Four Poems by Jerry Austin

Residence

This is a weird universe, and we can't know.

Does our conscience go on a scale at death?

This is a weird universe and we can't know.

Will DMT take us to aliens?

I doubt we're the only life in this universe.

Will DMT take us to aliens?

And does poetry make everything happen?

By which I mean, does it extend from the vital breath?

And does poetry make everything happen?

The professor told me: “It may turn out we can know.

But we just can't know that we know.”

The professor told me: “It may turn out we can know.”

The one you can never fool for long,

By whatever name, is the conscience:

The one you can never fool for long.

Jerry Austin / 22 April 2015

All Finite Things Reveal Infinitude

Was it William Bray said: "We don't

go to heaven; we are in heaven,

we just don't realize it."

I could believe that, today,

as I walked near View Ridge

Playfield--on the blocks nearby.

After rain, a half-hour of sunlight--

rare as peace--enfolded the yellow

azaleas and dense-pink flowers

of an ornamental tree. It was as if

one, without trying too hard, but simply

by not fighting it, could see into

the farther universe of things. Why

farther to see what is already there?

I don't know. But that's how it seemed.

Plain sidewalk; plain lawn, house,

park. Gardens. Rain lit with sun

on the infinite trees.

Jerry Austin / 24 April 2015

Discoveries

You may as well begin now.

                                        Life

in a year or a thousand

                                        will

be discovered

                                        outside

our solar system.

                                        Plenty

of problems--Big

                                        Problems--

will remain.

                                        But

on the beaches, wind blends

                                        magic

and a hushing, while the

                                        waves

roll like clocks

                                        readjusted

to a better-sounding tick and

                                        tock--

a music you have known

                                        far

away in your neurons

                                        all

this time. The universality,

                                        inevitability,

and organization of life will

                                        restore

knowledge of God.

                                        However

new dangers arise always from

                                        discoveries

(and here I wanted to comfort,

                                        but

have sworn to sincerity).

                                         Still

our center, a Paradise

                                        regained,

will in part be with us.

Jerry Austin / 18 April 2015

Dark Patch

Beavers had gnawed and worked

the timber that high valley, and left

a flat landscape our trail now ascended

past. Old now, older than some tall

trees.... Dark niches that scare me

do not surprise, but what much-spooked

in youth, radiated darker energies

and salience takes me back, back far

as Roethke's crow, or elders'

visionary tellings. A shudder

black-rose-black vibrated all

throughout my butterflywinged

wildscapes within, and far within,

where shared visions of unknown

ancestors and theirs much-conjure,

much-raise. Yes, I remember green

black forest on land flat as a beaver's

tail, and toothpick trees, thin as

skinny people, storks' legs, bamboo,

that didn't split the dark but furthered

thesterness, its tales of all the skies

to have passed overtop, while owls and

golden little birds in their seasons

raced to ungloom its niches.

Jerry Austin / 19 January 2015