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5 Birds by Duane Locke

                                                                Anhinga

                                                            Pine Warbler

                                                   Louisiana Heron

                                                              Wood Stork

                                                       Great Blue Heron

4 Poems by Duane Locke

TERRESTRIAL  ILLUMINATION NO. 421

An old man,

I sometimes things get confused,

Well, Amoretti,

I admire your white gold wig. If I remember right,

That the last you were here your hair was a light

Brown with auburn tints.  That might have been a wig also.

But I meant, intended to say, willed to say, although

I did not say it, I said something else, but now I will say it,

Utter it:  It is miraculous, a miracle, a terrestrial miracle,

A this-worldly miracle, when one experiences what an event

Actually contains, when one really feels and knows much

Of its multidimensionist.  An authentic event is always aleatory,

And the conceptually calculation of a forthcoming event results

In the destruction of an event,

Truncates, reduces, limits the event, turns it into some pitiable and petty.

Oh, you said something, did you say that you wanted another

Piece of the Chinese chocolate that came in the golden, glittering box

With a trio of cerise sparrows sitting on an emerald branch.

TERRESTRIAL  ILLUMINATION NO. 422

When the focus of my eyes selects

To see a part of event or object,

I afterwards, perhaps in a day, or a week, or a decade,

Speculate on what my focus excluded.

What in that moment of quickly flowing duration my focus excluded

When I saw a speck of turquoise in an eye colored ultramarine.

Did I miss seeing azure.

What caused my consciousness to center on turquoise among ultramarine.

Was it something spoken into me by communication with a community.

What caused me to code out azure.

If I had been confined to hearing talk that spread throughout a different community,

Would I have noticed azure, not turquoise.  

What causes our reality.

If I had been trained on scientific discourse, I would have blind to the eye,

And would substituted for its appearance, a bunch of conceptions, logical

And mathematical.

I would not have seen the azure at all.  I would not even

Have seen turquoise.  Not even ultramarine.

If I had been a poet,

I might have seen the holy face of a sacred crocodile emerging from the Nile.

TERRESTRIAL  ILLUMINATION NO. 423

This bird,

An anhinga, is a volcano of slick black whitened feathers

Whose lava is a Congo moon.

Whose lightning flashes become a flow,

Changed from zigzagging angles

Into curved invisible waves warm like sun light,

Become like metallic sounds from lute strings, although silent.

When in the presence of the anhinga one’s concealed bones

Of corporeality are touched by an unheard music,

Soft sounds like eiderdown, or a Hellenistic burial urn.

The anhinga is an Alexius Meinong’s zen koanist abistent object,

A squared circle,

The anhinga is an authentic animal rationale, rational

Like ants, bees, spinning flies, and not arational like a human beings

Who have fabricated a false and inauthentic rationality.


TERRESTRIAL  ILLUMINATION NO. 424

An opal’s opacity

When in a spotlight or the quick flame

Of a struck match is like the reflection of painted boats

On the mermaid-eye green

Of white-tipped waves’ breath on the basalt Amalfi coast.

The opal is a kaleidoscope.

She in Amalfi was opalescence as the opal

Mounted in simulated gold on a much used ring finger.  Should I be Lacanian

And cadaverise my position, since the living mind

Substitutes fantasies that become reality effects and speed boats.

It is axiomatic we only have approximate knowledge of why we address

Girls that wear opal rings, but we have no knowledge of why the address is returned.

We will never know for certain what animates and motivates the other.

So we are in a state of approximate knowledge

Flashing and glittering with no knowledge, like an opal before it is shadowed.

Are opal rings female praying mantis.

I contribute this speculation to my being in an Almafi defunct monastery

Now an albergo with amaretto standing where the crucifix once stood

On this bar board before the altar was converted into a bar.

Duane Locke lives in Tampa, Florida near anhinga, gallinules, raccoons, alligators, etc. He has published 6,736 poems, includes 30 books of poems. His latest book publications: April 2012, DUANE LOCKE, THE FIRST DECADE, 1968-1978, BITTER OLEANDER PRESS.  This book is a republication of his first eleven books, contains 333 pages.  Order from www.bitteroleander.com, or Amazon. December 2012, his 30th  was published TERRESTRIAL ILLUMINATIONS, FIRST SELECTION, 43 pages.  by FOWLPOX PRESS, http://fowlpox.tk/