OVERLOOKING

No need to honor blasted shells of cities

or of selves. It is most important not

to dwell on luscious sins, atrocities,

and political deliriums of hell. The improv

of each day can move us happily to overlook

complaint and find delight in moon pearls

of the night, in “wading in the velvet sea,”

being guided to the lover’s bower where the gorgeous

world is languid as a body we adore stretched out

so we can say, like Odysseus washed upon the shore,

“I worship as I see” everything that’s offered me.

So just to overlook anomalies of pain and fear, just to love

the breath of life so much – that lets us even brush aside

the leering dread of death as just a simple pause of breath.

Curiosity is a tricky guide to overlooking. It’s bounty

we transgress with every morbid focusing, with each

refusal to see the rest, even at the end, to wash our minds

in “ecstasies begotten of the breezes,” even on the iceberg

of necessity to never miss the best. All our lives we build

the library of our wonderings. Each day we are our curiosities

and the everyday takes every day we’ve got. The Rule:

overlook everything that gets in the way of overlooking,

of not going there, so your focus is free to rove

and turn your back on boredom, that mindless sin,

which sees itself as everything in a world of not so much. Anything that isn’t praise raises the spectrum

of dead balance in the strangling maze of fear,

gasping, at every turn “no exit,” no escape, my dear.

When you turn the other cheek for a kiss

you might get a slap, so look over there

at the wind strumming though the elms,

at her sly grin nuzzling with her daughter.

at that dragon fly hovering through the daises,

320 million years of flight, the first of things alive

to fly, or at your own twisted, bulging knuckles,

or even at the white banded gray-sky river stone,

worshipping the magic that you see. It’s not a trick

but a spell that overcomes you, as when you find

millions of stars by merely moving aside a curtain at 3 am

on a train crossing the Mojave Desert, a galaxy caught

in the image of your eye wild open in the window,

transfixed under the spell of your soaring feral wonder.

The nautilus of consciousness, you want to know

each curve and swirl of the smooth inside, even blending

into conscience, sadly, more jagged than trembling

and wise. It’s better just to laugh. Comprehending

without humor is a shady fantasy that apprehends

nothing but cool reason and the mystery it suspends.

When fun is gone, the “strangeness of old age” fans

the stories of our dread, and even love becomes

a scab to pick, a dangerous, drab habit like flying

would become to regimented birds tired of the dawn

and picky with the breezes. If wisdom has a trick

it’s only this: To thank steadfastly and to see anew,

despite the famous gloom of priests and holy crooks, that Life, itself, is gladdened always just by your generous overlookings.