Rising, Opening, Encompassing
by Daniel Corrie
This endless depth of meaning . . . .
-Philip Hefner
Through different trees, wind becomes different sounds.
The pines become the wind’s sound, here. I hear it.
Again the creek leads me along its seam, from my name.
Its artery opens out from trees, to a heart of water.
No identity will be time-honored. It will be time.
I feel mine. It is blood-honored. It is change-honored.
It is solitude’s language. It is oblivious sunlight
falling over leaves. Their ancient need greened to feel it.
Monumental time pairs into wings, flexing frail bones.
Wings open like meaning under meaningless sky.
Again geese lift from the pond I once knew well.
Their wings beat. Their harsh calls tear at the air
of my rising. We rise on our wingthrusts belonging
in our migration. In summoning’s wingwind, syllables
whisper through the rush of more slurring syllables.
The lines of being recite themselves. The primal poem
scores the lines of flyways through impulses born
knowing their courses, as creeks follow courses.
The one wing eclipsed the sky, wing of millions
of wings, shadow’s thunder of pigeons flown
gone into change-honor, accepted by change-honor.
The disembodying wind calls my embodied mind.
Time is the cadence falling. It falls calmly as light
over leaves’ incarnation, carnage, reincarnation.
The pond is left as ripples stilling, evaporating
from my knowing. My heartbeats count the tides
of blood’s migrations, pulses echoing out into older
iambics of nights beating into days, in the wordless odes.
(Originally published in The Kenyon Review)
Bodhisattva
by Daniel Corrie
i. Emergence
Orange of oriole
will flash as aureole
of afterimage.
Pines will stand
in flames’ orange aureole,
each a shrine of fire.
Words will mist in winter,
flocks chattering
to swirl to sky
to clear like breath in air.
Blown snow will lift
drifting cloudily
to pollen’s gold,
to twist to sand’s blind lash.
Tides will shift seeping
through marsh grass,
as sand’s hot blaze will drain
glittering through fingers.
Like faces, sunflowers
turn toward the far fire.
It is the fire floating,
centering the circle
of their world’s course.
Through murky depths
of uterine night,
all stars swirl out, colloidal,
to rupture and kindle.
As icicles melt
in sun’s brightening,
raised megaliths will melt
in time’s night.
ii. Skry
A truck would rust
under a bright
ceiling of waves,
in the augury.
The many futures wait
to become the one future.
Like ebb tide’s surf,
tree lines would ebb.
Like leaves’ sheltered shade,
plumage’s browns
would hide through leaves
of forests receding.
Wings’ sudden flurry
would be wings vanishing
in the rites of flight.
You would walk listening,
not knowing you’ve entered
the minutes’ last song
of the last bird of its kind.
You would walk listening
in passing beneath
brittle branches’ glaring aura
in the augury. In the augury,
the world would become
a different world.
Like incoming tide,
an arid latitude
would approach,
oblivious of borders.
Dunes would drift burying
urns of cars, deeper
than sun’s punishment.
Wind’s dunes would shimmer,
unearthing the colors
of cars’ pitted paint.
iii. Orison
Molten gold poured
to cool, molded
into a reliquary’s image
of a man approaching
out from a gold vista
encrusted with gems
echoing sky’s stars.
In his gold centuries,
the bodhisattva remains
poised as if to step
from his gold aura,
to walk into time’s world
under wind-stirred leaves.
A bird was nameless
then was named
passenger pigeon.
Cameras aim at people
turned nameless
in refugees’ lines,
some looking up at sky
as if to scry
into the glare of the sun.
The fecund world
becomes the human world.
The human season
becomes the unraveling
of seasons.
The human world
becomes the reliquary
of the elder world
where beetle-riddled trees
become forests’ slopes
of vanquished leaves.
Gold shoulders pass
from the gold reliquary
into the gold orison
that would gleam through
the dead branches.
iv. Dreamwalker
The many futures narrow
toward the one future.
You would falter, following
past each narrow tomorrow.
You would echo as you walk
under leaves, listening.
Dull plumage of veery
mirrors shade, blending.
Its song’s repetitions
pronounce living beauty.
The speech of echoes
would repeat the few words
for you to follow
like steppingstones.
Your entered moments
would hover like mist
over a river’s
deafening fall and crash.
You would enter the nave
of the columns of the pines,
breathing pines’ breath
as they breathe your breath.
You would hear wind’s tide
flood through the tall pines
as aeolian orisons.
Branches would murmur
soughing to clear
into the feeling
of an orison
like the span of horizon.
Your sight would dawn
through benisons of branches.
Beneath viridescence,
gold shoulders would pass.
Gold shoulders would open
into crowning heights
of the viridescence.
Self would enter soul.
Soul would enter soulscape.
The many futures might open
into the one
future’s anthesis.
Each will be the bearer
of what will be,
into echoes. Each will echo.
You will be the bearer
of what you will be,
as you echo. You will echo.
v. Dream
Meaning, abandoned
to the middens, will lift
from your starless abyss
as you echo. You will echo.
As you falter under
your azure zenith,
sky’s blue will know you
as you echo. You will echo.
You will hear the moment
that is your life sung
by a bird taking wing
as you echo. You will echo.
Wind will bear wildfire’s
bright seeds, sparking
into bright wildflowers
as you echo. You will echo.
You will feel your spine rise
to echo the towering
pine among pines
as you echo. You will echo.
Your autumn will hold
how goldenrod glows
yellowing into hallowing
as you echo. You will echo.
Ground’s earth will show you
gold sedges swaying
like a meaning of meaning
as you echo. You will echo.
Time lavished a world
and offered its ground
to be your ground of being
as you echo. You will echo.
Foretold in gold
and believed by gold,
bodhisattvas would walk
into echoes. All will echo.
When you hear the roar
of the course of the river,
you will follow its echoes
as you echo. You will echo.
Left behind you, its waters
will be a wake’s shimmer
that anyone might follow
called by echoes, who will echo.
(Originally published in Terrain.org)