In Praise of Books

The warped spine and the peeled cover
Remind me
That the book, like me,
Is a mere mortal:

A flame from the spark of a tree
Daubed in ink
Wrapped in the aura
Of an idea

Sent into the cosmos,
Bent on a whole new
Creation.

Someday soon,
But long after i am gone,
The book will return to the earth
(Or some other realm
Of human endeavor)

Only to nourish the soil,
And grow a forest of new ideas,
A new Creation
That lives through dying
That repeats itself
But never speaks the same utterance
Twice.

--Mr. Gobley

The Heron

Above the high-tension wires, which made sheet music of the sky,
Angling across the upper left corner of the tinted window,
The heron cut an arc with its angular wings.

No sound -- perhaps a red-winged blackbird, a distant car alarm,
The HVAC system whispering "Hush" --
Only the sight of its sharp breast,
Folded like a feathered paper airplane,

Above asphalt and ragweed and manicured traffic island,
Toward the reeds and willows
Of the botanic garden,
Perhaps a prosperous pond
By a vast lakefront manse;

No matter; the sight was all,
The memory is still:
The shape and direction
Of a flight that knows itself,

Borne toward its needs, its nest,
Its origins:
Its home.

--Mr. Gobley

At my desk

At my desk i am a copilot.

My vista is grand; i see beyond the
horizon.

The instrument panel
topped with talismans
(family photos, coasters,
a clock that actually ticks)

Directs my sight
Inward and outward,
Before and beyond.

i am only three stories above
a parking lot
Beside train tracks
And an office park,

But i fly
Toward meaning
High above myself

One breath at a time.

--Mr. Gobley

In Praise of Fog

In preventing clear sight, you encourage insight,
O mist of memory.
You are a galaxy of water in a universe of air;
You introduce us to the mystery of short horizons
And the ever-present possibility of
Revelation.

When you descend upon us--
We that are on land,
We that are warm,
That do not struggle for our very lives--

You whisper a secret,
Promise a new truth:
That when the curtain is lifted,
And the old truth is renewed,

We will newly understand
That what is brief is beautiful,
What is shrouded
Is sure to return.

--Mr. Gobley

Where the time goes

Inside the smallest movement
time lives not, and yet is breathing.
The world, made up of worlds itself,
is a life-death interweaving.

World unknown to its own self,
it unfurls by means of a breath,
to coil again within the world
of whatever self is left.

Our shoulder to the wheel of time,
we labor toward an ending.
But we cannot change the wheel's course,
unerrant and unbending.

A shard that glows will soon grow dark
and drown in the ink of night.
And here, we're taken up by time,
subsumed within its light.

Sloughing off our parchment skin,
our scaffolding of bone,
we see at last what's lit within:
our light, but not our own.

Time goes to the end of all things,
which is where all things begin;
coiling at last upon itself,
it is gone --
and here again.

--Mr. Gobley