At the End of the Day

 

At the End of the Day

I like to gather the glances and gazes

the small reflections where memory looms

a day with all its diffusions and clarities

to hoard the angles of light that fell

on the half-built greenhouse and stopped me

for a moment that unutterable sensation

I felt watching my wife immersed

in the art she loves more than me

to store that flavor of cinnamon in my coffee

that makes me close my eyes slowly

breathe and taste the whole Earth within

to assemble that poem I heard spilling

from the mouths of my children

that I meant to write before it disappeared

those are things I like to collect

the end of a day in the dead of night

and soar through them all in my dreams

Reading at the Martha Washington Library April 13, 2019 Building to a Crescendo Reading Series hosted by Steven Allenmay 27mins

Edgar Gabriel Silex reading at the Wildwood Writer's Festival in Harrisburg, Pa., March 29 2019. Intro by Rick Kearns 37 min.

How To Write A Poem

I am fanning the charcoals

with a composition notebook

hey don’t burn that she says

there’s a poem in there

a journal is a lovely place

to put your world down I say

as I hand it back step aside

and watch her start writing

everything down intently

naturally knowing how

each thing requires thought

she waits for the spirit

then not stopping driven

she’s off into that inner sky

how big is it now I wonder

then a loud bird churrs

and tears her from herself

she looks up waves at the bird

as if to an old friend

now she’s observing

angling her head to gaze then

drawing going back and forth

capturing the forms

where she can see the soul

of something she starts singing

to herself and I re-join her

see the coals are glowing

wanna see the poem I drawed

okay I say little pictures

and perfectly spanned lines

squiggled on the page lovely

I say there is a poem in there

The Beautiful Thread

and we will remember

                 we are filaments of sunlight

                                           remember to feel

                                    how we are

                       threaded around

         vessels of wind

                       our skin our eyes

                                      painted and glazed

                        by sky and loam

          and we will know

  the weaver

          how we learned

                       to crawl

                             on her grass skin

                                            how she weaves us

                                 as she weaves

                      every strand

  of the dandelion’s seed

                       and we will remember

                                          she looms us

                                                    equally

                                 from love as from pain

           and we will memorize her

 scent her rain

             her vistas

                      not her replaceable names

                                             already

                              when we have felt

         such great exhilaration

                               that we saw our own wings

               we remembered man

                               was not meant to fly

        so we have not forgotten

 everything

         is shaped in patterns

                            of wind

                                   like sinews of sand

            undulations of sea waves

the wind changes

              everything

                       that is its power

  when lonely or confused

                       we made ourselves small

                                             translucent

                                         quartz

                               sand grains

                   dandelion seeds

and the wind carried us

                      where we wanted to go

                                          and we will always

             treat innocence as God’s knife

                               so we do not cut our selves

                                                 with remorse

                                      so we can know

                              gentleness

                  and compassion

and we will remember you

                       grandfathers saying

                                    if we must close our eyes

                               to dream

               we will recognize

                               our own deaths

                                           our worries

                                our laughter

       our free or guilty thoughts

                                 are all plumes of chant

                   we will remember

 everything in beauty

                   we will remember everything

                                             in beauty

                            that is the thread

             we are woven from

Letter to Calliope

the two eyes are tired of the one eye

they long to see sadness again

not emptiness that makes more room for love

the lie that said it wanted nothing now is kneeling

at the temple of words

and paradox

who tried to drown you by drinking

slay you with drugs and silence

exorcise you with carnal senses

has no riddles left to turn to

it clutches at flowers and cries at ignorance

stares at the mirror deep within

while the pen is a dreamer that never sleeps

it never cries and never blinks

poets die there and tyrants never run out of ink

letters fly and fill its air

and they don’t care whose name they write

the newly born or those who’ll die before the night

now the wound demands its freedom

and the heart wants some moral law

while the mind still wanders somewhere

between being and non being

and I am dumb to tell the soul it failed

while it’s ego still thinks it knows what this job entails

its eyes keep gazing back through the dust

searching for you in the exodus

Elegy For a Child's Drawing

her drawings piled up on us like the days

and snows she drew with her small hands

the lessons she ingrained with imagination

that will soon bloom into full dreams

we have to throw them in the trash though

we try to save the milestones the images

that capture her metamorphosing skills

her carefully considered compositions

drawn more and more to represent the real

and measured world she’ll soon step into

this one in particular is a pastel of a ship

navigating over a dark blue perilous sea

the brilliant yellow portholes are all lit with life

as it sails in perfect perspective towards us

in the morning it’ll be gone and we’ll have one

less child’s drawing to tear our memories from

Nothing

For West Gurley

you must wake up to nothing

except the puzzle piece or two

you brought back from your dreams

fill the day with the nothing that you love

and the nothing that you have to do

feed the stomach and the memory nothing

if you get bored or hunger

you must still be holding onto something

don’t look for anything

there is nothing that can’t find you

everywhere is where you and nothing are

I once planted vegetables

and waited for the fruit to grow

now I wait for nothing

and everywhere I find ripe fruit

and that puzzle piece or two

you brought back from another place

should remind you there is nothing

that is missing in your life or in this world