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

Clues

In the wearing of rock by water,
We see both precision and randomness;

In art, we see both painstaking exactitude
And impassioned improvisation.

Within structures, we play;
Within rules, we challenge order.

All this is done
Because it is how
All was made,

How we were conceived,
How love is kindled,

How the Earth revolves,
How the Sun rises:

Never the same Sun,
And yet always the Sun we know.

And so the message to you is:
Remake each day

As a revived and elevated image
Of the First Day;

Make tomorrow a heightened expression
Of what you had hoped for this afternoon.

And so, rung by rung
Along Jacob's ladder

You will rise with the Angels
Toward the most perfect

Of imperfections:
A life of meaning.

--Mr. Gobley

Years

Who knew you would be blessed in this way?

Years were wound up like spools of silk;
You raised children
Watched friends suffer
And a brother die;
The world was an angry fool,
And you suffered it
With a joke, a cigarette,
A poem.

Days passed in their thousands
And on you went,
Given time to ponder the miracle
Of your eventual, silent passing --

But not today. Today there is more to know,
And still the thirst for knowing it.

You, who have known a length of days,
Wake now with wonder
That a new day can reveal
Its unique sameness

And that life's unkindnesses
All hold these kindnesses within:

Consciousness,
And
Gratitude
For the parade of heartbeats
Marching happily
Onward.

--Mr. Gobley

In Praise of Rejection

i thank you, says my small i, for confirming my worst and most deeply cherished fears about this thing i call my "self".

i appreciate your validation of my lack of worth. After all, there is no "I" to be valued.

It is precisely here that i fix my concentration: on the story i tell myself about why i have been rejected.

The insanity of it, the injustice, the demeaning and depressing heaviness of it, melt under scrutiny.

Leaving only the i, which also vanishes.

Had i sought validation from you and found it, my delusions of grandeur would have been fertilized, only to grow like beanstalks out of the fertile ground of my desires.

But as it is, you have let me know in no uncertain terms that my worth, whatever it may be, is not mine, and is not yours.

This is a gift of inestimable value.

i will take this gift with me to my grave.

Not as a burden, but as a seed of wisdom, a bolt of en-lightning, which in an instant can revive my gratitude for life, and relieve me from believing, as we all sometimes do, that i must be more than i am.

In the meantime, it will help me sleep better.

--Mr. Gobley

Revelation from a Stopped Watch

What was urgent
Has become trivial;

What was compacted
Into cubes of time

Has elongated into
Ellipses . . .

The Sun moves in imperceptible increments,
And, without my watch,

So does my day:

One task sliding into, elliding with
The next,

Moving without
Seeming to move,

Until at last, at the very end,
The sun and i

Can be seen sinking
Beneath our horizons,

Possessed of the silent fervor
Of the psalmist . . .

--Mr. Gobley

The Eve of Letting Go

This is the Eve of Letting Go.
This is that evening
When the Sun carves
A line in the sky,
Like the line that appears on a
Pregnant woman's belly,
Heralding a momentous event,
A life-changing life.

This is the evening of rest and restoration,
Of magnanimity and meaning,
Of holiness and wholeness.

This is the time when all is forgiven,
When love is made
And hurts are healed:
This is a shard of paradise
Dropped in our cupped and blistered palms.

This is the Eve of Letting Go:
All is released, all is restored,
And for this nano-now,
All is healed and revealed.

--Mr. Gobley

The Voice Within, The Voice Beyond

This morning, as the bird sang through me,
i regretted my place inside a cube of drywall,
but rejoiced at my place in this world,
where birds move music through us

And songs resonate in the cavities
Of our cares

i realized that when i am tired of singing
it is because i am not letting myself be sung

and when i am feeling wronged
it is because i resist the waters of compassion
which in time will set me aright.

Life in this world lives through us.
Love in this world is a current;
We, conductors.

Your sacred task
in this inch of Universe is

To Be
And
To Permit:

To let life live through you,
The Divine sing from beyond you
And reside within you.

To let yourself be an instrument,
You must, as thanks for being made,
Give yourself
Into the hands
Of the Maker of Music.

Your sacred tune will sing through you
And you will know the blessing
Known by all birds:

That the singer must be sung
In order for there
To be song.

--Mr. Gobley

All Is Said and Done

We travel on a thin wire
Suspended between two columns
Concealed from us:

The Column of Beginning,
From which we begin our journey;
And the Column of Ending,
From which we transfer to the next.

All is suspension and movement.

As we travel this transom,
We are buffeted by the winds
Of All That Is Said and Done:

The rush of Napoleon's charge
And the rustle and snap
Of laundry hung out
On a balcony in
Sardinia;

The ice-fisherman's heater
As he sits on the frozen crust
Of the Boundary Waters;
And the lunch
Of the yak herdsman
On the steppes,
All dissolve slowly
Into waves of will

That now and always
Change what comes after.

All our aspiration
And ambition
Are expressed
In Doing
And Saying,

And it all reverberates,
Between the Columns,
Forever.

So speak and act
With the care and deliberation
Of a nurse on the night watch:

Lives --
Most especially yours,
Now and hereafter --
Will be saved.

--Mr. Gobley

The Importance of Snow

We are snow --

We do not last forever,
No two are alike,
Yes, yes, i know all that --

But also:

It is made to fall,
And it falls.

It may rise up,
But only for an instant,
And only as a reminder,
A delicious delay
In its sealed fate;

It does not map its destiny,
Ponder its options,
Bemoan its passage
Or seek counseling for its fall.

It has a collective identity
And a single
Mind,

But it is a dance
Of infinite steps,
A monotony
Of dizzying variety.

It is fun for those
Who are not busy;

It is water,
Suspended.

It just is.

And then it is not.

--Mr. Gobley

The New Office

Now, instead of woods and a pond,
There is a pebbled parapet
Outside my window,
And beyond it, a parking lot,
Vast and forbidding
As the Sahara,

Herring-boned with parking spaces,
Dotted with duck poop.

In other words,
The view is no longer sacred:
It is merely perfect.

From here -- the second floor --
i can see people
Put on their game faces,
Put up their cell phones.

From here, i see
Life being lived
At that thin threshold
Between dreams and duties,

A forgotten sliver of time
Wedged between facades;

It is all so terribly mundane,
So routine --

So brimming with the required:

A Mobius Strip,
An unending miracle
Such as few
Are privileged to behold.

--Mr. Gobley