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Friday, April 24, 2015

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


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