Time in the Full of Empty

 

these are times for vases
I’ll leave vacant
and not cut the roses lilies daffodils
blooming in my garden

 I’ll feed house crickets to the song finch
for this is its molting season
it will sing again … or die
like the crickets
time

once a dove flew against my window
to drop hurt … still breathing
I caged and healed it
watched it orient and fly
watched it taloned by a diving hawk
time

oh,  now is time in the full of empty
when smiles are merely stretch-ed lips
and fog trails from my fingertips
and I wear his slippers

 I shall sit upon my lawn
close to the roses lilies daffodils
and breath the fragrance
of invisible of presence

 

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Qi Baishi

blade sting

we near death are not yet as
pocket lint…soft gray felting
re-mem-brance

instead…
we are crisp ironed  alpine forest
spice thread saffron…and we
blush carnadine to water with
our hands

your conversation in the other room
is noisome to us as mosquito drone

and if we gaze at you as if we
do not comprehend it is because
we do…hear over under ‘round
above and through you

did you know…inside…we laugh
at…do not go gentle…lost the battle
did you know at brink we do not care

for tissue rustle dry cough tearless
we dismiss your presence…and
we know our blade stings  and…how
soon you’ll heal the cut

 

Bonnie Marshall

Art by Elizabeth Opalenik

 

 

in another room

we swim in amniotic warmth
and trampoline her shore;
we taste her sweet and salty,
scent vanilla carrot mint

her soft voicedrift descants
heartdrum… throb whoosh
murmur burble wash…of
our presence in her space

then…pulse and pulse
crown pressure and release
for skinness to be air lit
inner outer brash and thrash

sometimes…
when we step to darkness
when we enter light
comes remembrance…place
comes remembrance…rhythm
comes remembrance…music dance
in another room

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artist: Jamie Wyeth

Hamlet and the Piraha

“There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is’t to leave betimes?” William Shakespeare   (Hamlet, 5.2.214)

To live as Brazilian Pirahã
is to be wholly in the present
where mists of past and future
are intangibles of time.

To live with Pirahã worldview
is to have no word for worry.
Dreamtime is the same as waketime…
seamless experience.

To live on the Meici River
is to flow one with the moment
where death is observation
eyes close…breath stops…
and readiness is all.

Bonnie Marshall

Art by Salvador Dali

interstice

to think ancient Egyptian worldview
is to sense true otherness…informed, I
think, by happenstance of a fertile river
flooding lifebloom across a desert plane

no wonder they plundered Nubian
mines for veins of gold to shine like
sun on desiccated bodies resin wrapped
and carried through interstice to a realm
of dark inundated chambers

for they could think dimension…inner
outer…space of four triangles set on a
square into the air where depth is afterlife
and length is life and height is aspiration

Bonnie Marshall

Plate: Great  Pyramid Diagram by Charles Piazzi Symthe, 1877