The First Cup of Memory

The first cup of memory
Fills the throat
With sorrow and expectation

The veins with the fuel of longing
Regret

Anticipation is Time's trollop
But memory is her angel
With the ever-turning sword.

Each present moment
Holds more past-ness;
The past grows more present.

As i look out the window
On the rising heat of the day,
I drink the first cup of memory

And turn toward my desk.

--Mr. Gobley

Departure

Your going away
Was ordained
The moment you were born.

Your return is written
But only in draft form--
Who can say
What we will feel
After all that
Time
Growth
Sorrow?

i find you always
Unexpectedly
In the flotsam of
Domestic duty

You appear
In the guise of
A tube of cream
A shoe tossed
With the flick of a foot
A blouse still exhaling
Your scent --

A list
In your hurried
But competent hand.

When you return
My embrace will suffuse you
With those lost moments

And me with
Your next
Departure.

--Mr. Gobley

In Praise of the International Space Station

O wandering brilliance--
Avatar of our pilgrimage
Toward ourselves,

How the point of light in me
Rose to meet you
As you soared

A motive star

Across the scrim
Of the suburban night sky;

What you showed me

Was myself:
A frail enclosure
Moving across vastness

Containing life
Crossing paths
With other
Translucent vessels

On a journey that
Appears linear, finite,

But is in fact
Cyclical,
Eternal . . .

--Mr. Gobley

Please Confirm You Are Not a Robot

i laughed out loud
when the computer
asked me to prove
i was not a robot.

i asked it to prove to me
it was not a person,

and that i, in fact,
am.

--Mr. Gobley

Prayer for an Injured Child

O Great Healer,

Raise your mighty hand

And stop the flood of tears,

Blood,

Fury

And Fear.

Exalted Engineer of Life,

Restore the soul to its strength.

Knit the bones

Back together,

Mend the gentle mind

That still cowers

At the lurching memory

Of looking into

The jaws of

Destruction.

Suture the wounded spirit,

Spread the salve

Of your love

Over the burning stitches.

As the turning of day into night

Gives rest to your Creation,

Let it restore

Wholeness

Of mind,

Body, and Spirit

To the one whose pain

Is more than my frail heart

Can carry.

Heal her,

Care for her,

Revive her,

Hold her

In the

Great Embrace 

Of your Presence.

i stand by,

A whispered prayer,

A jagged breath,

A gasp of love,

Holding vigil

In the darkness of  

The fluorescent desert.

--Mr. Gobley

The Rebirth of the Muse

When the singing of the great angels ceases,
Have they gone,
Or are they merely crowded out?
When the mind fills with lists,
Scraps of metal,
Shards of memory,

The angels cannot be heard.

One angel in particular
Shadows you,
Embraces you with light,
Cradles you in sleep,
Pulls your spirit
From the earth

Like a blade
Of new grass;
Touches a coal
To your lips

And brings forth
Song.

Storms above the soul
Cause you to wonder:
Is she gone?

She is not gone.

She is behind the maelstrom
Of detritus,
Waiting for a gap

Into which she can step.

When she steps in,
The maelstrom stops,
The scree in your skull

Falls into a sacred hole
And you are reunited with her.

Find silence every day:
Carve a space for it,
Make a time for it,
Open your arms

And she will step forward.

--Mr. Gobley

The Tree

The tree stands in silent witness.
We do our worst.
It remains a tree.

Even if we cut it down,
Send it to the mill,
Grind the stump,
Sell the planks,

The ground bears
Not only the scar
Of our angry ambition
But the silent witness
Borne by the boughs

Through the currents
Of time,
The sea of breezes
On which it rested
And grew.

Today,
There is another scar.
Where before,
Shade and shelter,
Now, bits of bark
And broken leaves:
Barbs of time.

And somewhere else--
Please, let it be near--
A root has taken hold,
A seed,
An idea,
A prayer,

Curling down
Timorous,
Tremendous,
Toward the center.

--Mr. Gobley

The Contingent

All the cords connecting us
Are thin and frail.
All the fibers and filaments
That weave us together,
Illuminate us,

Depend on
Rest:
That diadem
In the crown
Of brave
Being,
That wraith
That beckons
From the shore of
The ever-shifting
Now.

Let those whose cords have broken
Go on to the
Now
That is only
Always.

Let us mend the brittle braids
Of those who ache to hold on,
And bind up the wounds
Of the weary.

There is no healing
Where there is no rest.

Bring silence,
Bring light:
Only what is sheltered
Grows strong;

Only she that
Is held
Is helped;

Only he that
Surrenders
Can at last
Overcome.

--Mr. Gobley

Pool of Souls

In the office park
There is an artificial stream
That gathers into separate
Symmetrical pools

Emerald green
(Thanks to modern chemistry),
Mock-contemplative,

Bereft of the
Deep-disordered
Harmony
Of nature's
Equipoise.

One pool:
A slowly circulating
Flotilla
Of autumn's castaways,
Dressed in a hundred hues
Of passage;

A second pool:
One leaf, poised
On upturned ends--
A miniature catamaran,

Sailing alone.

--Mr. Gobley

Past All That

The past is never
Here yet.

It is always arriving
And yet not fully here --
A train forever entering the station
Of consciousness.

The present,
So rarely apprehended
Until it is past,

Is like a doll's house
In its precious mimicry
Of all the memories
On which it's modeled.

i stand at the
Parallax point
Of this moving instant

And gaze back
At the vanishing
And yet moving union
Of the twinned trails
Of my journey.

And so
And ever so
i recede
Into the present

--Mr. Gobley

Holding on to Letting Go

Regarding the thing you find yourself aching
To let go of --
Hold on.

At least until you have found the source
Of the voice that loosens your hold.

And of that to which you would hold fast --
Let go.
What is held is merely a spectre--
The fear of loss,
Not the thing itself.

In the grip of rededication,
In the release of the newly found,
Lies the black pearl
Of all Presence:

That graceful defiance
That makes room
For
More life.

--Mr. Gobley

In Praise of Psalm 23

My own hymn of thanksgiving:

Whatever may come,
i shall remember,
eventually,
to be grateful.

The smell of new-mown grass,
Its blades crowned with
Diadem-universes,
Will gladden my heart.

(There may be no Shepherd
But we are surely sheep.)

Even in terror of my own death,
i see all encompassed before me

Through eyes that glimpse eternity,
Through hands that both restrain and revive.

And in this way am i nourished,
Despite all,
Resplendent,
Completed.

Awake.

--Mr. Gobley

Prayer Over Coffee

Fossil fuel of my soul
Black light of my veins
Course through me
Quicken me

Sharpen my senses
Dull my pain
Deepen the penetrating gaze
Which i fasten
On the route
Of my
Inner
Iditarod.

Sing to me.
Breathe your black magic
Onto the coals
Of my soul.

From the mountain of your birth
i look down
On the vale of my sorrows
And laugh.

Water is fine,
Yes,
And clear;
Water nourishes the body
And restores the soul --

But to what?

When restoration is not enough,
And hope must be injected,
I stretch forth my neck.
Drunk on the black blood
Of your pulverized essence,

I howl down the avenue
Of my day
And relish the heat
And the friction
Of life
Under your
Slightly
Sweetened
Spell.

--Mr. Gobley

In Praise of My Depression

i set aside the pills

and settle,

like a leaf in a pond,

into the absence of color.

i am aware of the dangers,

and aware, too,

of the blessed relief 

of authentic being,

with all its

shortcomings 

and quotidian terrors.

able at last to settle 

for who i am,

i discover that

it isn't so bad.

this scrim of suffering

is only that,

a scrim,

a veil,

a partition between

what one might wish 

and whatever may be.

Certain that we 

deserve better 

than to be separated

from our ideals,

we medicate our way

to a pale perfection, 

consisting of timidity

and troubled sleep.

evening by placid evening,

we become strangers to ourselves,

Lonely for something similar to a memory,

"liking" other lonelinesses

while the books

biodegrade

on the shelves.

i have been away from myself.

coming back from the long journey

into the second dimension,

i inhale 

into the gray

of a soft, perpetual grief --

and am grateful.

--Mr. Gobley

In praise of Leap Day

We should leap every day.
Once in four years is a travesty,
A sin of ingratitude
Against the
Crazy liberation of
Bottled-up
Being.

Today of all days --
Today is the day to shout:
We are!
We are!

We should leap every day --

But we can't, of course:
There is too much loss
To leap over,
Too much darkness
To dispel.

Gravity will prevail.

This day, though, should remind us:
Time spirals out
From within all,
Unfurls

A being that is
Becoming,
A becoming that is a
Departure.

Leap Day
Stands outside
What it stands within.

It stands within its
Proper, square,
Joined to the others
But hanging over
The Void.

It exists
Here
But points
Beyond,
Proclaiming
That the leap into life
(Like the eventual
Leap of leaving)

Is a gift
Which even
The angels
Covet.

--Mr. Gobley

In Praise of February

On this gray morning,
Every branch has a droplet
Suspended at its tip,
Like a bud
Or a pearl of milk

Nothing moves

All is suspended
In the equipoise
Of a mild
Midwestern
Winter

The barking of dogs
The sighing of traffic on
The expressway
The whir of an
Appliance

Spiral out into the
Waiting air --
Signals
To the waiting Spring,

Semaphore to the
Seeping aquifers
And sleeping ants,

Drumbeat of the deliverance
Of the Sun
As it ascends once more
To its black
Throne

We who hope
And wait

Hear the crocuses stirring

Smile as life
Comes
And the drops swell
And fall

On the waiting
Earth

--Mr. Gobley

In praise of reading

When all that is read
Ascends into the mind's eye
The letters evaporate into images
And rain back down from
Clouds of being,
Pooling again
As letters --
Drops
Coalescing in the
Ocean of Ideas.

What we receive in reading,
We give in writing,
We adorn with speech.

All that we are,
All that we uniquely are,
Resides in
The Letter
And
The Word.

The strings of glyphs
Run along the transom
Of our mind

And through the apertures
Of our organs ---

And we are gifted
With
Sight.

Transformed,
We move into the world
Glittering with thought,

Anointed with the oil
Of ideas

Able to reach out,
Or in;

In a word,
With a word,

To save

And be
Saved.

--Mr. Gobley

First Snow

Each year,
For billions,
It must seem strange:

The translucent dust
That rims the ponds
And frosts the forest's edge.

And yet, from great heights
To deep swales,
We receive the bounty
And the blessing,
And the reminder
That we all fall
Slowly
Uniquely

Into
And out of
Being.

--Mr. Gobley

Only the Lonely

Among us,
There are worlds unspoken
And worlds sheltered.

We look for eyes like ours,
Hearths brimming with banked coals,
A window from which to gaze together upon
All that passes.

We see and hear
Clearly
But from a distance;
We reach toward
Those who cannot be reached.

Tonight, in the pool of dreams
Beyond our solitude,
We will swim toward each other,
Smiling.

--Mr. Gobley

Sabbath's end

i dissolve back into
distinctness,
bringing with me
the baggage of being,
hauling over my shoulder
the work and worries of
personhood.

Still, having shed the skin
of the old week,
i am made new--
find new possibilities,
new meaning;
not merely in life,
but even in the breath
that builds it.

Each fallen leaf,
Each gust of
Autumn wind,
Conveys a world
In its presence --

What is my small satchel
Of worries,
Compared to this
Constant presence
Of peace?

--Mr. Gobley

In praise of the first day of Autumn

The Sun sets at the end of the boulevard
The cicadas' song becomes uncertain
The sky has no depth, only width,
Like a canvas stretched taut
Over the frame of the horizon

The equipoise of Autumn
Is the pause
In the respiration
Of the seasons --
The playground swing
At its apex,

Waiting to tumble back
Into the
Before
Of dark days
Cold nights
Turning inward
Waiting

And yet,
The moment of turning
The tiniest caesura,
By the time we awaken to it,
Has already passed

And so we, too,
Fall
in the immodest hope that,
Like all else that lives
And breathes

We will rise again.

--Mr. Gobley

How to Become a Ghost

First, put yourself at the center
Of an imaginary cosmos.

Next, dwell on the wrongs you've suffered:
The wounds,
The injustices,
The slow and halting
Healing:

How could
You, on whom
All
Rests,
Be subjected to this?

Finally, live for the future
While dwelling inwardly
On the past.

Free of the
Bulging burden
Of the present,
You will become
Translucent,
Then transparent,

Until all that is left of you

Is a scar.

--Mr. Gobley

In praise of a heat wave

Today, the Sun seems
Omnipresent,
Its fervid heat
Diffused in languid drops


That fall onto
My neck
And burn toward
My bones

Just today,
The cicadas
Proclaim the triumph
Of heat
Over all
Who walk,
Fly and crawl

The grass sends up damp
Curtains of chlorophyll,
The leaves bow and sulk
Before their intemperate
Lord

i stay low,
And remember
The deep snows
And the
Driving storms


The weather,
Like all other spiritual forces,
Is not personal,
Is intensely personal,
Is vast and private,
Mysterious
And self-evident

It makes me want to go on
Sweating, drinking,
Lying in the shade
Of the great question
To which the cicada
Sings
The only answer.

--Mr. Gobley

The Crabapple Tree

Its blossoms full
The air
All
Pregnant, swollen

Until fat drops of rain
Fell like oil

Astonishing as a shooting star

Each drop that struck
A blossom
Caused a snowstorm
Of petals

Thunder rolled like a barrel
Across the oaken vault
Of the attic sky

And the blossoms leapt
Pirouetted
Rested

Red, waxen leaves
Standing at attention
For their fallen leaders

The heralds of the season
Celebrating their own
Spectacular
Fall

And the pores of the earth
Opening to receive the
Unguent
of a
Spring
Rain.

Passing Over

i fly too low.
At this moment
of beckoning liberty
i must promise myself
not to inspect
all that i
pass over.

The loved,
the miraculous
and the missed:
these will beckon,
and these will i gaze upon . . .

And if by some chance
i learn to truly see,
then all that I pass over
will not snag the narrow nerves
and tender corpuscles

That pulsate and quiver
And thrill at pain and injustice.

In passing over
all that is, at last,
i'll simply be.

Until such time as
Earth and sky
At last pass over
me.

--Mr. Gobley

The Old Folks' Home

Well past sunset,
My parents and i
Reminisce, laugh,
Squint at each other's
Emerging silhouettes.

Under the darkening dome, a parade:
Children inventing a dance
Of Sun worship,
Teenagers flirting,
Pelicans commuting back
To their mangrove perches
Above a sea
Sighing itself
To sleep.

All we have is behind us,
And all with which we have been
Blessed
Is spread before us.

The horizon hints of morning.

There is no beginning and no end.

It was ever thus.

--Mr. Gobley

The Wave

We live on a thin crust of good fortune,
At the edge of a sea of chance.

Every ripple in the sea reorders the cosmos
For some living being.

Live with this knowledge,
And then,
Even when all is washed away,
You will be able
To gather the strength
To begin again.

--Mr. Gobley

Everything is running

Even the cars in the parking lot are running:
A woman sits at the steering wheel
Of her SUV,
Window cracked,
Smoking a cigarette.

In the far corner of the lot,
The engine of the Dodge Charger
Is running, too,
But no one is visible:

The seat is tilted back,
The driver asleep.

He needs the engine to run
So he can be warm.

Everything is running.
All may not be revealed,
But certainly all will be replenished
From the inexhaustible
Horn of plenty
Laid before us.

Our lives, too,
Like our engines
And our dreams,
Our naps
And our cigarette breaks,
Will go on
Uninterrupted.

Even after we awake,
Even when
The cigarette
Lies crushed and smouldering
Beside the retention pond.

Our comfort is perpetual,
Our rest undisturbed.
When the last drop of oxygen
is absorbed into
The last lonely vessel.

Slow asphyxia
Is a small price to pay
For all the comfort
For which
We have poorly paid.

Up until then,
We will rot
At room temperature,
Assured of a perfectly
Comfortable
And eternal
Rest.

--Mr. Gobley

In Praise of Staying Home on a Saturday Night

The house labors all week
To hold us --
We, who, in our haste
Toward nothing,
Hurtle from its
Careful carpentry
Into halls of
Concrete
Or to frozen fields;

We,
With our large ambitions
Encased in
Fragile frames,

Must at last
Come home.

There is, in shelter,
A splinter of
Such solace
As the angels must know
In the presence of
The All-Knowing.

Gathered together,
For a moment,
We truly live together:
Framed in fleeting harmony,
Embraced in solitary splendor,

We realize, again,
That we have each other
So briefly,
And must hold each other
For this brief
Eternity,
So that all that is without
May come within.

--Mr. Gobley

A Roof in a Snowstorm

Today the new roof
Juts its serrated jaw
At the elements,
Which are not impressed.

A new roof revives the self-esteem
Of brick and mortar, rather like

A new hat bestows new grace
To an old gentleman.

Some day, the elements will have won,
But today, the roof seems to lean
Into the wind and welcome its worst.

From behind the frosted windows,
i thank the Maker of all Shelters,
Even as i bow
To that same Force,

Which bends Its might

To taking back,
In tiny increments
And fierce blows,
The very shelter It provided.

--Mr. Gobley

Having Given Thanks

Having given thanks,
i rise toward my obligations
unaware of their weight

send orisons
hosannahs
to the four corners of the compass
whence dwells the All

And save some small part
Of my shattered self
For the days that will be:

i must rise in all directions,
Even downward:
i will not rest
Until all have given thanks
For All . . .

--Mr. Gobley

The Gift of the Dying

The gift of the dying
Is their knowing.

The dying know it all
But only their eyes say so.

And what they say is this:

Go. Live. Sing.
Pray for me,
But don't spend all day on it.

Outside, the world
Is growing accustomed
To my absence,
And being ceaselessly amazed
At the arrivals,
Raw from their journey and,
Like you, shocked
At being torn away.

Turn your attention to me,
Ever so briefly,
Say the dying,

So that the fierce forward-leaning
Nowness
Of life
Can shock you anew,

And build your resolve
To call out to the cosmos
With all the devoted desperation

Of your borrowed soul.

Go,
Say the dying with their fluttering eyes.
Go, but don't leave me.
Come back,
So i can see what coming back is like,
Once more,

And so that you may remember
That in coming back,
You are practiced
In the art that i learn even now:
The art
Of going
Home.

--Mr. Gobley

In Praise of Ritual

The young woman steps up
Into a forest of adults,
Their gnarled hands
Extended
As shields,
As signs,
As cudgels,
Their prayer shawls
Billowing like sails,
Conveying her along
On this raft of ritual.

None of the practice,
The memorization,
The chanting,
The slow disappearance of vowels,
Her first real look at the mottled
Parchment, so clearly
An animal's hide --

None of it prepared her for this moment,
But in this way it is like the rest of life
After the ritual:

You prepare, but are still rudderless,
You are expert and yet unschooled.
You know, and know not.

Her pulse pounding in her throat,
She begins, weakly at first.
Her eyes are dry.
The letters on the parchment blur
When she blinks.

And then, the transformation occurs:
The letters are singing:
She merely opens her throat
To let them pass through.

When she is done,
The great gnarled fists
Open and bring her
Into embrace.

None of it makes any sense --
And after all, why should it?

Paths and mountains do not
Make sense --
They merely lower
Themselves to you,
Imperceptibly,
When you commit to them,

And begin to climb.

--Mr. Gobley

Two and a Half Donuts

We eat the concentric rings of our lives.
The crescent that cradles what's left
Of our hollow center
Slides down time's throat,
Taking our soul with it.

All that is held
Is held in the center:
Air, emptiness:
Memory.

The first donut firmly establishes this lesson
In the mind of the initiate.
The slight crunch of the baked shell
Between your teeth,
The surrender of the dough
To your steaming palate,
Move you through the lesson,
But your lust overwhelms it.

The second donut,
Eaten more deliberately,
Chewed more thoughtfully,
Is the beginning of
An Awakening.

And the last half --
Which begins with the cradled emptiness
And ends with substance --
Is a crullered coda:

Never do once,
Thoughtlessly,
What can be done
(With deepening concentration
Wonder
Appreciation)
Two
And a half
Times.

In Praise of Small Change

The obdurate, obstinate coin:

Hangnail of capital,
Orphan of the bank note,
Shard of shattered worth;

Erstwhile screwdriver,
Denizen of ashtrays,
Swimming in figure-stamped schools
Through childrens' desks:

How you exemplify all that is good!

In the dark, in the drawer,
In the jug behind the door,
Buried under strata of
Your brethren,
You remain
At attention,
Neither more
Nor less
Than you were
(Inflation does not
Diminish your constancy).

At night, the upside-down presidents
Confer with their neighbors,
The flag-bearing cavalry
Of a chivalrous state,

And determine to
Stay the Course.

And stay they do.

There is no better friend than these:
Both flat and round,
Historic and hum-drum,
They move through time
By standing still
As we hurry by,

Scrambling to be worth
Only a little less
Than we were worth
A moment ago.

--Mr. Gobley

When God Created Godself

When God created Godself,
She unfurled into a cosmos
Of Becoming
And made room out of
What had not been
For what would yet be.

"This," God said,
"Is where I will reside:
In the nexus where non-Being
Meets Being --
Where No-Thing
Meets Becoming."

And it is here --
In life's forward-leaning
Love of Being,
And in Mind's
Restless Minding,

That God speaks.
Here you will find
The smallest of all miracles
And the greatest of all forces --

The thumbnail's growth
And the glacier's grinding solace.

All that is and will be
Spirals from the womb
Of the first
Becoming --

Returning,
Beyond our wildest dreams,
To Her,
The Self-Making
Mind
Of all Presence.

Turn back now.
Make a pact with
Becoming.
Untie the knots of
Insistence
And Pride
That tether you
To merely having been.

Not to be
Born Again,
But to continue
Being born,

Is the tireless task
Through which
She
Becomes
You.

--Mr. Gobley

In Praise of Growing Old

How else would i come to understand
(Other than from my garden)
That decay nourishes life?

How better to learn
That humility
Is no mere virtue,
But a survival skill?

What better way to appreciate
The fleeting heroism of youth?

When else would i understand,
In my viscera,
The smooth, accelerating curves
That are the contours of time?

How else would i know
That there is no God,
Except the beingness,
The eagerness of forward-leaning
Life
That, given half a chance,

Restlessly proclaims
The "is-ing"
That everywhere
Is?

How else would i know
The arc
Of an unending love?

How else
Would i learn
To say goodbye?

--Mr. Gobley

The Elegant, Intelligent Telephone

It knows me.
It says so.

It marshalls a parade of universes under my nose,
Customized to my vanities and idiosyncrasies.

It orders my day,
Proffers my priorities,
Summarizes my finances,
Reminds me of meetings.

All the variables of life --
All tragedies,
Mysteries,
Great loves,
Approaching thunderstorms --
Are known to it.

What was so recently impossible
Is now indispensable.

Nothing exists
That cannot be ordered,
Animated,
Displayed;

My hand commands a universe:
Another galaxy of
Illumined cubes
Slides into view;

i am summoned . . .
--Mr. Gobley

A Pain in the Neck

i love a good pain in the neck.

i love the communal efforts
of my constituent parts
to find, address, soothe,
heal.

Pains, i know, can be ominous:
These i do not love.

What i cherish
Are those pains
That remind me
That i am plugged in --

That synapses and nerve endings,
Corpuscles and cartilage
Are challenged --

That they, too, react and respond.
i am a Tower of Babel,
Reaching toward the Sun --
Made of bricks that breathe.

Unguents and anti-inflammatories
Will reduce the pain
And gently draw a veil over
The urgent, insistent truth:

We are built on air,
Anchored in water.
Tunnels of time run through us.
Atoms collide.
Things fall apart.

We die.

And we go on.

--Mr. Gobley

Independence

Independence
Is a habit of mind:

It is both a gentle insistence
On setting oneself apart

And a vigilant openness
Toward every aspect of the universe.

It is the birth of real hope,
Being the death of captive fantasy.

Independence
Comes from being
Neither slave nor master.

A braid of
One's best attributes --

Humility,
Bravery,
Persistence --

Independence proclaims itself
The way a flower
Or a stream might--

By simply being,
In each moment,
Insistent on itself
As inevitable,
Timeless
And new.

--Mr. Gobley

In Praise of the Water Cooler

How am i different
From the water cooler?

i exist to refresh and replenish;
In the end, i am emptied.

Even at night, the doors locked,
The hallways frosted with the
Light,
Comforting and impersonal,
Of the overhead fluorescents,

The cooler is ready, vigilant,
Frosted with the perspiration
Of constant effort.

(The workday is no different
From the quietest night --
Existence and service
Know their own rhythms,
To which we are blind.)

Perhaps i am more like
The cup that nourishes me,
But the pattern is the same:

Filled,
Drained,
Emptied,
Discarded,

i go on in an infinity
Of droplets
that refresh, replenish
And rise again.

--Mr. Gobley

The Fallen Nest

My steps were directed to it.
There were two baby birds
And a fallen nest on the ground
Beyond the parking lot.

The flies were already making fast work
Of the nestlings.
And as for the mother --
Already moved on, i suppose,

To thoughts of more eggs,
Another nest.
There is grief but no lapse,
A pause, but no waiting.

It is best not to dwell on
The precarious.
Better to do, and make,
And make do.

By Monday, the nestlings will be gone.
i will, i hope and pray,
Be reading
And breathing
And being,
And ceasing to be.

--Mr. Gobley

In praise of rain on my office window

The highway whispers,
The trees bow.

The world is in every drop;
Every drop is in the world.

The sky throws liquid confetti down
Behind the pictures of my family.

Green and gray are the only colors;
Water and earth are the only elements.

For a moment -- this brief moment --
Sustenance is the order of the universe,

And fear is soothed
By the unguent of plenty.

--Mr. Gobley

Ode to a young apple tree

You were born:

As an immanent idea,
As a pinprick of potential,
As a memory-bearing universe.
You were placed beneath the surface
Of life
And came forth as life:

You identified yourself as a node
Through which the Divine
Chose to exist,
And you proclaimed
This nodal outpouring
Steadfastly and faithfully --

You were a seedling.

You traveled:

On the back of a truck, crowded with
Other nodes of Divine efflux,
You moved at speeds
Of which seedlings,
For eons,
Never dreamed.
You glided along exit ramps
And paused at stoplights,
Watching the spinning cylinders
Of cigarette butts and soda cans
Roll toward extinction
Even as you rolled toward some
New beginning
Or quiet,
Malnourished end.

You were chosen:

A purple ribbon was twined through
Your waxen branches.
A tag reading "SOLD"
was stapled to the ribbon --
An award, an epaulet,
A bestowal of
Arboreal anamnesis.

You would move again:
Your roots would find room,
Your branches would breathe their own air
And fix their future directions,
And all the potential within you
Would soon become a river
Flowing toward your extremities
And back into the secret ground
Of your being.

You waited:

Confined in your plastic cone, you stood
Within sight
Of neighbor and soul mate:
Three inches of rain;
A night in the garage to avoid frost;
Winds from north and south:
The thousand small paroxysms of Spring,

And still,
You stood patiently,
Smelling the earth
Into which you would be placed,
Feeling the stippled shadow
Of a small, secluded home.

You were planted:

Our hands grasped our meager tools
And clawed the marbled earth,
Pulled up ribs of clay.
We sculpted a vault of humus,
Laid a quilt of topsoil,
Then a pillow of peat
With treats laid underneath.

And now:

Your roots,
Bent into ovals
Of artificial confinement, begin to turn outward
To greet the life
That will move through you.

You have been brave and patient.
You have been resolute and modest.
You have been, simply and supremely,
A tree.

You are home.

--Mr. Gobley

In Praise of Loneliness

Sometimes,
All it takes
To feel loved
Is an interlude
Of utter loneliness.

When i am lonely,
Nothing keeps me company
Except
Everything.

The All,
In its placid indifference,
Winks at me,
Reflecting shards of light
Off the million
Mirrors of
Being,

Nods to me
With wind-bowed treetops,
Quivers in anticipation
And waves madly
With waxen Spring leaves.

Lest i think it is all for me,
i see the
All saluting
the All

From within
The hermitage
Of a self --

We are waving to each other,
You and i
And all,
From high windows
That face each other
Across an abyss --

All that moves
Salutes you;
All that is still
Accompanies you.

Only utter loneliness
Reveals this
Constant,
Loving
Companionship.

--Mr. Gobley

In Praise of Fingernails

This morning i awoke
to find that a screwdriver
had grown
on the end of each finger.

O wonderful world,
where the body grows
the means of procurement
and repair!

What awaits?
What calls to us?
We are made to build
and to mend --
our fingertips
attest to this.

i am my own set of tools,
gone off into the world
in search of all
that needs
fixing.

Procrastination and Fear

Procrastination
Prophesies defeat

Sees the future as sealed
Guarantees what it fears

i fear
Darkness
Blind corners
Apathy

Procrastination
Delivers all of these

And yet:
What other creature
Can procrastinate?

Who else
Among God's creatures
Can name their fear of failure?

i bow
To the great gray emptiness
Of my inertia --

And to my ability
To name it
And draw it near.

Perhaps, later,
i will leap tall buildings
In a single bound . . .

--Mr. Gobley

The hard work of meditation

It never ends.

The creaking bones
The sigh of the highway
The semaphore of my avian neighbors

The slow arising and falling away
Of breath
And everything else:

None of it ends --
It only begins.

The mind is subdued
Like a frightened mare,
Slowly and with loving reassurance.

Soon, what arises
Bows to me,
i bow to the arising

And then all is enfolded
In the bow of Being
Toward All That Is.

In this way,
i mark the passage of essence
Through the vestibule of
Being human,
Toward the great hall
Of
Simply
Being.

--Mr. Gobley

In Praise of a Splinter

There:

In a dry river bed
Carving the canyon
Of one finger print:

A shaft.

The finger must be held up
Against a dark background . . .
Behold:
A translucent projectile
From some angry angel.

And yet:
Each time you brush against it,
An alarm goes through
Your entire
Being.

It is the thrill
Of the threading of nerves,
Ideas,
Experience --
And in it, too:
Fear,
A premontion
Of
The End
That comes with each
Sensation.

How, you might ask,
Can something so small
Pervade your consciousness,
Arrest your day,
Force its way
To the front?

The splinter says:
Pay attention.

It says:
You are one
And many.

How finely woven you are,
And how attuned
To the missives
And missiles

That remind you
To pay attention.

The splinter is gone,
But not the spirit that sent it.

The splinter found its mark,
Made its wound:
A world poured in behind it.

Thank it.

--Mr. Gobley

Nothing

When nothing beckons --

When the striving
And the gasping,
The wrenching,
The breaking-down;

When the struggle to
Be
In the face of the
Relentless rush
Of non-Being
Seems too much--

Remember that
Nothing
Is not the absence
Of everything.

No-thingness
Lives in its own
Dark universe,
Twinned with ours;

It is the sieve that strains
Our Being.

We all pass through it;
We all live on in a sacred
Renewal,
A revivifying recombination
Of the atoms of our
Tiny selves.

The pain we feel
In holding ourselves together
Is the exquisite throbbing
Of the nerve-end
Of
Life itself.

Grasp that holy agony
And you will begin
To understand
All that is possible,

Beginning with this:
Thing
And no-thing
Are
Not two,
Not one.

We traverse the solitary seam
Of Life
On the balance beam
Of Being.

We must dance,
No matter the risk.

--Mr. Gobley

In Praise of Waiting

Beneath the crust of the frozen earth,
Spring has already been formed.

Just so,
Within your skin, your All
Waits--

Not with bated breath,
But with silent assurance,

The exalted inhalations
Of promise.

We fear that we may
Never fulfill that promise,
And so we live in a flaccid fury,

Enraged at all that holds us back.

In fact, what holds us back
Is precisely where blessing resides:
This is the fulcrum of promise,
Not the ministrations of the malevolent
Or sheer bad luck.

Know this:

Your promise never will be fulfilled.
Instead, it will expand for eons --
A universe of potential
Unleashed by you,
Echoed from you,
Emanating from you.

What you never will be
Is the space to be filled
By those who loved you,
Who lived in your universe,

Breathed your promise;
Their exhalations of memory
Contain

And disperse,
To the winds,
The molecules,
The miracle

Of your abiding
Eternity.

--Mr. Gobley

In praise of my depression

Every now and then
The gray eagle
Lands on my shoulder.

The talons
A dull ache
A shadow

A weight
That presses
And does not relent

The world:
Merely
An anvil
On which blood's rhythm
Is hammered
Ceaselessly
Out.

The Sun:
The dreaded cataract
Of conscience.

The sky:
A sharp-edged sheet
Of flattened brass
That does not forgive.

Only night
Offers dimension and color;
Only the dark has depth
And holds out a shard
Of cold compassion.

i slide
Down the soul's sine curve
And praise the purgatory
Of my shame.
i think:

"Oh, to be truly alone:
To be without
A Self."

After which
A spark of self-loathing
Ignites the smoldering,
Clears the thistled ground
For new growth:

A small bud
Opens its petals
Toward
All
Being. . .

--Mr. Gobley

Un-Seeing

The detritus of past lives
Clatters behind me --
The chains of
Marley's ghost.

Ingots, idols,
Knick-knacks,
Brick-a-brack;

Mementos from a time
That begs to be forgotten.

There is much --
Even here, in my inner sanctum --
That i have trained myself not to see.

Having become adept at not-seeing,
i learn to un-see in every facet of my life.

The more i un-see,
The closer i am
To
Coma.

My soul says to my mind:
Save me.

My mind says to my soul:
Save me.

i say to you,
As i fade to gray:

Save yourself.

--Mr. Gobley

The Library

Now the shelves are on tracks
And for days -- who knows? -- weeks,
Whole rows are entombed
Between other rows.

As you pass each row, a light sensor
Flashes
The fluorescents shudder and blink,
And there it is:
The crypt of the intellect.

If you want a book from a row, you turn a massive handle
On one end;
The shelves press against each other,
Groaning like old bones,
And an opening appears:

The books stretch and exhale
Their breath of dust and erudition;
The authors, cold in their graves,
Sigh,
Just a little:
Their name,
Their work,
Is briefly lit,
Quickly glanced at,
Perhaps even thumbed
By the living.

Back outside,
You are still haunted:
Knowledge obscuring knowledge,
The weight of the world's work,
Alphabetized, digitized, catalogued,
Encrypted.
Wisdom collapses in on itself;
A black hole of anti-thought
Formed from the gravity
Of our desire to know.

Darkness comes on
Like a silent movie locomotive
From behind our flat screens.
It passes.
We are gone.

If we vanish,
It will be because
We were too busy with our knowing
To truly learn.

--Mr. Gobley

Still

Tonight as i lay in bed
i heard life going by

ghost train of memories
panes of light in parallax
in the mind's shuttered eye

lost love
the arc of a home run
in a softball game

fumbling for car keys
on a winter night

smells:
the Adirondacks
barbecue
the diaper pail

and suddenly:
the heaviness

pinned to the earth
as the comet of memory
whispered by

i saw that we exist
for the briefest
of eternities

and are gone
in a flash
that does not end

-- Mr. Gobley

In Praise of Fingers

Lord of Reaching:

Thank you for the
Tendrils
The jointed
The knuckled and nailed
The ridged and rounded
Antennae
Through which we discover
You.

Thank you for sensation,
A miracle beyond all explanation.

Thank you for all ten,
Each with its own
Peculiarities
Personality
Predilections.

Thank you for
Their individuality within
Their Unity.

They tell us everything about
You:
Many,
One,
Opposable,
Prehensile,
Grasping,
Feeling:

Alive.

-- Mr. Gobley

The Annual Review

i sit across the desk from my employee.
The review forms are fanned out
Beneath my folded hands,
Like a model of an auditorium,
Where my knuckles are the footlights.

My job is not to judge him,
But to know him.
However much I might disavow my power,
Power is what i have.

That power obstructs knowing--
Occludes my sight.
My tiny fiefdom wavers in the harsh winds of commerce:
How, i wonder, did medieval kings review their lords and vassals,
Remain standing in the maelstrom of mutiny and calumny
That daily greeted them?

No matter:
i tell my employee what i know
Ask him to tell me what he knows;
Together we search for agreement
On a way forward;
We smile and laugh;
The way begins.

He has taught me a lot in an hour:
While being reviewed,
He has reviewed me.

Every religious calendar has an annual review:
A moment of introspection,
The divine as silent employer,
The penitent under assessment.

And yet,
Do we not review, as well,
The sacred center of our yearning?

We are all employed
In the service of
Something Great.
It's very possible
That we all know our
Employer
At least as well
As our Employer
Knows
Us . . .

(For Karen)

Mr. Gobley

Dark Morning

My earache and i
Wait for light and heat,

For the brow of the morning to lift
And for a bird to sing the Sun
Out of its crypt.

The leaves -- those that haven't fallen --
Are crisp and folded,
Oregamis of Autumn;
The garden is picked clean,
Gone to seed:
One dented tomato
Embalmed by frost
Onto its fatal vine.

Then,
As if parachuted in,
A pair of heels hits the floor
In the upstairs bedroom,
And the backyard fence
Rises;
Reminds me

That it rises
Along with me
Toward that
Un-becoming
We call
Daybreak.

-- Mr. Gobley

Balance Sheet

Today, numbers --
Brave soldiers, ranked and ordered,
Aligned and at attention
In a phalanx of
Rows and columns--
Await my orders.

Sometimes at night,
As i lie in bed,
i can feel them,
From miles away on my desk,
Standing at attention:
They exist merely to inform,
They hold a place
That represents an idea
That has a value.
Their purpose is their meaning.

They do not waver.
They do not sigh
Slouch
Sulk
Beweep their outcast state.

They wait for an ordering presence
To mobilize the meaning
They merely symbolize.

Sometimes, on my commute,
My sight pulls back,
My mind's eye rises,
And i see myself
As i see them:

Held within a cell,
Waiting to motivate a higher mind
Toward action.

Naught but my soul at attention,
Only the meaning i represent
Held forth,
A dagger or
Dandelion.

Within the confines
Of row and column,
Worlds explode into strenuous
Life.

i do my part:

i stand still in my cell
And dance.


--Mr. Gobley

Late Summer

Today the clouds scudded by like glass-bottomed boats.

This afternoon, a few dozen raindrops
The size of grapes
Ended their brief lives, only
To enter a new one
As a stain
Or a pilgrim
In a puddle.

Tonight, the crickets sing
Over the condenser unit

And fans blow away
The house's introspective heat.

August:

There can never be a sweeter moment,
Whose cool evenings
And humid days
Promise death,
Then life everlasting:

The palimpsest of repose,
The Garden of Eden
Whose gates go unguarded:

The angels with fiery swords
Have tickets to the game,
And afterwards,
A party
On the swankiest
Ring of Saturn.

--Mr. Gobley

The thinking person's tree

Its branches arc over the house like the spokes of an umbrella.

Its seedpods clog the gutters in Spring; its leaves shelter the house from
Summer's withering glare.

In Fall, its leaves dance and die; again the gutters cradles --
Not sparks of what might of been, but
Embers of what gloriously, patiently
Was.

Its roots explore the foundation.
Its branches praise the heavens.

In winter, the thinking person's tree
Withdraws into itself,
And the branches appear sclerotic
Against the gray vault
Of Perihelion.

Today, as on all days,
It simply is.
Thrusting down, praising up,

Thick with life,
Always prepared.
Swathed in symbiosis
With my fragile abode
(Whose bones are planed
From fellow trees),

The thinking person's tree
Always waits, but stays present;
Always is rooted
And is always on the move;

Always loves what it shelters,
And gently, unapologetically
Uses
What it loves.

--Mr. Gobley

Done

It is wonderful to be a student again.

Now i remember:

Summer smells of greening promise --

Chlorophyll and melanin --

And the expansion of the soul back into

Something called "life,"

An end to shuffling herds in stairwells

And dark evenings buried in books.

i remember, too, what striving and promise are:

miniatures of the Universe's expansion into self.

i return to my diurnal identity,

a little older

but a little further from death.

--Mr. Gobley

Late Night City Sounds

A sigh, perhaps;
Even a motor
Can sound contemplative

When all that is behind it
Is the susurration
Of a vent shaft
Or the
Plaint
Of an idling bus

All i listen for
Is contained
Within symphonies
Of metal and stone

All i hear
Breathes
Against a quilt of night
And dreams
Of tomorrow's
Exhaust.

--Mr. Gobley

Five O'Clock Somewhere

Quitting time is a small, delightful death.
Cars exhale. People, too.
The sun begins to retire, in this latitude,
From the rigors of forcing Spring
On a frozen hemisphere.

Birds --
Who exclaim, and who hail the morning Sun --
Also fly home, somewhere, when the Sun does;
Wedges of wings turning,
Leaving, arcing and returning,
Vanishing.

At Five O'clock
In March
Where i live,
The monochrome is
Coloring into its gentle death.

At home, there is light.

In my mind,
Which til now hibernated,
A ray of languid light enters the cave.

--Mr. Gobley

Thaw

Blood rediscovers the end of my fingertips,
The tips of my toes.

The bone-ache of deep cold
Is dipped in a shallow, steaming pool
Of promise.

Somewhere, a cardinal sings;
And beyond that,
The sigh of the expressway
Arcs higher into the
Suburban air,
Comes down more gently,
Without icicles shattering
Around it.

The trees point less angrily
At their parent sky,
And people stand taller,
No longer hunching their shoulders
Over their hearts.

Time turns from blade to blossom
In tiny increments,
Like the growing of an eyelash.

And i rejoice in the cloud of breath
That rises from my day,
In gratitude -- and relief --
Toward the day's
Maker.

--Mr. Gobley

the breach

The black whale
That shot from the sea
And thundered back down
Was master of all his universes:

The liquid world could not contain him;

The air rushed to greet him, filling his lungs with new life,
Hurried to sustain his brief flight;

The solid world -- the world of our flesh and feeling --

Utterly transformed by his might.

All I can ask is to live one moment like him;

To briefly launch into that element just beyond my reach;

That benign and yet ominous Other that both inspires and eludes me;

So that my moment of mastery might descend with me again, into the iridescent deep

Where memory and meaning both reside.

-- Mr. Gobley

Old Man on Campus

He moves among the young
Pulled by air currents
Pushed by gestures:
He has the presence
Of cigar smoke
And something of its odor.

He lingers amidst the library stacks
Like Bellow's ghost,
Looking for pages to live in.

He interrogates academic journals,
Demanding that they divulge
What only he can decipher;
Kidnaps orphaned lattes
From the basement coffee shop,
Devours the Science Times
That beckons
Stained and matted
From the counter.

His briefcase, never open,
Bears the same battered manuscript
Over which he labored,
Through which he breathed,
During the years of his
Academic apprenticeship.

When i come close to pitying him,
i look close until i see
The smile of utter solitude
Crease his face:

The bliss of solipsism
Is his;
He is an anchorite
Amidst the young --
A minor god,
Hurling bolts of erudition
Into a sea of ink.

--Mr. Gobley

Early dusk

This is a miracle, too:

How nightfall,
In its heaviness,
Falls as lightly,
As freely,

As day dawns.

How watching reveals nothing
Until it reveals
That all is hidden.

How darkness, through the window,
Reflects oneself back to oneself,
And how daylight at last
Causes the self to vanish.

No light shines on my soul
But that it slowly dims,
No darkness descends upon me
But that its arc swings gently back
Toward redemption.

I breathe, I dream, I slowly die;
And all for this -- and only this -- am I.

--Mr. Gobley

In Praise of a Woman, Running

No form ever graced the Universe,
No figure ever spoke to the angels
Until yours sped past.

Your feet touched the ground as a sort of compromise;
You moved as if time and gravity were mere concepts,
And bones and ligaments fashioned
Like bow and arrow.

i cannot forget the ease,
Cannot approximate the joy,
Will not understand
The lightness of being

Expressed in your stride,
Until I have died.

--Mr. Gobley

Meditation on a Sunset from Behind a Window

Without biting bugs
And the territorial shrieks of gulls,
This is little more than a flat-screen TV.

And yet:

There is a cricket secreted in the ceiling tiles,
Singing to a newly determined storm;
And there is the semaphore of the rain
On the old roof

To remind me
That i am not alone here,
Not all alone.

i live on an island,
weave dreams on a prairie,
build boxes in the suburbs,

And watch water and sky
rise and fall

Through the great window
of memory.

--Mr. Gobley

Prayer for a Sunday Evening

My bones ache from the pleasure
Of wasting time.

And from working in the garden,
And walking into town.

From the sledding hill,
i saw a highway,
A forest,
And a world in no hurry.

On the way home,
i saw two children selling lemonade,
A dog trotting alongside her mistress,
And a father and daughter racing their bikes,
Laughing into the wind..

It was a world without ambition
And without enmity --
A small, fragile universe,
Shielded from itself
By a brief, benevolent window
Of the timeless.

i thank you,
Creator of Time,
For briefly, sweetly,
Making time
Go
Away.

--Mr. Gobley

Prayer for a Child Engaged in Sport

You cannot fail.

You live in a
Distilled elixir,
A concoction of hope
And riotous dreams
That causes us
To rise out of our seats
And shout.

O Great Life,
That it should let us drink
Such wonders
As this modest moment!

All your guides,
i first and foremost,
pray that in falling you rise
and in defeat you
overcome,

And that what wounds you suffer
Will scab over like glaciers
And move slowly
To the center of your being,

Where all defeat becomes song
And all sport
Conveys a hint of
The World to Come.

--Mr. Gobley

Prayer for When You Do Not Feel Ready

Dear Mover of Stillness:

The rush of time
Makes moments like leaves --

Unfurling slowly, they are suddenly everywhere,
Then, even more suddenly,
Gone.

i fall helplessly behind:
Time has no particles,
Only waves;
No moments,
Only a stream.

Make me like the rock in the stream --
Let me bend the tide to my ceaseless will,
Until i am no more.

Or, perhaps,
Make me like the stream --
Transparent,
Still,
Present;

And yet, for all this,
i know
That You have made me
Both stream and rock,

And in time i will embrace
The flow of Presence
Over the stillness at my center.

Let that time be
Now.

-- Mr. Gobley

What the Garden Said

Thank you for scratching my back,
Tending to my wounds,
Cleansing my pores,
Nourishing my being.

All that remains for you to do
Is to recognize that i smile at you
Each day.

i wait for you to see me --
Essence of me,
Presence of me,
Beingness of me
That reaches toward you
With the whorled and trifoliate,
Tunnels toward you with
The fibrous and adventitious

(All i ask:
Look beyond the rim
Of your morning cup
And see me!),

Keeps becoming
And becoming
And waiting for you to
Gasp in recognition:

i live not next to you
But within you.
We grow
Into
Each other.

The lobilia
And the columbine
Merely add flourishes
To what i constantly proclaim:

i am you.
Smile and reside within me,
And together we will
Reach upwards.

--Mr. Gobley

What Thin Is

Thin is skin.
Skin is thin, thinking ink.

In this, i sink:

i sin, kiss, shit,
hit things;

i sit.

This is it:
It is,
It isn't.

i stink,
sigh,
tisk:
i think, sinking.

It is knit
in skin.

It's high;
it's thin;

it thinks;
it sings.

It is i.

--Mr. Gobley

A meditation on lethargy

My soul has been baked
into a pudding.

i eat, standing over the kitchen sink,
looking out at the back yard,
and wish to remain there all day,
watching rabbit denude the garden
and blossoms sing of their own passing.

At times like this, i wish only to move
as the current of life will move me.

i have no designs
on reaching or grasping:

merely breathing,
and being,
are achievement enough.

Perhaps this isn't lethargy after all:
it may just be the call
of the corpuscles

The wild cry of the nucleotides

The singing of cells
Through the arches
Of tendon,

Morse code
Tapped onto
The wall of my slumbering soul:

Live, live, live . . .

-- Mr. Gobley

Getting Un-Lonely

This time, i mean it:
i will not rely on the mountains
To soothe my soul
Or on music
To provide a soundtrack
For my life,
Or on you
To make me feel worthy.

Suddenly, i find the mountains
to be piles of rocks and weeds,
the music to be merely the earnest
vibrations of the strings and the hopes
and the thirsty egos of the players.

And you:

You have come and gone.
What have you left me with?
Mere mountains;
Mere music.

A thirsty ego;
Nothing to quench the thirst.

Great heaps of nothing;
Vast mirages of beauty
That vanish as soon as
They appear.

If i promise to come to you,
You do not answer.
If i sing to you,
You do not smile.

All i have of you
Is the mountain
And the instrument.

i must climb,
i must play and sing.

And it is only then --
Straining my muscles,
Vibrating the strings --
That you appear to me,
Smiling,
Open,
Here,
And Here --

Being with me.

i am rendered
un-lonely.

--Mr. Gobley

The Blessing of a Beach House

We perched, like ants, on a crust of earth,
On a mound of your making.
We asked, meekly --
"Can we stay for a moment?"

You were kind.

Thousands of turns of the globe,
The gyrations and wobbles of the planet,
Have been made plain to us;
Creatures, and Creation,
Have become our friends.

The plainest messages of time and tide
Have been laid at our feet.
We have grown up in the sun,

Found our way through the bays and inlets
Toward something greater
Than any city street:

Everything is busy being and becoming,
And we, who are so often too busy to notice,
Come here to just be, and to become.

We are pelicans and plovers,
And dolphins and egrets;
We are Germans and locals.

We find that Nature is omnivorous,
And we are omnipresent.
When we are here, even if alone,
We are never lonely.

--Mr. Gobley

Prayer of Gratitude for a Mixed Blessing

Dear Maker of Meaning:

Thank you for knowing me so well.
Your gift to me comes with good counsel.

i could not have swallowed my pride
but for this mixed blessing.

It reminds me that i am
loved by you,
neither more nor less
than every snowflake that falls,

And that my brief descent
is but a dance that celebrates
its own frailty
and makes its own brief imprint
on the pavement of the Eternal.

i will meditate on You.

i will see the humility of the mixed blessing
as the greatest of Your many gifts to me,
and i will remember to thank you no less
for what you have taken from me
than for all you have bestowed.

--Mr. Gobley

i accept the terms of service

When i have to click on that little box,
When choosing, or buying,
Or downloading,
Signifying that
"i accept the terms of service,"

i often think:

"How i long, just once, to click that box --
If only in my mind --

When it really means something."

So i will say it now,
For all to read,
For the All to know:



i accept the terms of service.

And now i will serve.


--Mr. Gobley

The Return of My Miniature Zen Garden

Today, it was on my desk again:

The small, square Zen garden,
Three rakes and a brush,
Sugar-white sand laced
With miniature tumbleweeds of
Dust and lint;

The garden had lived for months
In a colleague's cubicle:
While i was gone,
The garden was neglected.

The sand furrowed its brows;
The smooth stones sulked in their
Nests of sand and and gathering dust.

It is home again,
And again, my desk is a desert.
And now i will rake the garden
And pluck the lint from its new rows,
And then

The scratching of the miniature rake
Against bottom of the earthenware tray
Will drown out the silicon hum of the
Hard drive

Will obscure the blinking of the
Message light

Will remand the petty interruptions
Back to their cubed spaces:

Now, i will rake;
Now, i will be folded
Into a small, square universe
Of order and
Harmony.

--Mr. Gobley

What the snowplows leave behind

What the snowplows leave behind
Is gray and leaden.


Pure when peeled, the snow is sullied
By the passage of time and vehicles;
It becomes a sulking armature
Over lampposts and hydrants,
A cream-pie in the face
Of the world.


Then it hardens;
Then it is gone.

The plowed snow
Reminds me of my own
Fevered delusions
And personal melodramas:
Billions of little deceptions,
Grains of fiction,

Become a wall,
Become a shell,
Become water,
Become, in the end,

Nothing.

Just now they are jagged and gray,
But in time, they will flow downstream;

Perhaps someone will drink them
And be nourished.

In the gray of this season,
Impervious,
They seem almost to boast.

Soon enough,
The plow and the salt-spreader
Will cover them over with another layer;

Soon after that, perhaps,
i will remember them fondly
For what they really were:

Billions of little stories,
Waiting patiently to be told.

--Mr. Gobley

Meditation on my Blackberry

You are the fruit
Of a strange and lifeless tree:
My little rectangular heart,
Rear-view mirror of my conscience,
Insomniac engine of my endless days.

You emerge from a seed of wisdom --
The knowledge that we are all connected --
But you are a mutation:
You do not connect us
So much as you ensnare us.
We are alone,
Tied by your tentacles
Into an info-world
Made hollow and blinking and blue.

Priorities without meaning,
Messages without
Content:
These are the gifts you bear.

We bow low to your screen,
Waste our thumbs in obeisance to you,
Call out for connection
But are never fully joined
To those who beckon.

Even so, i thank you:
You always do your best,
You do not complain;
You exist to serve.

You are humility,
Clipped to my waist,
You are community
In a cube.

Like you, i will do my best,
Not complain,
Exist to serve;

And there,
We shall part ways.

--Mr. Gobley

Prayer for Yourself

May you remember that each breath you take is the first in a long chain of breaths, stretching down to all those who will be touched by you, loved by you; by those who descend from you, and by those who honor your memory.

May you remember that each breath you take is the last in a long chain of breaths, drawn from ancestors, all the way back to The Very First.

May you honor all these, with each breath.

May you be thirsty.

May you remove a splinter from your thumb.

And peel a grape.

And go an entire day without hearing an engine or an electrical appliance.

May you remember a grievous wrong done to you, and think of something very funny you could have done in response.

May you remember your calling.

May you fall out of bed.

May you make your own ice cream.

And eat it.

And may you hear crickets, and distant thunder, on an evening in August, when you are not in a hurry and the dishes have already been done.

--Mr. Gobley

A 10-gallon fish tank, in the dark

suspended in the invisible,
buoyed in a liquid
that always seeks the most direct route
to the lowest place,

they breathe

kept in a cube,
they sense large creatures,
shards of light,
feel the thud
of our footfall

each morning,
the heavens open,
the light returns with a burst:

mannah!

for now,
they have made their peace
with each other

for now, it is dark,
and they sense both
relief and terror,
and from their fellow travelers,
companionship
and competition

soon it will be light again;
soon, the heavens will erupt
with light, and a shower
of nourishment;

for now, the filter breathes,
and they with it;

and all is quiet,
and still,
and fleeting,
and strange;

all is visible,
but nothing is within reach . . .

--Mr. Gobley

The Drift

The last dusk of the year
Falls in a pointillist's parade.

Each snowflake is a shard of glass
From a shattered universe,
A spark stricken
From the flint of a life.

See that one?
That snowflake has a dust-mote
At its center.

And at the center of that dust-mote
Is a carbon atom

That Shakespeare once exhaled.

All around us, they are falling,
The great and the wicked,

Bound up in the dance of eternity,
Combining with each other
And with us

To make new
The age-old promise
Of life after life,

Of resurrection after death.

One snowflake is a fluke.
One thousand snowflakes are a pattern.
One million snowflakes are a drift.

One snowstorm is a fraction of a moment.

Live this moment with me,
And we shall be blessed.

Happy New Year to you, from--


--Mr. Gobley

When i am cold

When i am cold
i remember the eons
of my pre-existence:

a germ of light
planted at the edge
of the vast womb of
Darkness,

i waited without purpose
and watched without sight.

i can dimly recall
the silence,
the stillness,

the millennia of
not knowing,

And even now
i can summon up
the moment --

the horrifying eternity --
when movement
toward Being began.

When i am cold,
i recall my first passage into warmth:
the horror, the exhilaration
as comprehension dawned,

the mighty struggle
to Become,
even as i yearned
not to Be,

the messiness,
the urgency,
the surging heat.

When i am cold,
i begin to ache for those dark silences --
against my will, to be sure,
and still --

some speck of ash at the center of me
senses the cold,
wants the weightlessness,
embraces the emptiness,
seeks the silence

and welcomes the prospect
of rest
of emptiness
of ceasing the struggle
abandoning the need

to be warmed.

--Mr. Gobley

On Sight Restored

Hosanna in the highest:

The eye is a catacomb of halos.

Within these shining rings lie the secret of all perception:
Brief, shaded, shaped by experience,
Warped by time and by grief:

Restored by heat and light.

The eye is that most miraculous of all organs:
Revealing, receiving,
Fragile, resilient,
Complex,
Unitary:

Milton's window on the soul
Is the Throne of Pure Majesty.

When the world jumps toward you
With renewed clarity,
You are born again

Into aching color and pointillist perfection.

Glory to All That Is:
Light and life have come home to her,

And her insight is now restored
To its outward twin.

--Mr. Gobley

Meditating at Dawn

No shadows

Panes of light
Slide by as cars go round the bend

Have i sat long enough yet?

i hear the toll road
and the filter on the fish tank
and the toilet with the leaky flapper

All sighs and exhalations of coming to be
And passing away
Are borne through me
On the panes of light

Thought sinks

Soul rises

The leaves that shudder
And drift from the trees
Are like the ornaments of selfhood
That fall from my carapace --

And then i hear the thud of heels
On a bedroom floor above me,
And i feel my knees and my back,

And i know,
With no regret,
That the day has begun.

--Mr. Gobley

My Mind is Times Square

Somewhere above 43rd and Broadway
A peregrine falcon nests
On the rim of a roof-top water tank.

The pulmonary power of the Broadway bus
And its subconscious thought,
The Number 3 IRT,
Force movement and
Deliver defibrillation.

None are lost here; none are even lonely.
My mind is like this --
Full of electronics
And loud pictures,

Bright beauties
Larger than life
Colors too vivid for
Real eyes

Schools of people
Swimming uptown
To their jobs.

When i sweep the streets
At first light

i am inviting filth
Praising busy-ness
And sanctifying this
Brief
Frantic
Commute through
Time's full arteries.

--Mr. Gobley

Prayer for a Friend, Dead in a Jail Cell

You were too good.

You were too lonely,
Too lost, too loved
From a distance.

You knew heartache the way
A child knows her invisible friends
(Or her other secrets)
And you fought

Until it gently took you
In its arms
And danced with you --

Danced off the edge of the stage, --
A flash of satin,
Then
Silence.

i wish to my great, silent God
That you will be held,
Loved,
Healed
Where you have gone;

Because if you are not,
Then we have no recompense
For your absence,
No balm

For the wound
Opened by your final,
Muffled cry

For company.

--Mr. Gobley

The Day of the Truth of the Highest Meaning

i am about to dive down
and find what has lain silent.
In the penumbra of time
And a veil of sand
My soul lays dormant,
Not breathing,
Unsuffocated:
Unaware.

The descent to retrieve
Is fraught:

i must move slowly
So as not to threaten
My equilibrium
Or disturb the beasts
Of the deep.

i find where my soul lies
In angry repose
And i begin to lift.

There is little weight
But great resistance:
So small an essence,
Such gravity.

i rejoice in the struggle
That risks my life,
And in the recapture
Of the soul that is
Mine and
Not mine.

Such is the life
Of a penitent
On the day
Of the truth
Of the highest meaning.

-- Mr. Gobley

Alone in the Office

Today there is a company event,
Some corporate frolick on a boat
Or a beach;
i did not attend.

i sit in my office, alone, comforted by
The hum of the hard drive

And the fall of locust leaves
On this, our first autumnal day.

There is great comfort in finding solitude
Where it usually is not to be found.

Such unexpected, unruffled quiet
Reminds the part of you that is always alone
That it is, in fact, always kept company
By some idea
Or hope
Or grocery list
Or falling leaf;

Some reflection of a passing angel on your coffee cup
As she goes off to celebrate her freedom.

--Mr. Gobley

Wednesday

The blessing of this day
Is its middle-ness.

Along this bridge between Sabbaths,
Sun and Moon were created,
Ballasts of Time
Hung in black bunting.

Hidden in today's name,
The god of the Wild Hunt
Gallops above the ground,
Seeking between
Sky and Earth
The bounty that mortals
Cannot fathom,
Much less attain.

i set foot on this bridge,
The bridge of the
Middle Way,

And am embarked
Upon my own
Wild Hunt
For the promise
Of each week's path --
The heart of meaning,
Toward which I fly,

Unbound by time
Unfazed by torment,
Unafraid of the moment

When silence is revealed
At the center
Of the wandering
Universe.

--Mr. Gobley

The borrowed soul

i borrowed a soul
was given it, really
for a brief moment

it came wrapped in a
blanket of flesh
and box of bone

it was a mighty force
in a tiny package,
furious at its needs
and regal in its demands

it soon was clothed in
a personality
and gained
the rudiments of speech

it grew to know me
and surpass me
in all things

and now
my child
has a borrowed soul
of its own

another gift
like a telescope
that magnifies miracles more
the larger it gets

and i
full of the wonder
and the remorse
of the blessed

open my arms to
hold it
for this one
brief
borrowed
moment

--Mr. Gobley

A Visit from Beethoven

i sat in the concert hall --
All graceful arches and spandrels,
Filigree and high polish --

And was drenched
By the wake of sound
Plowed up by
The prow of
The mighty soprano.

Outside, the rain whispered
Its praises,
Crying for joy
On the concert hall's roof.

Sheltered from one downpour,
i was baptized in another --

Or, maybe, i thought,
I had received a visitation:
Each time the great are summoned,
They appear, atomized, annotated,
Scaled and sung:

Vocal cords vibrated, raindrops condensed,
Tiny bones of the eardrum --
The soul's own tuning fork --

Rattled by rays of being
More powerful, more enduring
Than Time itself.

That evening, we were visited
By Beethoven,
i'm sure of it --
As his notes were sung
And his rain fell
And our bones, great and small,
Trembled and hummed
In the presence of
His fevered majesty.

In this way, he lives on,
And i carry him forward,
Humbly,
Stumbling
Toward
You.

--Mr. Gobley

The tree that saved your life

the tree that saved your life
was not the oak that sheltered you
from withering heat

was not the pine
whose dry cones
and brittle bark
gave you kindling
for a fire
on that black,
aching night

the tree that saved your life
was not even the Douglas Fir
that seemed to call to you
one summer evening,
commanding you to
see wonder in all things

no, the tree that saved your life
dug its roots into rock
and by those roots
held itself upright above a gorge
calm and ageless
still and certain

impossible you said
impossible
how life makes life go on
until all going is gone

impossible how in any crag
life will set up shop
hold on for dear life
while i -- sodden with my own
private miseries --
ponder letting go

so you did as commanded:
you wondered -- at the sheer force
the desire to be
the knuckled roots determined, steady
content within their gnarled will
their unshakable embrace
holding to their eternal task

you looked awhile
then you knelt by the tree
and thanked it and
it spoke to you (in its way)

and at that moment you dug in --
your roots went down
into the rock of your life
further and more firmly each day

your branches spread
your head went more certainly
toward the Sun

and you pressed forward
to contain
to express
to share and shelter
to be
as much as that tree

and that's how
in that moment
by that tree
your life was saved.

--Mr. Gobley

Edge of Time

prepare with me
to fall into the abyss
of eternity.

Don't worry:
it only lasts a day.

Come with me
and feel time fall away
as we fall away from time.

We'll abandon all --
All cares, all commitments,
All concepts --

We'll watch the sun push shadows
Slowly through the back yard,

See backyard animals
On their unending rounds;

And soon, this sliver of endlessness
Will end.

Within that needle's eye of time,
We'll have lived a life.

Come see this sliver of forever
In our midst.

Don't worry:
It only lasts a day.

--Mr. Gobley

Waiting for You

Waiting for you to manifest inside me
Is like waiting for death to overtake me.

Waiting for you to hold me
Is like waiting for a tornado.

Waiting for you to have faith in me
Is like waiting to have faith in myself.

We go on like this.
Neither of us sure, both of us suspecting

That we contain each other,
Challenge each other,

Torment each other:
Are

And are not
Each other.

i will never let go
Of wondering

Whether, even now,
i am being held by

You.

--Mr. Gobley

I Hate You, i Love You

You have done this to me.

And for this,
I hate you --

You have made me to lie down in filth;
You have kicked dust in my teeth,
You have shattered my bones
And scattered my people.

What have I done--
What could anyone do --
To deserve such
Hatred?

Only remember:
My fierce devotion
Is not swayed by your mocking
My mortality --

Your loathing is merely
Mirrored back to you
In the hallowed blue light
Of your shallow, temporal love.

Your love is hate to me.

And so,
I hate you back.

And yet,
Seeing the burnt ember of embrace
In the ashes of our moment,
I am warmed, and
Made whole,
And scooped up from the scarred earth;

Gathered up
And held,
And then
I am i
And i remember the promises you made
And i am left alone with you,
And the sobs
That break my ribs
Are because,
After all this hate,
You still love me,

And
(the more fool) i
Love
You.

--Mr. Gobley