking at you in an antimirror.


{B. Living Stone}
My word is living stone
My poem is window of life---
Heart of crystal
Water of life
Voice calling “Grow!”

Vision of unfolding nature
Suspended still in her cloudy water
Mist of mist
Man of man
Woman of woman
Before they fall into this momentary condensation of now.
How do you describe what precedes word?
The red that gives red its red?
Flame that burns my flesh.

Theatre of true life
Even if the fourth dimension is a hoax,
Another abstract intangible shadow.

Celtic Radio brings poetry to transmission
I am listening and listening hard

This poem is a gate into reality---
Not the reality of argumentation, doubt or disputation [which is not really real]
Reality answers only to “Yes”
Wakens only to praise.

A younger poet wrote:
When I look she is not there /
never really there
This poem is untrue
For that which makes present is as always was
And is as always will.

This poem sings of permanent beauty---
She remains!
The words of this poet are living stones.

XII.
(Antibes: Le plage)
Pebbles on the beach never sparkle so brilliant
As they do in the Summer Sun.
Slim red stones with white fingers---
Souvenirs
Whose shine will never mesmerize as now.

A jet roars over the Alps of the High Provence,
Fishers pull their lines,
Children tousle and play.
Nice and Monaco are white slabs in the mist
Dark mountain yonder is Italy.

An African vends his colorful wares on the beach,
Fire is set and grill made ready for supper,
Little boy reels madly
He has a big one hooked.
Like a figure in a painting
Amidst the surf splattered rock
Raising his fishing pole
Twice his height,
Lifting well above his head
Letting loose the line into the blue blue sea.
As the sun sets over Antibes.

XIII.
(Antibes-Picasso Museum)

Surfmusic:wet stones,
Grimacing boulders,
Writhing beasts drunk in sea froth.
My head is spinning
From Picasso’s paintings:
Ferocity and outward calm
So wild, so pure
Like the mad love I feel for the blue sea
From the window of Chateau Grimaldi.

To stay drunk on beauty half
The first night and double the following day.
Sickness that follows beauty too palpable
Gazing long into her eyes.

Vertigo of deepness within your soul
The everchanging light on your face.
The only sound I hear is a heartbeat---

Black Cubist sculpture slashing open the land and water.
His works are wide worlds falling at the edges of the wall.
They call me into the muddled blue darkness
of a world created fresh and free.
Rudimental,
Percussive steps in a city of freemen.

Art of art,
Mirror of this poem
Gazing hard into the sea
Wave splattered
Velvet green revealing
Tiny crabs
Sideways soldiers marching heroically on pin fingers.

The Surfmusic is within me
I am healing
I am praying for every living thing to rise.

XIV.
{A. Antibes-Cathedral}
Listening to the priest’s soothing sermon,
I cannot get the sense his French sentences
Though his voice is calm and pure.

I want to be a living stone
Or perhaps a little candle before the tabernacle.
Joy rises up within my heart
Joy passing all understanding---
‘Le priere universelle.’

“I believe in the resurrection of the dead
and in the life of the world to come.”

Within I am lit up as gold and blue moonlight on the onyx sea.
My sickness is crushed
The walls of my heart shatter
In an orange furnace
In a golden womb
The sun is within me.
A master glassblower turns his pipe blending
Marble pigments into crystal wonder.

Sunsets upon the water in her emerald eyes
White fish dive near the boulders in the milky green mist
Prayer is my joy.
I pray for all of the things I cannot say.

{B. On the Street}
Beneath the old pines
Black dogs rest with drunk travelers
Another two bottles arrive as the evening starts to glow.

Shady pink haze falls over Antibes’ pale white horizon of condominium towers,
The motor starts to slow.
Cigarettes are lit one after the other
Tourists mill by
In fuschias, red, and cadmium yellow.

There is jazz in the air in this happy town.
It is another type of joy
Another town created for human joy
Another paradise.

The cathedral is a stone’s throw beyond the rampart.
Home is very near and very far away. Busses come and go
The road winds on and on through the night.

XV.
(Moustieres Sainte Marie)

Misty green lake in the high alps
Adolescence again---
Diving from the bridge and cliff
As multicolored boats drift by.
Recollections of home and Raystown Lake
Though the steep canyon walls towering before me are new.

The green lake is in my poet’s eye
As the high hills fill my vision.
Fishwatermusick is everlasting rhythm
The voice of the final human being/the inward man.

Families recreate in the summer sun
Life from life
Undying and eternal
A word that speaks in so many tongues
Wafting across the lake with the echoing drum.

Today, all of these little things---
Pink caps and paddles,
Towels on the pebble beach
Paul smiling
Ode joyous
Thick clouds so tall above the pale mountains
Like Pennsylvania.

All of this exuberance is being lifted up into eternity.
All of these brown dogs,
Black swimming suits,
Red canoes,
And chalk white dusty walks
Are rising up into immortality.

The poet sings this
His eyes reveal it
And it is so.
Wonder of it all that all is well.
Everywhere flesh and shining eyes,
Laughing voices in the human pasttime.
Every body rises and wakes anew
Every tear is a tear of joy.


XVI.
(Rousillon-Le Canyon des Ocres)
Canyon of yellow ochre---
Canyon of gold---
Canyon of red bulging towers of dull ribbons,
Dwarf evergreen oaks,
Dry scent of lofty pines crowns this work
While cicadas incessantly hum.

God has given me another vision today
In the high alps of Provence
beyond Grasse
with lavender blankets
and fields of sunflowers
where sunlight traverses 93 million miles to bathe the humble earth.

Heat wafts up from pine needles with a charming perfume.
The true light awakes to His creation---
Alive to all places and times,
Eternally alive.

The Son of Man is continuously waking
As the poet peers ever deeper into the great blue sky;
When there is great distance in one time
There is eternal life;
Where there is all of time in one place there is eternal life.

To find more of God in every little thing and in every face.
Reflecting upon this canyon at sunset whose dusty pigment
The earth has prepared mostly for our enjoyment.*
We are in the workshop of a beautiful artist
Whose unfinished, living painting
I am the brush.

* (Chandogya Upanishad).

XVII.
{A.}
(Minerve)
“And have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him.” (St. Paul Colossians 3:10)

Poetry---after swimming in cool waters
Past channels of marble boulders,
Through fishwater like a frog.

Dry wind blows the scent of boxwoods through the valley
Cicadas chant like summer monks
And a dry lizard slides so high above the canyon wall.

My method of picture taking is simple ‘reportage’---
Simply describing what I see and hear.
I have no pretensions of rare things or exotic birds,
My perspective is not exalted like the young poet.
I am simply in the middle of the day
And this is what I speak
This I broadcast.
Perhaps you prefer a distant dialect.
I have no sleight of hand
Evenso, when I see the red willow roots
along the edge of the canal dangling in the green stream
I want to sing like a child.

I am not a slender root but have my root within.
I am alive in the root that enlivens me. I am a branch.

To look back on the photos of my youth and realize
It is not me.
I am being recreated from the ground up.
Pure joy follows as I climb my Self step by step
And stone by stone.
My wall is renewing with stones of life.

I have found wings to fly
But the melancholy troubador sings a weary tune
In the ancient tower below.

Passing on to a new day.
Who will I find there?

The young girl’s round breasts delight me
But there is another breast
Another milk for me.
There is another food for another life.
Not a belly
But a temple filled with knowledge.


Little boy sits at a restaurant table smiling, singing and painting pictures.
The parents are too busy talking to notice his art.
The boy is forgotten.
This is not his father but his mother’s new lover.
He is a young artist
Who sings and creates without pause
But they cannot hear
Or know what these pictures mean.
I see and hear him
I am the poet of hidden meanings
Like the boy who realizes that words don’t work
Because the new word he is trying to say
Has no home in this old world.

I know not what else to say,
I have been that child.
This poem is just, pure and honest.

{B.}
Clacking red rocks against green rocks
Rock bridges and rock walls
Clear water over marble channels
In an orange canyon.

I am not really interested in the knowledge or science of nature
Everywhere I find life is its root.
Life is inexplicable.
Life hidden within its source astounds.
I see the face of life
It is the house I seek. ‘

Water plunges along the valley floor
beneath the ancient bridge
endlessly asking:
“Why am I here?”
“For nothing, save the joy you bring to my ear,” I whisper.

“Where am I going?”
“The river bends and disappears into rock. After your long sojourn you simply blend in,” I answer.

Last evening two guitars played flamenco
While gypsies danced near the lake.
Beneath the full Andalusian moon.
Hands clap in syncopated time,
While the old poet rolls out another crying verse.
This dancer is a powerful mystery.
Throws up her arms,
And turns stomping her feet defiantly---
Her face a challenge to the night.

She asks, “Why do I dance, what is the meaning of my song?”
I answer: “You are a flash full of color and personality.
Living stones cannot stop from dancing.
You are a living stone.”

XVIII.
{A. Jouarres l’Etang}
The surface of Lac de Jouarres is ruffled---
Perturbed emerald green turns to brown
While heavy clouds roll off of the shoulders of the Montagne Noir.
Windsurfer spins in fluorescence
Olive hills fall into deeper blue
But I am rooted like a stone.

There are so many types of stones!
Stones of heaven and battered stones of earth---
White boulders that cradle the lake,
Stones invisible.
Stones in the great sky by gravity held in orbit---moon stones.
Dusty pebbles shining like jewels in seasurf;
Stones in the fiery furnace.

Mighty stones and mountains,
Earth’s magnetic crust.
Crystal caves,
Celtic tombs, transistors, megaliths!

The earth---Gaia!---the earth!

Swift little wrens dart and loop
Chirping with a song deeper than the crickets’ steady screeching
As the wind blasts in ancient pine boughs
Rages like a small ocean.

{B. Laure-Minervois}
I am climbing upon a dry waterfall thick with yellow calk
Molded by its watercourse.
Muddled and milky cascade,
Where is your sweet gurgling song?

“I am hollow, my mouth is stopped with dust.
I am a whited sepulcher.”

The poet wonders, “Why was I led to this uneven road
To stand facing this dusty slope?”
The wind is heavy with pungent sage
From the brush underfoot.

Clattered white stones lie in a heap bearing witness to April’s torrent stream.
The stone bank on which I rest is a composite
of pink quartz,
Pebbles,
Shells,
Chunks of white marble,
Black mold capped with orange lichen
one often finds on gravestones,
Celtic monuments and alignments.

Tapping upon the sedimentary floor
Reveals a hollow cavity
Beneath which lies a layer of supple earth,
And then a chamber of orange marble
Like the quarry at Caunes
20 to 40 foot deep or more
walls of sheer peachflower marble.

{C. Carcassonne}
I am building up the fortress of my heart
Stone by stone stacked against gravity.
My tower opens to the sun and stars,
From stone windows I look down upon the terracotta rooftops below---
City of stone houses
And pale churches.

My furnace is sunburst and glowing
Cooled by white mist that drives up the green slope to the black slate tower.

Stone upon stone
Stone under foot,
Vertical and horizontal herringbone patterns on stone walls.
Stone aqueducts of effluence,
Stone well, so dark and deep,
my watersource, What is your musty song?

Cathedral within my walls---
Stone arched,
Hooded with gargoyles spewing
Buttressed in gray stone.
Silent stone sanctuary,
Altar of peachflower marble in a chapel
Where yellow candlelight flickers
Upon Saint Anthony’s
Sculpted, polished and tranquil face
Caressed by an old grandmother
With her wooden beads tapping.
Worn tomb of an ancient Patrician bears the scraping marks of time.
Triceles, circle within circles in stone like lace---
The rose window of Saint Nazaire,
My beautiful flower!

There are shops in my stone walled city;
Souvenirs, candy, coffee, cigarettes and books.

I see a little girl smiling to me from the bottom of a stone stairwell.
To her I say:
”This path lies before you. In it you shall prosper and grow.
You will become strong.
Nonetheless you shall arrive to where I stand---
It is only a matter of days
Strung one after the other.”