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The Books of Silence
Poems in a form that, as far as I know, I invented. Stanzas are five long lines in compressed, haiku-like syntax. The form is self-similar on different scales, making it the first genuinely fractal poetic form. Each line can be read as a haiku-like poem; each stave of five lines is a poem in itself, or a sub-section of a larger poem made up of several five-line groups. The sub-sections sometimes have subtitles. The entire series contains several Books, on various but related topics, with a consistent tone and style. In other words, the reader can "zoom in" and "zoom out" and the tone, style, and mood will remain generally consistent across several levels. So, these poems can be read on different scales, in different ways. In one way, they are all discrete. In another way, they are all one long poem in the same style.
I call these poems Books. Eventually, I plan to collect them into the Books of Silences.
All poetry on this website ©Arthur Durkee 1984–2008. All Rights Reserved.
A Book of Woods
Cold of the cedar heart. Storks in the road. Pausing.
Up the valleys of red air, sunset finches blur into being.
Sun barks through pine needle carpet. The green birds.
Red shoulders to the wind. The eldest wind up quiet, watchful.
Nothingness. Your back to the cliff. Grey grows land, become stone.
Remarkable ironies. Hands becoming memory.
Birdcries of children in serious play. Try on this life for fit.
Porcelain sky turning grey. Murmurings in the scrub pine.
Does any geometry encircle the fallen birch? Where the red bird
is.
A path, a winding, a trick of falling. Thunder clearing the fallen.
What is the right hand saying to what’s left?
Anything moving is chaff, what’s left to scare.
Apples of the irrigated chest. Naming is not the source.
Sweat of the night christens this marriage bed: two spirits.
Wrens in the headboard. Your breast full of chattering birds.
Agony of acorns ripe with vivid green lies.
Following the bell into silence. Two strokes midway.
Taking night’s throat into stillness. The dry lands.
Falls of sulfur, the beating of wasp wings. Speech of dust.
In this memory of river, underground, the religion of lamps.
A convergence inside something infinite.
Conflagration. Ekstasis. Remorse and removal.
Olive trees pretend to dance. Only wind.
Hardpan underfoot: dolomite and shrubs.
I’m walking on the gods’ home mountain: sun falls bronzed.
Moon veiled in bright ice-cloud, pine-tree sentinel.
The howling. Red-eyed, mewling, clawed and torn.
Every eye a tree-spirit, a passing light. Into cedars.
Loon: black dot on grey seas. Dark island.
Into the every world a circling, a wheeling. These times.
Stars bleed in from grey: watchers without hope.
Outside after aurora, sky cloud-blinded, veils.
Aspen snow boughs white on white. Footprints.
Trail starlit, moonlit, firelit. Eyes opening to Orion.
Clouds knocking snow loose, sugar on the wheelbarrow.
The Books of Binding
The Book of Spells
the drumbeat. all things enclosed in the circle.
their cycling rhythms, the dark voices of stone altars.
from this rough place, another is made, is touched.
seahorses stride across the plowed fields.
breezes stir the leaves. the weakening sun.
The Book of Air
whisssst. sssstinfickertick. sssssshhhooom.
mouths of the dark birds shatter.
roaring in the sky, three knocks above the hill.
death of a god, birth of another.
now the sea and air are their own gods, restless.
Atlas of the Dead
come see: how quietly they move through the stones.
parchment fingers rustling their leaf tambourines.
the dew is on the grass. their feet, in all their wanderings,
do not touch.
they float above the earth, or dissolve near to it, into it.
their compass rose is of the greater earth: these leaves fall
through them.
The Book of the Sea
the sea speaks fiercely, cursive waves and shouting spray.
surge. pull. the tides rock under the sky, chariot rhythm.
foaming at mouth and mane, the green mares race ashore.
prairie grasses break in waves over the river’s edge, churning.
leaves fall into the eye of the ocean. whales sing of hot, dark
love.
The Last Wave
God is a huge encircling round, like the ocean, permeating everything.
like the ocean.
the eye of the ocean is the heart of time. the Dreaming.
dreaming true of a rose, a shell, four moons, a crescent scythe.
sickle moon pricks these trees, the earth into humming.
A Book of Elements
Earth says: I turn. I adhere to myself, lichened unto time.
Air says: I fill. There is no burning without me, and no living.
Fire says: I consume. Living is dancing, the immolation of love.
Water says: I flow. I slowly wear it down, seeking the lowest
ground.
Spirit says: I spin. Every grain a web, a lantern, a long weaving.
Poetry Index New Poems Haibun eros, eros, eros Basin & Range
short forms The Books Solo Journey The Fire Sermon Prose-Poems
New Poems 2
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