Put a Ladder in My Tomb
A second book of poetry, awaiting publication in its entirety, contains 20 poems that have already appeared separately. Titled Put a Ladder in My Tomb, it expresses the need to resist the distractions of a mechanistic age; to avoid being overwhelmed by the diversions of the prevailing electronic culture; and to keep consciousness aware of its connection to the living whole. Its initial poem follows.
Opening the House
Come, this is an invitation. The doors are unhinged,
in empty rooms the dust is dreaming.
You who are different, I bid you come.
I have built my life around you,
who are keen as I am to leave behind a world
of pointless discourse, vacuous news, hullabaloo of causes,
a world in which humans have lost the art of hearing,
hearing only the voices of the body.
Leave it behind. This is an invitation
to see even the smallest things, a junco
or a sparrow, as you saw them in childhood,
playing their part in the fabric of life,
untouched by the shadow of a skyscraper,
large and real and full of wonder.
Come, take your soundings.
Here are depths which like yours are dark and bottomless
because we stand in a mystery,
trying to fathom toward what we are summoned,
a mystery in which flourish our contradictions,
self-betrayals and unreasonable longings.
Why does love turn to hate? Why so many abandoned?
Why the suffering who cry out as if
they were the inverse of the beauty of the world?
Thorny problems? I place them on the table.
I know your listening,
and your belief that behind all existing things
there is a hint of companionship.
That hint is our destiny, isn’t it?
This is an invitation.