poetry

In A Dark Time – Theodore Roethke

/ Bill Schulz / 2 Comments

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

My Worst Habit – Rumi

/ Bill Schulz / 1 Comment
My worst habit is I get so tired of winter
I become a torture to those I am with.
If you’re not here, nothing grows.
I lack clarity. My words
tangle up and knot.
How to cure bad water? Send it back to the river.
How to cure bad habits?  Send me back to you.
When water gets caught in the habitual whirlpools,
dig a way out through the bottom
to the ocean. There is a secret medicine
given only to those who hurt so hard
they can’t hope.
The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.
Look as long as you can at the friend you love,
no matter if that friend is moving away from you
or coming back towards you.
Don’t let your throat tighten
with fear. Take sips of breath
all day and night, before death
closes your mouth.
– Rumi

evening

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

20180917_185953

Evening – Chama River
Love means to learn to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things
– Czelslaw Milosz

Pulling back the blankets tonight
I found a small cricket
quiet and shy
hiding under my pillow.

Oh, I know better.
Like me, though, it seemed alone
and in need of a companion
to get through the dark alive.

So, I’ll awaken before dawn
and give thanks if we’re still here
like the moths that flew to the light just now
when I opened the door to check for rain.

As a man is, so he sees

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

FB_IMG_1595707392909

Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth. I feel that a man may be happy in this world. And I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision. I see every thing I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. To the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the Sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees. – William Blake

for a friend who died on this day in 2000

/ Bill Schulz / 2 Comments

striped bass

For my friend Joe – who died on this day in 2000. I miss you every day.

On the Feast of St. James the Greater
(for Joe C.)

This is where
he would have fished

imagine
him in the dark

gathering gear
stripers transfiguring

the moon’s
light he loses

all balance and
bearings thunder

muffling the dry
night sky

what we heard
is in the mist

blowing over
Ram Island

disappearing
like walks

we’ll never take

/ Bill Schulz / 2 Comments

shug

Tattoo by Shug Lescault from issue 2 of Hole In The Head Review.
http://www.holeintheheadreview.com
Look for Issue 3 on 08.01.2020 with wonderful work by Betsy Sholl, Charles Simic, Linda Aldrich, Alice B. Fogel, F. Daniel Rzicznek, Sara Pirkle, Meghan Vigeant, Janet Powers, Greg Clary, Russell Barajas, Michael Hettich interviews Denise Duhamel, and much, much more.