for S.
“Eros manifests the intimacy of being in a primordial “being with” (synousia): to be at all is “to be with.” IU 422
Hum of the cafe
where I spend my afternoons,
lost in this or that
book. Sometimes you leave
the back and sit down next to
me, our shoulders touch—
it lasts a minute.
You whisper something sad or
funny. It lasts and
lasts. The look in your
eyes sees through my loneliness
like desert starlight.
Desire, improvident,
faithful! The distance between
us fills, empties, fills.
Work-in-progress
“One might speak here of what the Greeks called “mania,” in terms of an intimate immanence rather than a merely external transcendence, though this immanence is not devoid of communication of an other, intimate transcendence,” IU 81.
Sitting in your car,
from the driver’s seat, you said,
“Look, Tom, a deer!” We
were parked by the cove,
talking in the warmth, the dark:
a shimmer ahead—
gone! Did the deer see
the delight in your eyes, to
see and be seen by
it? Interrupted
from being part of its strange
world beyond our world?
The dark between us
returns and yes I see it
still in your wide eyes.
“Our erotics witnesses to a passio essendi that is marked by a primal porosity to what exceeds all determination and finally our own self-determination.” IU 421f.
Work-in-progress
I was dead with grief
for years. You came and ripped my
heart in two. Now you
are part of me. One,
two. Now I count myself blessed
by your cutting glance
inviting me to
the dance, to hold you tight or
loose so we can breathe
as one or two. Love
is not one thing but a verb
I will learn to do.
I can count on you.
Slosh of waves, soft pink
sky, picknicking giggles, full
moon rising. One thing.
“One has been so wounded that one cannot be fully at home there henceforth. One is a little over the boundary between between life and death and there is no seamless return to the first life ever again.” IU 107
Work-in-progress
Between the sunset
and the dark the regatta
shines at the cove’s end.
The horizon glows
before going gray, as if
to say, you, you, you
have lived in this light
between coming and going.
Adjust to the dark.
It may take some time.
You will hear ducks calling o-
ver head, but go home.
Work-in-progress
We sat here talking
low last night while the sun set.
An odd couple, old
and young, patient and
care-giver, intimate and
other. As the light
fades tonight, the geese
gather, ducks cry out crossing
the water. This too
is our world, now, both
together and apart, while
there is time to spare.
Work-in-progress
“The metaphysical frailty and yet the robust there-ness of our being at all are at stake in acknowledging the porosity.“ Desmond, Intimate Universal, 213.
I rock on a rock
at the cove this evening.
High tide gulps the salt
grass, wave on wave on
wave. October mist. No moon
cuts the night’s cacoon.
I rock on granite.
The stone is old, I know it—
the sharp eschaton,
the last thing, the edge.
Eros or death? The cricket
sings in darkling trees.
“[Poetic intelligence] derives its energy from willingness to discard conclusion in the face of evidence.” Louise Gluck
Work-in-progress
Autumn glare almost
eclipses the cove. Sooty
ducks don’t move an inch
and say nothing. This
is the dark moon’s brighter side.
Boats stay in their slips.
The cove still opens
on the Atlantic—out of
sight and out of mind.
Such steadiness! I
am in awe. Perception does
not hold still (L. Gluck).
Giving away clothes
you wore so perfectly in
life. The silver bean
necklace, the boiled wool
blue jacket from Austria.
Your girlfriends love them.
They have new life now.
I have a hard time moving
on. I make a fool
of myself: a neck-
lace, a blue coat: it’s not you.
Oh, nothing like you.
“One does not die of love—that’s the horror.” Jean-Luc Marion The Erotic Phenomenon, 156.
Mute swans gather and
open and close their great wings
and cough in the dusk.
In autumnal cold
they cough with desire and splash
into dark water.
You, always with me.
Silence is no answer and
I sing a swan song
to the too muchness.
The swans have cleared the cove now.
You, always with me.