Reflections in April 16

Reflections in April 16


If a rumination is attended, say scrutinized,
The rumination would be found
To be runes,

But not the runes we are accustomed to see
Depicted as illustrations in dictionaries.

Our ruminations when unhandcuffed,
When unshackled
From the second-hand, finger-soiled,
weather-attacked
Scenarios
Of our simulated lives and simulated
report cards,
We recognize
The runes
As runes beyond runes, hyper-runes
Beyond translation and completely closed
To interpretation.
We have to discuss these unknowable realities
As Dionysius's the Pseudo-Areopagite
Discussed the semiotics of conversing
About the essence and existence of God.

In this discovery of how to proceed
In ruminations, say, about when we watched
As we touched the rough, although muted,
Textures of a shore willow's bark,
The black, large, webbed foot of a swan
Being lifted out of pond water
And the sun-struck water, globular,
Somewhat warped, falling back
To find a new existence, without
Demarcation, in the oblivion of a pond,
We have experienced the divine.
Keats found a similar, if something
Obscure can be said to have a similar
Since the origin is to be believed to have
Existence only through faith, in
His remark in a letter about
Negative Capability.

We know as we experience the present
existence of this divinity that emanates
from ruminations
With ruminations' wedding ring's pressed
Finger skin, tissues with lipstick,
bright-edged hatchets,
Folded yellow silk, the cradle's broken slats,
That the elusive actual existent
And its elusive actual emotive reception
Render an other and an inner symbol
That is connected and separate,
Thus an invisible hand arises
out of an invisible lake
And hands us a divinity whose intangibility
we touch.

After the sambuca and its trinity
of coffee beans,
We pause from our trance to speculate on what
Bishop Berkeley and David Hartley
would have thought
Of the inconclusive conclusions we constituted
From a our rumination on ruminations.


Duane Locke

Posted over on Mad Hatter's Review