a literary journal published by the Black Earth Institute dedicated to re-forging the links between art and spirit, earth and society
THE PATH FROM YOU TO GOD
You
wake from
a dream and
the dream is still hanging
you’re an iceberg adrift in the
sea of yourself and the dream is
a drama but not in the ballpark of
meaning and message and changing and chance
it’s reaching and stretching and pushing against the thick glassy limit
of the little you know and just when you think you can see through the limit
thought seizes like an engine it balks like a horse and it throws you
it throws you it throws you you fall and keep falling
you fall until all goes settle or smash and then
you miraculous find you can move and your
legs lift your arms lift they’re wings and
you’re a seabird high over water
not falling you’re flying you’re
calling and crying
Gaaaa Kaaaa
God
***
SALMON
without memory
or anything remotely like
an expectation,
with the true sight,
the ungiven gift of blindness,
we thrust ourselves back and back
back and up and back,
bending and straightening in an arc
like the bow, like the eye of the archer
who sees without sight–
fighting dumbly,
plunging bullet-headed
we move somehow through holes
in provisional nets
exploding upward into silence,
beyond finding, beyond losing,
beyond name,
we break unbroken
to an ecstasy of air,
motionless at every height,
at every depth of moving
finally turning
in the new, the old, the wreck and span of all the births,
the spawn of every death,
we will find the source
we will find the source and be then nothing more
and nothing less,
nothing other
than the undone thing we do
the closer that the center is,
the more the more is better—
that center,
always surfacing
is held and holding
at the breaking point
and the answer that we
find and lose
beyond all knowing
is
the paradox:
our silver skin,
our keen and rosy flesh.
***
DROWNING
Swimming a strange lake… The unerring stroke of
Arms is wrested from the unreflective cold
Palpable, dark… Tastes cleaner, deeper than love
Ring my mouth as I wade to shore. The choke of
Water loosens. Untested senses take hold:
Swimming the strange lake, the unerring stroke of
Arms, gets forgotten. Shedding the frayed cloak of
Dawn, trees rise before me invested with mold
Palpable, dark; tastes cleaner, deeper than love.
But glimpsed apparitions, the grinning folk of
Folklore, herd me back to the watery fold.
Swimming the strange lake, the unerring stroke of
Arms fails me: my breathing is the last joke of
Creatures in league beneath me, older than old,
Palpable, dark… Tastes cleaner, deeper than love
Tempt me and I drown, shedding the wide yoke of
Air… I surface among surfaces untold,
Swimming a strange lake… The unerring stroke of
Palpable dark tastes cleaner, deeper than love.
Author Biography:
Lyn Coffin’s 9th book, White Picture, was published in 2011 by Night Publishing (UK). White Picture contains translations of Jiri Orten, a Czech killed in the holocaust who was one of the 20th century’s greatest poets. In 2012, her translations of Dato Barbakadze (amazing!) will be published by Night, and her anthology of Georgian poetry in translation will hopefully be published by Slavica (Indiana University). She’s been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king. (cf. Wikipedia) Well-liked in Poughkeepsie, Lyn is a Buddhist and regularly enjoys her breathing.
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