© David LylesMount Angel, Winter 1992
She Keeps This Small Poem
On Steep Streep Street
In the Evening Night
One Truth, Unspoken
The Mathematics Professor
Fear
Offertory
Haiku
Poems
© Audy Thistle Davison & David Lyles
our poem, that time will tell
Transitions
May All Beings Be Happy
Wrong is a Word We Use
Mount Angel, Winter 1992
He is gentle now.
He lets me take his shaver
in my hand
Assents to this ministration
by his son.
It is grey and black, metal and plastic
with three, circular heads
It has silver-grey and black cut stubble
from recent days/weeks/months
to be cleaned from it before beginning.
I turn it on
place its face to his cheek.
He lets me begin the ritual he has faithfully carried out
each day
for many thousands of days reaching back
into his youth of promise.
Fidelity. It was this
trustworthiness of daily routine that defined him
that spoke to his world
and reassured all of his same presence,
Clean-shaven and familiar.
I remembered the rare luxury
he would allow himself – only on a Saturday of course –
He would let the stubble on his face
remain through a day and night,
a stay from the faithful
executioner's duty.
But church morning ended the reprieves,
and on this bright winter Sunday,
in the nursing home,
I take on and begin the slow gentle strokes
of personal ceremony.
July 2001Top of Page
She Keeps This Small Poem
She keeps this small poem
with dried tears
folded
carefully tucked away
between pages of the album
with pictures from better days.
It is one of the small crumbs of failed relationship
left behind on the floor
after departure.
March 1999Top of Page
On Steep Streep Street (with apologies to Dr. Suess)
"Here's a broom - now go sweep
No complaints - not a peep.
You gave a pledge it's time to keep
To
Sweep
Steep
Streep
Street."
"I know I said that I could sweep
Every inch of every street
But not the inches, not the feet
Of
Steep
Streep
Street!
"Just look at how Streep Street's steep!
You take one step - and drop ten feet!
Each paving stone's a Lover's Leap
On
Steep
Streep
Street!"
"Oh, it pains me, how you retreat
From the boast you made, that you could sweep
Every street; which must include - to be complete -
Steep
Streep
Street.
"So I ask you now, and I repeat,
Will you not your promise meet
And go in glory - not defeat -
To
Sweep
Steep
Streep
Street?"
"Oh, your exhortations make me weep
Yet make my heart more bravely beat
With resolution, most clear and sweet,
That what I've sown, so shall I reap.
"And thus, I look you in the eye;
And thus, I say to you that I
Can do this -- do-or-die!
Will do this -- Semper Fi !
"And so I go, with resolve replete,
To
Sweep
Steep
Streep
Street!"
June 2001Top of Page
In the Evening Night
In the evening night
a silent whippoorwill
raises its head
turns its eye to me
once
twice
and disappears.
In the evening night
breezes fill the spaces through alders
and spin their eddies
and vortices
in dervish anticipation of the
following quiet.
In the evening night
the rainclouds on high winds rush
to replace the vacated sun
with first their silver-rimmed
glories, and then with grey-cloaked
stillness.
And in this evening night,
the closing in of night,
I am taught by wind and cloud,
by darkness and silent bird.
In the undertow of this night
my heart takes in the lessons
once
twice
I am taken,
and disappear.
April 1999Top of Page
One Truth, Unspoken
I come upon you
in the lovely green bath-pool
in first morning light
as your eyes smile a greeting and
one slow stroke of your leg
covers your nakedness
with threads of sun-colored water.
I stand in the quiet
undress
slip between the threads and layers
to take a place
too far away.
And it's only this
thorn in my throat
that keeps me from
breaking the silence
the code
to place my offering of words before you:
your body is goddess of this morning
and I have come to worship.
Breitenbush Hot Springs, July 1999Top of Page
The Mathematics Professor
The mathematics professor added a factor to the expression he was writing for me,
turned his head towards me with a slight smile and his eyes full of passion
for the beauty, the clean, simple elegance of what he was writing;
wanting to share his joy in this vision, so pure and so compelling,
of abstract Mind in which he was ravished.
Of his passion he could not tell but only through
another's understanding of what he was writing,
and his hope for this was in me.
A hard awkward silence, and then I spoke:
"you do know that I don't understand any of this?" --
for I had not attended his classes and had not studied,
and would surely fail tomorrow's final exam.
February 1999Top of Page
Fear
Black out the sun;
War manifests once again;
Dark ribbons of hatred
form strands of fear
and fall in clotted showers
overeveryoneeverywhere.
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Your neighbor is losing his mind.
The same man who cheerily just yesterday
brought you red tomatoes from his proud vines
is even now (as you bite into the fruit and
feel the acid juice run down your beard)
in the thrall of Fox News on his TV
wishing he had sons to send to the front lines
and unaware of the sifting, showering strands
fingering into his cortex to help him
remember what (he thought) you said yesterday
about Our Leader and our glorious troops.
He remembers the envelope from the ACLU
misdelivered by the mailman
He wonders what books you are borrowing
from the Public Library ("which I pay taxes for, by God!")
And his brain makes sense of why
you declined his offer of a flag to fly from your car.
Red tomatoes cut open ("have to, to eat them")
Redskins slaughtered ("didn't John Wayne say the only good one was a dead one?")
Red Menace, Red Scare ("didn't The Gipper show those Commies?")
Red Alert ("Homeland security")
Red states on the TV network election night map, Red-blooded American ("I see the connection")
The Rules are changing; Civility's time is passing;
Seeing red now, a new sense takes hold in limbic brains;
A New Age of Blood, red blood, age-old blood
Blood of Fathers
Blood of Isaac
Blood of Martyrs
is coming in fear strands
is coming in dark clots
is coming to claim its due.
Shroud the sun.
Your neighbor is losing his mind.
October-November 2003Top of Page
Offertory
Let me place my heart in a velvet box
no longer in this cage of bones where it now resides
but in a softer place where it may lie in state
where all may come by and pay respects.
I would cradle it in my cupped hands
carry it and place it gently in that more deserved place
for what I have to offer it now is too rude by far for its station.
This breast of brittle bone and skin too often
becomes cauldron for bile and acid
teeming up from battles below in ancient caves of
wounded striving and privation;
becomes then, by turn, sarcophagus
frozen by icy Mind in rational necessity of
logic and anesthesia.
Let me now yield claim
Let me somehow find release
Let me wrap my heart in swaddling
and lay it to rest in the manger place
to lie in velvet fleece, to lie in state
where ones more humble and noble than I
may chance upon, or be led to, this,
my offering
my heart.
December 2003Top of Page
Haiku
summer's chill showers
lilacs, blooms brown past their life,
stand wet with green leaf
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robins with their breasts
enflamed, flying straight into
the red, setting sun
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the dim evening sun
washes across the midnight,
startling morning dew
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cream-winged butterfly
on the deck floorboard. Bodies
need someplace to lie.
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lips abide on breast
sensation beneath dark core
breath, then bursting fruit
Top of Page
our poem, that time will tell
"a poem should be mysterious"
she said
it should hold secrets
and not give them up indiscriminately
willy-nilly to just any prying
mind's eye or mirrored face
that looks both in and out.
perhaps the face looking back from the mirror
is the one that understands.
"but what is there to understand?"
he asked
"or to be understood?"
I see the face looking back at me
and by trick of mind can
become the imaged face that does the looking first.
we stare at each other
and can no more resolve the issue
of who's looking at whom
any more than one of us can be
the first to blink.
in the blink of an eye the world
began and I suppose will end
but now we stare -- the
world envisions us as we
watch it, so various, so
beautiful, so new -- the endless
unfolding of seasons and flowers
and new technology --
new technology, you and me
the see and saw -- the improbable
unfolding
hmm . . . he pondered over her words
. . . the seeing and having seen
and having been seen . . . ever deepening
ever unfolding into new mysteries . . .
and suddenly, then, it all became clear --
and he turned to her and said
"I think we've just written a poem!"
and she said "to write a poem
is like pressing wine, only
time will tell its worth."
Top of Page
Transitions
The mystery is in transitions -
The growing tip of the plant -
The place where the stem becomes
the trunk - the flower becomes
the fruit - the caterpillar
becomes the butterfly.
The place where you and I become
merged - where you and I become separate again.
In transition something is always lost
or left behind
as its essence transforms
into some other thing and some other
thing and some other thing . . .
So the fruit goes to seed goes
into the bird's belly goes
into the ground becomes
the shoot, then the stem,
and what was left behind
becomes again.
There is always some kind of
longing for what isn't here, now.
for the flower in the time of fruit -
for the fruit in the time of seed.
The longing for substance & rooted-ness
in the weightless flight in belly of the bird.
we long for our old self as we
blend into a new person - we long
for each other when we are
separate.
Top of Page
May All Beings Be Happy
May all Beings be Happy.
May the May fly sing its whole short life
and the whale's song reach the stars
May the stars sing for Eons and eons
and even black holes must create a resonance
for this dance.
Shall we dance?
Shall we dance with the fireflies in the summer evening
Our hands joining the weave through the warm, silky air?
Our feet moving through the grass as each blade
springs back from the press of soles and toes . . .
as I sing softly to you, and you sing back to the stars?
But we are not nightingales or butterflies,
happiness is not a wing or a familiar song.
We stumble and sing off key. You, then me.
forgive me, forgive me, we need to say.
and lead each other back into harmony.
I trust your hand, I trust your voice
and that is the key to my happiness.
David Lyles and Audy DavisonFebruary 2006
Top of Page
Wrong is a Word We Use
Wrong is a word we use to close off a door --
wrong is a slap or flash of blade or heavy
black bible being closed around our hearts.
doubt is a word we use to smother tender new life
doubt is a blanket we cover over our infant hope,
icy water we pour over sparks of new aliveness
lest they catch flame in the deadwood all around
our hearts and engulf us in our passions.
Prometheus brought man fire and Eve gave
us knowledge. The high priests have
always warned us that these things
are Evil. Yet in our hearts there is a
Shrine where the eternal light burns.
I say "let us burn, then! Let us bring
vessel upon vessel of oil to fill the lamps,
let us pour it out recklessly upon the floors
and walls! Gather wood from the sun-forests
and throw it upon the growing fire, that the
light shines back upon the Sun!"
We say to the gods and the high priests:
"This is our birthright! This we claim, and
this we return to its rightful place!"
Audy Davison and David LylesFebruary 2006
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