Filament

Filament
by Gideon Burton
inspired by Walt Whitman's "A Noiseless Patient Spider" (below)

Not anything can measure it, not light
nor miles nor time nor words like "depth" or "height"
and I am, insect-like, a speck, so slight
so blank so mute so pale within the white
yet poised along the cusp of sound and sight
some primal part, down deep where neurons bite
where forces stir that blurred primeval night
with white-hot wonder, blazing through the fight
to see: the sea, the scene, each atom bright
from here from me somehow so wide despite
my jellied lenses, dulled by mortal rites
yet lasering through all till all ignites.
   Some filament is cast that cords the kite,
   I board the flight, I soar though sore in sight.

image: creative commons licensed by John Barton

A Noiseless Patient Spider 

by Walt Whitman

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

Sing to Me

I'm very lucky because I'm married to someone who cheers many people with her beautiful voice. Sometimes, it's the only thing I want to hear.

Sing to Me
by Gideon Burton

Build evenly with phrases made of sound
more pure than silent moonlit winter nights.
Construct with smoothest linen tones, with round
and moistened vowels your reply. In bright
hosannas or in humming whispers make
for me redeeming chords to crash and flow
as rivered springtime runoff coldly breaks
in halo sprays. Give me this way to know.
Let words dilate to thinnest wisps of vapor,
for it is but your voice I will attend.
Give up all eloquence, all pen and paper;
your melody sustain until the end.
     Perform this service, sing to me in song;
     compose me whole, with music, softly strong.

Photo: flickr - karenmburton
(used by permission)

Squinting

Squinting
by Gideon Burton

Where ends the world or where it all began,
disorder thick with order, dark with light, 
from primal chaos, womankind and man.
How tardy comes our story, squinting sight,
but eagerly we chart the eons, scan
the atoms, reading genes and comets, dazed
at each continuum, minute or grand.
More magnitudes extend the cosmic maze.
And yet, however vast our growing scope
we close parameters by reasoned thought.
What are those worlds we've chosen not to note
insisting systemed knowledge as we ought?
     Our ignorance compounds as knowledge grows;
     for good or ill, for now, nobody knows.

Photo: flickr - kingarthur10

Unencumbered

Unencumbered
by Gideon Burton

Our things are weights, are tethers, hobbles, dense
and mute and brutally inert. They keep 
beyond their keeping, adding new expense
to store, maintain, or lie about in heaps.
I love a home, an auto, or a sweater,
but only as they serve and not enslave.
And letting go, I've found, is often better,
prepared by less to ride the rising wave.
The art of living well is living lean,
preserving an agility for change,
a willingness to clear the clutter clean,
to nothing spare so God can all arrange.
     The tools and tangibles that we require
     are throttled more by purpose than desire.

Photo: flickr - The Hamster Factor

Chance and Choice

Chance and Choice
by Gideon Burton

A world of chance and choice, a plane not planed
of splintered barbs except by dragging skin
along the slow progression of the limned
and matted surfaces that are the main
and staple places where we wait, we glare,
we weep for items lost to time or dust
with all the other traffickers in rust.
I'm hopeful that my children may still dare
another course less crooked than the one
I fell to with such hungry, biting blows.
And yet I can still sense the saving snows,
still sort the tangled rays of distant suns
that speak to me in pulses not so mute
as careful to reward my patience crude.

Photo: flickr - scott.tanis

Before Newton

Before Newton
by Gideon Burton

Before we knew the measuring, before
the calculus of gravity, when mass
was celebrated, not inert, when more
was known through silent mysteries unasked--
The cosmos turned along the axis, earth,
the sable silent ether held the stars,
which smiled or frowned at every human birth,
and few there were who dared to pause and parse.
Astronomers have architected breadth
and depth, unclasped the boundaries of space,
and to old verities have handed death,
with dust and radiation in their place.
     How easily the heavens lost their grasp
     When little man thought he was big to ask.

Photo: flickr - Lynn (Gracie's mom)

Sign Seen

Sign Seen
by Gideon Burton

Then comes the signal -- not the one you'd hoped
would beacon something better -- yet it comes,
as though you hadn't watched and waited, scoped
the landscape, felt the seasons tightly spun,
the layered hours numbing you, your eyes
gone dry and red and stinging, blurring, wide
in fright to miss a comet crossing skies.
And yet what comes is what you want to hide,
to dampen, chasten, fasten, bring to rights.
Where is the fog uncurtaining the land?
The sunrise cresting hills with sudden light?
The trumpets heralding arrivals grand?
     You mark it, know it, wishing otherwise,
     the sign that you must welcome and despise.

Photo: flickr - exoskull

Seeking the Good

Seeking the Good
by Gideon Burton

inspired by Philippians 4:8 and the 

13th article of faith 

All lovely things and virtuous, the white
inside of light, the sting of sweat, designs
that angle gravity, the binding bite
of interlocking fingers, laughter lines--
All things of good report: a budget kept,
a double-windsor tied on first attempt,
a flaky crust, a long jump deftly leapt,
a child from heaven's mercy not exempt--
I see the more I seek the more I see
that everywhere and everything and more
is more: the world in messages for me,
a refuge, message, comfort, pleasure, store.
     I look to see fresh subjects for bright praise,
     and warming oceans wash me in their waves.
    

Photo: flickr - Phil Strahl

Will I Remember?

Will I Remember?
by Gideon Burton

Will I remember? Gushing waters burst
in splintered roaring force, the firmament
reverberating, echoing, disbursed
in seismic shuddering, in permanent
expansion, rushing winds that heat and spin
the layered atmospheres, the heavy weight
of silent certainty. Can I begin
to name the hour, wield the flux and freight,
the liquid ministrations poured in thick
remissions? Tides of burning waters wash
away the blackened sands, a whitened wick
threads evenly, a filament, a floss
too fine to see, new salt in newer seas.
Will I remember, hushed, on bended knees?

Photo: flickr - stuant63

A Drowning

Some friends of ours lost two adult children to drowning not so long ago. I still can't wrap my head around it all. It is haunting.

A Drowning
by Gideon Burton

you wake you gulp slap surface sink you kick
just why the dark the salt the cold the cramps
you bend below cough up the sand the prick
of sickness seizes cloudy pressures clamp
and shake you kick and sink and slap you tire
how long remains how long so far no fight
no shore no more you cramp convulse the mire
of melting mud and muck ascends to bite
your numbing limbs slow treading sink and churn
the froth and seaweed strands that slide and wrap
what's left you choke you heave the throaty burn
and just how you got here what ship what map
you are that distant dimming swimmer tossed
to fetal fatal falling chilling loss

Photo: flickr - andy castro

Impatience

Impatience
by Gideon Burton

This bore, this augur, drilling down to tap
a primal vinegar, a bile, a dread.
Infinities stretch out across the map
confused with aching, black inside of red.
It starts with a fixation: this I want
and only this and these my only terms.
The thing then proves to be an endless font
of disappointment burrowing, a worm.
How keen the mind: secure and insecure,
to never waver, spiraled rhythms down
to what is dark and hard and yet so sure
to haunt, to trap, distract you till you drown.
     If we can name the thing for which we wait,
     it proves and idle idol, switch, and bait.

Photo: flickr - tobym

What a Piece of Work

What a Piece of Work
by Gideon Burton
after a passage from Shakespeare's Hamlet

How is it no one, nothing pleases me?
I am not blind to how our sweaty dust
retains bright shimmers of divinity,
despite the vinegar, the bile and rust.
We are these demigods of sense and flesh,
as fair in form and movement as the stars,
the waves, the wind; our stirring thoughts enmeshed
in reason, action, music, spreading far
into infinities beyond, within,
as golden glorious as fretted skies
afire; as magical as newborn's skin.
And yet I stop. I sink in heavy sighs.
     Though heaven dazzles earth with brightest beams,
     so heavy, bland, and sterile it all seems.
  

Photo: flickr - susy

---

From Hamlet:

I have of late--but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neither...

At Rest

At Rest
by Gideon Burton

If there were other options, had the sound
not echoed from the lower canyons, had
the strains of Barber's violins not found
crescendos stronger than the snowfall, sad
against the season, over warm so soon.
If there were chances to betray the light
the children weave across their crooked loom
of chance enthusiasms, loosely bright.
But we are snared, entangled, bound to this,
to sudden graces, mercies tendered thick
as afternoons unpressured by a kiss
upon the forehead. Nothing left to kick:
     the pricking shards and nettles -- all at rest
     because you tire and sleep against my chest.

Photo: flickr - rrrodrigo

Returned

Returned
by Gideon Burton

And after so much time, so many days
adrift in waiting -- do I watch the sun
horizoned, rippling in the water's rays?
or angle moonwise where the night's begun
its dread ascent? And after walking west
against that wall of gristled wind, head down
and stutter-paced, the glow of morning's breast
a fable, running short of verbs and nouns
to document the spiraling, the choke
and phlegm, the snapping ailerons, those long
and twisted cloths to mop the sticky smoke
of wasting resolutions -- then a song
     awakens something hidden, buys me back,
     forgives the time, the waste, the weight, the lack.

Photo: flickr - Espen Faugstad

Begin Again

Begin Again
by Gideon Burton

Dismember anything that might remain --
arpeggios strung out along the bank
of churning chords, the octaves spanning blank
precisions -- anything that might have named
the slanted hue of evening on the stones,
or numbered currents intersecting light
and water, milky with their clotted peace.
There is a danger more than time can crease,
inherently a risk, however slight.
I feel it, marrow glowing in the bones.
Disband the braiding scents of hot house flowers,
inhale the sharpened shards of winter air.
There's only time enough today to spare
yourself, to pardon all beyond your power.

Photo: flickr - John Oram

Then Comes an End

Then Comes an End
by Gideon Burton

An end, conclusion, coming to a close
despite the things unfinished and undone;
though I was just beginning to compose,
the moon arises, westward dims the sun.
An end, a destination, something sought
outside of range, beyond all present means
for which I've lost each time the fight was fought;
the scaffolding is rusting as it leans
toward an end, concluding, destiny
in crooked planks and meters, nothing spanned
across the chasms through the density
of smoky hopes for distant planets manned.
     To come at last to know the proper end
     makes everything toward it rushing bend.

Photo: flickr - Kuzeytac

Bronze Sky

Bronze Sky
by Gideon Burton

This sky, a bronze, contracting bowl, a paste
Of heat, a smear of fire that descends
Along the spines of hope and dregs of waste
Until the oxygen itself will end.
This sea, this warm and bloody stir of meat,
This soup of plankton, manta rays and kelp
That swallows mountains, caverns in the sweet
Conclusion promised by the webs of help.
And this the dry and brooding moon, aloft
Despite strong gravities that tug its mass
To linger in the night despite the cost
As gawking gazers watch its present pass.
     All this, and only minutes now remain
     To tell what's left, what's more than mildly stained

Photo: flickr - Hopefoote, Ambassador of the Wow

Thing Stuck

Thing Stuck
by Gideon Burton

Whatever we collect along the way
to someplace else accumulates and drags
us with its ballast to the past. We say
we'd like to be efficient, trim the lags
beween our thoughts and actions. Yet we keep
the anchors and the sluggish mass that weight
our way with needless waiting. Whether steep
or disant ventures beckon, all our freight
becomes the pretext to remain inert
when all our agile movements are required
and pyramids like fallow in the dirt.
     To build we need materials most fit;
     two-thirds of what we gather isn't it.

Photo: flickr - swirlingyin

Memory Crime

Memory Crime

by Gideon Burton

Oblivion, sweet gift from passing time

unburdening the psyche from the weight

and pull of every petty thought. The crime

of memory is her shifty sifting, great

events passed over, lesser ones retained

as though they were the center and the core:

a dozen words ill spoken seem the same

as constitutional amendments -- even more.

Poor memory is like a welcome sleep,

a margin buffering us from the past,

a moratorium from things too deep,

a chance for things to sort from first to last.

     If every moment kept, how high the cost

     for recollection's savor would be lost.

Photo: flickr - Alex No Logo

Who is Kurtz?

Who is Kurtz?
by Gideon Burton
after a passage from Conrad's Heart of Darkness

I say a name that's hemoglobin red,
a talisman, a paradox, a charm.
I might as well attempt to raise the dead.
Can you perceive the man? Hence my alarm.
No wealth of words can say what can't be spoken,
absurdity, surprise, revolting tremors;
the circled squares, a dreamer's logic broken.
How can I speak what I can scarce remember?
Impossible to summon or preserve
the essence of a decade or a day;
whatever is the truth is bent in curves
that language will confess as it betrays.
     Our mind in isolation hosts our dreams;
     we live just as we dream, alone, it seems.

Photo: flickr - Baronvonhorne

From Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

He [Kurtz] was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream -- making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams. . . . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence -- that which makes its truth, its meaning -- its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream -- alone. . . ."