Homage to Soren Kierkegaard

His father knew these blessings were God’s punishment.

All would be stripped away. His beautiful wife died,

then five of his children. Crippled Soren survived.

The self-consuming sickness unto death is despair.

What the age needs is not a genius but a martyr.

Soren fell in love, proposed, then broke the engagement.

No one, he thought, could bear his presence daily.

My sorrow is my castle. His books were read

but ridiculed. Cartoons mocked his deformities.

His private journals fill seven thousand pages.

You could read them all, he claimed, and still not know him.

He who explains this riddle explains my life.

When everyone is Christian, Christianity

does not exist. The crowd is untruth. Remember

we stand alone before God in fear and trembling.

At forty-two he collapsed on his daily walk.

Dying he seemed radiant. His skin had become

almost transparent. He refused communion

from the established church. His grave has no headstone.

Now with God’s help I shall at last become myself.

Progress Report

It’s time to admit I’m irresponsible.

I lack ambition. I get nothing done.

I spend the morning walking up the fire road.

I know every tree along the ridge.

Reaching the end, I turn around. There’s no point

to my pilgrimage except the coming and the going.

Then I sit and listen to the woodpecker

tapping away. He works too hard.

Tonight I will go out to watch the moon rise.

If only I could move that slowly.

I have no plans. No one visits me.

No need to change my clothes.

What a blessing just to sit still–

a luxury only the lazy can afford.

Let the dusk settle on my desk.

No one needs to hear from me today.

Marriage of Many Years

Most of what happens happens beyond words.

The lexicon of lip and fingertip

defies translation into common speech.

I recognize the musk of your dark hair.

It always thrills me, though I can’t describe it.

My finger on your thigh does not touch skin—

it touches your skin warming to my touch.

You are a language I have learned by heart.

This intimate patois will vanish with us,

its only native speakers. Does it matter?

Our tribal chants, our dances round the fire

performed the sorcery we most required.

They bound us in a spell time could not break.

Let the young vaunt their ecstasy. We keep

our tribe of two in sovereign secrecy.

What must be lost was never lost on us

Selected Essays