The Willingness

The Willingness Is All

The gravity of the situation:

tense mass

excitable zoo

strung-out world

loopy world, hard to gauge

uncertain boundaries

incomplete theories

elusive constraints

approximate equations

inconstant couplings

scattered process

discussion without end point

drift without anchorage

hidden freedoms

You moons of ice and rock

dwarf stars

meteors of extinction

planets stranded in ellipse –

parse your sentences

sift snapshots in a drawer

abide the afternoon

chew your delivered dinners in separate rooms

eat, drink, lose track

nod off in analgesic districts and tenured communities

where careerists cluck in lecture halls

and short-spanned screeners slight thick text’s weight

Go ahead, you wet wool socks

bloodless leaves

riders on small errands

yuan-dollar assassins –

cast your sunlit lines on river’s midnight mouth

shout "bweeok! bweeok!" at the surface bubbles

The wave lays waste to your village, too

muddy crushed heads and odd-angled limbs

pools of blood and soundless mouths

Feast-end on Nature’s plates

Neither sun’s stroke nor space rock’s deed,

the end of days

Cordless and switchless

singularly unheralded it comes

The carny’s flim-flam ends

Silly tunes fade into the ether

Empty lanes trail off

Then poetry’s thousand alphabets speak as one

Then full dance-card Death teems,

textured, juiced, coherent

Saviour of the near-dead huddling in the electron cloudshadows

with ‘Net for needle and screen for spoon

Who fear its summons and Judgment’s voir dire

though Hell itself would seem as cook fire to inferno life

Dust bunny species, blown easily away

iii

You will yet feel sad:

hiking in September in Maroon Bells among the aspens

Sad:

with the sun shining in your face on the Ponte Vecchio

on your wedding day

in Chichicastenango with the smoke wisps above the church on market day

on your last run through the moguls before lunch at mid-Vail

when you see your son born and he has all his fingers and toes

Sadness:

walking from Taillevent in the night to the Arc de Triomphe

when Xmas lights Fifth Avenue and you’re shopping in the frost among the pretty people

riding on sled runners up river and White Mountain appears through the snowfall

making love in a sleeping bag in Big Sur on a moonlit beach

when the Mountain Jam’s playing at Ipod’s max volume

at your daughter’s graduation

driving past the red rocks at Abiquiu with the girl you love

when you read Keats

Beauty’s old,

smells like. . . espresso

In the piazza at dusk

life stirs

stars gather

buona sera’s a polite segue to night’s rude hustle

jammed streets

greetings and disputes

Vespa racket

the clack and jangle of silverware and plates

goods displayed and hawked

the cries of tourists learning the way –

lingering dinners

purposeless strolls

love’s protests and sighs:

life’s impossible main course

Beauty’s old,

smells like. . . porchetta

To die for a natural sandwich

on saltless Umbrian bread!

Water spills over a fountain

Birds drink

Children play, their shrieks and laughter lighting

the piazza

the simple afternoon

Beauty’s old,

smells like. . . olives

Ancient hills and trod roads

A cool morning at the Duomo

Your moods and affectations

crust of personality

wit’s attack and manner’s thrust

are as quantum stuff streaming through the statues

of saints and scientists, soldiers and sinners

Look! They are slow-dancing to violins along the Uffizi in the moonlight;

painterly morning serves the sky-blue that your palette craves

Here there is no concern

no reason to ask:

is belief worthy?

is faith madness?

no reason to doubt the truths of the place you have come to,

unasked

Beauty’s old,

smells like. . . the sea

Look out from Ravello’s cliffs

Sail to Capri

In the mist is the familiar formless Presence

Wisps of its purpose dance above the wave tops

Whispers of its promise excite the sea-spray

Come, it beckons: explore the Deep

The Willingness is all

to end our sadness

to escape our edgy hip dead-ends

to silence the white-noise hiss of tattered human doodads

and the drone of tan-raincoated clones

the barking of Senators and complaints of false maidens

to banish the sight of men and women grasping at one another

naked along curbside among the ruins of steaming streets

to stop the scratching at hives and our mad hopping dance

to speak of our hunger

and discover together our communal heart

The Willingness is all and the journey continues

A voyage long ago begun

Before awareness

Compelling

Irresistible

All sailors are friends

Broken-masted heroes

Our mastery propels us

We sail on,

heedless of harbor-bound spirits and mooring voices

Going always forward,

abiding Time’s cruelty and the hardness of the way,

to make music with our steps and days

-- Richard Ross