The Short Side

When Cold Moon lights the longest night 
we’re on the short side 
of the sun.

These are the days of dusk 
when the pale sun 
beats west 

through half-hearted arcs 
to warm a far-off 
southern sea 

and Orion rises, red-shouldered 
east into evening to hunt 
the midnight sky.

This is the season of silhouettes, 
when dark forms 
cast shadows 

on a velvet void 
to illumine by absence 
a vast empty realm 

where love lies below layers, 
faith stands by frozen, 
and hope taunts the dormant heart. 

This is the grace of unknowing, 
the stage beyond belief and doubt, 
a place to bank the fire, and wait. 

Till Ice Moon lights late winter nights 
we're on the short side 
of the sun.

"Orion" from ScienceBlogs
by Ethan Siegel

The Comfort of Fading

Athens, Georgia
November 15, 2013

There were years of prime
when I looked upon a living bay
pulsing with life, pulled
by celestial bodies, and saw

numerical mesh
stretching through
the sterile ether.
Such a stately parade

of symbols set in spare beauty  –
partial c’s sliding slopes
of Q and E, of x and t,
but no longer.

The crystalline equations fade;
their symbols spill
off dog-eared pages
graced with arcs of coffee stain

in manuals with my name inside
and broken backs, now boxed
and stored in cardboard tombs
of moth and mildew, must and tears.

I find my life now softly fallen
in the gentle in-between

while plowing through uncharted now
as Voyager past the heliopause

no longer here
but not yet there.

So I shut my eyes in warm sun
and drift down whole days.

The world is my back yard,
the afterlife unfenced.

I wander a peaceable kingdom
where voices chant in strange tongues

from the distance of dreams,
and though I cannot catch their meaning

sure as Voyager shoots beyond,
I shall sing their soul, unknowing.

Lessons for the Fallen

Athens, Georgia
November 15, 2013

When you find your life, fallen;
when you inhabit the gap,
the no longer but not yet,
the neither-nor:

Then linger, friend;
let the soft day suffice;
do not rush the soon to be,
do not claw back the packaged past.

When you find yourself caught
in-between, your stance astride
both deck and dinghy, rope
untethered, weather rising:

Do not stand tall and grasp the wind;
forego, my friend, the stately pose
but sink your soul below the storm
and praise the passing of the waves.

When you find your soul, riven;
when truths refuse to reconcile;
when torn between two warring armies
dug in trenches, steel points gleaming:

Then light your last candle;
make your way to no-man’s land
beyond the barbed wire and bayonet,
and sing your hymn on holy ground.

The Reality of Sunsets

Athens, Georgia 

October 23, 2013 *

Scientifically speaking, sunsets

are unreal, nothing there

but oscillation

      diffracted by dust

      detected by cones

      delivered by neurons

upside down

reorganized and rendered so

You pull your beach chair

next to mine to watch the sun

sink cross the line

together as we reconstruct

what never was

yet brings forth tears.

Scientifically speaking, God

is unreal, nothing there

but old construction

      discerned in dreams

      dissected by logic

      deposed by knowledge

bottom up

reorganized and rendered so

We build our walls with

jumbled facts ignoring what

the wise have found –

no human proof forever binds

constructed truth

to quaking ground.

God of Logic, clockwork wound

Cerebral God so tightly bound

you Warrior God of bold savants

who slash the soul with arguments –

your God has died, so long

so long.

So long live what lies beyond

what comforts tears

and calls up song

what makes for kindness uncompelled

what steels the heart

confronting hell.

But shall we talk or just rejoice? Oh

you can call this what you will

based on how you think and feel

but as for me, it sounds like Love.

* Note, this is a revision of the original, posted March 7, 2011.

Light Bodies

"Washed in Light," photograph by David Noah

Athens, Georgia

September 27, 2013

Forged from Light

and Will to Be

condensing bits

of information

Spare abstractions

bare equations birthed

in time to earthen bodies

word and dust

Made humankind

where thoughts careen

through three pound prisons

fired by feelings

Primal scream

to tribal voodoo,

nursery rhyme

to alleluia.

A thousand tongues sing broken

rhyme, ten thousand voices vie

for time in neural networks

born to die, yet something watches

Deep inside –

freedom is a mirrored maze

with no path back

and branches split forever forward

Built atop the tangled byways

burrowed deep within the psyche

trapped by musty cells inside

the catacombs of joy and tears.

But out beyond all self reflection

past the chain of explanation

unconstrained by mere causation

life abundant whispers, dear

You are your light body

the woken one

serene as Siddhartha

sharing his smile

The soul of Yeshua

encircled by sinners

with stones in hand

and softening hearts.

Yours is the earth of Adam

the wind of Lao Tzu

the fire of Elijah, yours

the still waters.

Let go the deathly grip on grace

and loose the light body –

your own true face awaits

the joining.

To My Daughter, Turning

Athens, Georgia
September 2, 2013

There was a time before

– so asserts the desert

mind – before your tiny face

carved love on our hearts,

Bound to a new blessing

of joy and terror, tied

to a miracle, millennia in

making, robust and fragile

Both, the improbable becoming

inevitable as time reveals

fresh wonders, which always

lay latent in life, in stardust,

In what came before. There is

no time before we loved you

and there can never be

a world where we do not.

To Mothers Watching Offspring Part

In memory of Ruth Gilmore Ambrose

Athens, Georgia

August 20, 2013; revised December 20, 2014

It was the church bells 
from just past Five Points 
as late afternoons lingered 
on the cusp of evening, ringing 
family home in those happy years 

Till one by one we left.

But ah, to rise to distant cause,
discover wings of light and gauze 
like tiny Monarchs born to fall 
who feel the ache of far away, 
forsake the fields of yesterday 

To take the wind and open skies. 

It is an odd quintessence – 
the noble hyperbole, glorious lies 
and naïve dreams of youthful tribes 
that glide above the weathered  lives
of mothers watching offspring part 

As bells toll love and ancient loss. 

What comes of cocoons came 
over her heart as dusk by dark 
the shadows crept to Gospel 
chimes and childhood rhymes, 
the sweet debris of golden times 

In mommy’s world now left behind. 

Home turns refuge, safehouse, 
cell when trapped inside that cozy shell, 
but motherlove may self-transcend, new 
causes and callings now coursing within, 
a spirit soars to greet its dreams. 

Your love redeems the churchly bells.

Photograph by David Noah, Winterville, Georgia

Boothbay Gray

Boothbay Harbor, Maine

July 12, 2013

If you hold a quiet pose

ankle deep in shallow water

soles set to fine sand

rooted into rising tide

that carved the coves

and coast of Maine,

perhaps you’ll feel a touch of grace

washed in warm midsummer

sun and bathed in midday

joy-song of brother thrush.

If you hold as tiny crablettes

scuttle-crawl across your feet

and minnows clean your wrinkled toes,

perhaps you’ll catch the seaweed sway 

to sister moon and lapping wave.

And if you chance to hold your ground

with thighs immersed beneath the tide,

perhaps your pulse will realign,

your breath reset to offshore breeze,

your mind at peace with mother sea.

Perhaps you’ll find your soul

submerged within the one eternal

moment, calm as the evening

osprey, who holds a quiet pose

on a pole with a view

to watch the daylight

slowly fade, his world

dissolve in shades of gray

and unobserved, to fly away

as silence fills the fog-bound night.

Boothbay Harbor, Maine

An Ode to Aralee

On the passing of Aralee Strange, founder and host 

of the Athens Word of Mouth open poetry community,

June 15, 2013 at her home, "Timberdance"

Athens, Georgia

July 3, 2013; revised June 28 2015

In some place primeval

the priestess holds court 

where rhythms take form 

your spirit’s reborn  
as sirens sing in sotto voce, 
the Sibyl raves a praise to Gaia, 

long-mute furies chant 
in tongues, and fiery nuns 
rap truth to knaves. None

can name the kind of faith 
that rocked your soul 
in the bosom of Timberdance, 

but a warm spring bathed 
your late years, submerging self 
to nurture words in perfect strangers. 

It’s just the broken way 
of things that what we love 
will leave too soon. 

Authentic poets never die, 
they just transcend. Their words 
become their epitaph 

their thoughts a meme, 
their spirits, muse. Unburdened 
of body returned to the source, 

to the place beyond words 
where they go to be born,  
your essence awaits: 

A brief note, held sweet 
                against silence 
echoes forever 
        the memory of grace.

To Run the Wild Beast

Reflections on a morning run, March 27, 2010
Athens, Georgia
March 2011, revised June 23, 2013

Yes, I remember

how it was in spring

to set out in darkness and ease

into the light pace that takes you nowhere

and home. How paved roads roll

easy underfoot, as stride by stride

you stretch through strength to joy.  

How brisk east wind blows cold on sweat

through muscle and marrow and deeper yet

to cleanse the body, unburden the soul,

to shed all distractions and fall into flow,

in silence the mind to step out of time –

to stride the high plains

under African sky

in searing noon heat

bold predator, I

to run the wild beast

through tortuous lands

where Eden is naught

but hazy mirage

that hovers beyond

uncountable dawns

with history’s tears

still yet to be shed

no burden of why

nor what lies ahead

eternity’s now

impressed on my will

inside of my heart

on glistening skin

in deepening breath

the freshening wind

for immortal am I

till the moment I die

or run out my race

and reenter time –

where asphalt

yields to open fields

and far across a waking

park, white halos of pear

blossom hover against silhouettes

of a treeline emerging from dark, pale

spectors of spring in the soft morning light,

         which harbors a spirit

                                         attempting to soar

                        escaping the darkness

                                encasing our core

in primitive peace

                reconnected once more.

"Primitive Dawn" by David Noah, Winterville, Georgia

In Praise of Imperfection

Athens, Georgia
April 17, 2013 (revised March 11, 2015)

"So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life."

1. The Peace of Imperfection

The songbirds seem not to have noticed
perfection having passed us by
last Tuesday week, the prime of spring
peaking in the predawn darkness:

                        first light
        gracing east
                a drift of breeze
the slightest hint
        of scented whispers
                wafting through
        the inner senses

The flaming sword
                that guards the garden
        carves a chasm
                        deep inside
                that fills us
        with inchoate
                longing, calling

    Brother, sister, join the sparrow 
        wander unaware in Eden 
    claim what lies beyond mere joy.

We must decline – their souls inhabit different
realms from yours and mine. They still live
within the garden, lost in perfect flow
of being. We live East, the slaves of knowing.

Once again we’re left behind to tend
a freshly-fallen world, now dusted
with a set of gnats, green oak tree doodles
caught in cracks of splintered decks

and crumbling driveways; drooping dogwood
blossoms browned about the edges,
bright azaleas slightly faded –
signs of spring now going stale.

Still bearing the imprint of Eden inside us
while bursting with knowledge and moral awareness,
we build a home in the shadow of heaven
and make our peace with imperfection.

2. In Praise of Unkempt Things 

Praise to God for unkempt things

that grace our world with imperfection –

for Friday mornings after Easter,
one egg missing;

for tidy lawns with clover patches,
strewn with toys;

for joyful girls with reckless smiles
and saddened eyes;

or graceful curves of mountain vistas
cloaked in clouds;

for clever proofs of shrouded concepts
conjured out of troubled minds.

In sorrow and striving,
in coping and growing,

in desperate hope and untenable dreams,
a glory shines through imperfection.

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

and sweet pineapple grace.

Other poems from Costa Rica:

• Jessica's Blessing
• A Friday Morning Devotional in Iglesia Evangelica Metodista
• The Girl's Guava Tree

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

To Go to Patagonia

"Pacific Coast" by David Noah,
Winterville, Georgia

January ruminations on a 
Sunday Times travel section

Athens, Georgia

February 4, 2013

Some truths hover

just past the point of perception

and pass into knowing

gradual as gray dawn

Grows from blue-black nights

to gentle winter days in Georgia

singing frost and white camellia,

silver age and pale regret:

You’ll never go to Patagonia

never trek the tortured plain

to breathe the bracing air of Andes

blowing off the icy sea.

You’ll never see auroras dance

unless by chance coronas leap

and sear the Southern sky with fire

an hour before your time of sleep.

You’ll go no more to Mykonos

nevermore return to youth

to stride the sands of Paradise

while clothed in fresh Aegean air.

Some truths lie

harmless as hibernating vipers

that wake on warm days

to feed on minds that give them life.

But winter afternoons can glow

as silver yields to tones of gold

and old camellias burst in color –

so it is with elder souls

Who step beyond belief and doubt,

and freed at last of empty strife

embrace the wondrous, fallen world

which harbors grace within the shadows.

From this veil I would chase truths

past the far end of perception

where they flit, unformed

above a lonely Patagonia

Where somehow, surely

amidst the sun-drenched daydreams of God

my doppelgänger draws near

the Torres del Paine.

"In the Museum" by David Noah, Winterville, Georgia