Sunrise

Sunrise
Sunrise on Sunset Beach

Sunday, March 31, 2013

The Night Music of San Rafael de Guatuso


San Rafael de Guatuso, Costa Rica
A living fence in Costa Rica, from TravelBlog.org
April 2, 2013

I wander dreams of dinosaurs
while dozing in a concrete cave
as freight trucks rumble
baritone scales
north into night.

Somewhere in darkness
drunks howl feigned joy
and small dogs strut
soprano outrage
from the safety of sofas.

Tremulations
stalk the hearts and haunt
Field in Guatuso,
courtesy of Mary Woods,
Methodist Rural Center, Costa Rica
the souls of those who walk
the night alone
in far lands.

But far is not a place you go to, 
far is something dark inside, 
a cave you wall against the terror 
faced alone but not beyond 
the love disguised as humble chance.

So who’s to say the whippoorwill
who camps aside my weathered door
to chant his sad, hypnotic score
is not an angel sent by God
to guard the gap from black to gray.

When somehow, dawn
birds sing back sleep
as light rains
play, pianissimo,
the green plains of Guatuso.

Where fence posts sprout
leaves and roots, and dark nights
yield to sun-baked days
with black beans, bitter coffee

Friday, March 1, 2013

Vacuum Collapse


March 2013, revised September 11, 2019


It could be out there even now 
slouching from Sagittarius 
at the speed of light –

the final cosmic tidal wave 
collapsing vacuum into void. 
The ghost of Koheleth cries again 

vanity, vanity, all is for naught 

for the number of the beast 
is hidden in the Higgs – 
125 GeV. Hear this and weep 

you prophets who probe 
the bitter equations: 
the pseudo-emptiness teems 

with too much and one day must slump 
to an emptiness more true. 
Oh this could be chimera.

Vacuum could hold 
as space expands forever 
and ever to emptiness again. 

Just so, beloved, the monster 
under your bed is nothing, really; 
somehow or other it’s nothing at all.

In the spell of the cold shadow 
you can feel the final calm 
of cosmic indifference. 

By ragged fields pale lilies bloom 
and sparrows sing more sweetly 
than they ever sang before. 

Photograph by David Noah
Winterville, Georgia