To My Father, Who Has Stepped Out

Now, you can rest.

Having sloughed off the rack of aching bones,
You can simply be,
In that way that flash bulbs
Hover and dance on the cornea,
Though long since 
Brittle and burnt.

Your presence, always stolid,
Has become an insistent absence,
And we, your children, have become
Sieves,
Weaving through the liquid world,
Catching atoms of you
Borne on the current of loss.

Memory being what it is,
You begin now to appear in fine form,
Jaunty
Optimistic
But always a shade removed
From the moment,
A part of you hanging back
With those
Who,
Like you now,

Had moved beyond the scrim
Of certain presence,
And dissolved,
At last,
Into the
Stream of
All
Being.
--Mr. Gobley

In Praise of the Old Man

Even when you were my age
You were old:
Suffering and loss
Solitude in the midst of tumult
A wife overcoming polio
The cares of career
(And six kids) --
And a back
Aching from all that you had carried.

Now you have seen almost a century
And gotten younger all the time.
Not in body, to be sure,
But in brightness of mind
And clarity of vision.

Almost a prophet,
You see over the rim
Of life's horizon
And call back the sun --
The world is your
Wall of Jericho --

To measure out the wisdom
Of pure wonder.

Do stay --
Stay on, Old Man,
That we
Who sprang from your loins
May know more fully
How, toward the end,
Time for the truly virtuous
Stands still
Breathes,
And moves backward a little
The sun hesitating
For that eternal moment
Above the emerald sea.

--Mr. Gobley

Presence and Absence

Nothing is here
That has not spread its wings

Nothing is gone --
Its imprint is pressed
In the record of all things.

All is not lost --
All is here, untouched,
Unmediated, swift.

Why hold on tight,
When everything that lives
Must learn to drift?

This is your course --
Relayed to you
In hearbeat semaphore:

Toward Presence, mere Presence,
That near, that distant shore.

--Mr. Gobley

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

The Highest Light

The highest light is the light within.
Descending, we ascend and win
The heavens, though they distant be,
Reposing here 'twixt you and me.

Our coldest season lights the spark
That vanquishes the roiling dark;
Our blindness ebbs toward understanding,
Furnishing the view commanding:

We constitute a constellation--
But bound up in our situation,
We see, but do not comprehend,
And strive, unto the bitter end.

Exhausted by the endless push
We never see the burning bush;
What would be the path we took,
Had we but turned aside to look?

Every tree's already lit,
Awake within, and ponder it.
Look beyond, and look again--
Perhaps you'll understand it then:


Every light is the light within,
And every thought its distant twin;
Immortal is our evanescence,
Our orbit is our very essence.


--Mr. Gobley

In Praise of a Splinter

Between the ridges of a fingerprint,

A microscopic javelin:

You have to hold up the finger

Against a dark background

Even to see it.

And yet, each time you brush it,

The whole body thrums with a

Warning, a plea:

A need.

You ask yourself:

How can something so small

So alter my outlook?

How can the barely visible

Be so unbearably insistent?

Your day is filled with such splinters.

Do you not see how finely woven you are --

How the plucking of one nerve

Awakens you to the vulnerability,

The sensitivity,

The dangerous thrill

Of simply

Being?

My splinter was the shaft

That split open my slumber.

The tiny opening it made

Let a world pour in.

i thank it.

--Mr. Gobley

Prayer After Giving Thanks

One moment of respite
Within the womb of plenty
Is worth a lifetime of gratitude.

Please teach me to give thanks
When I am bereft,
To sing hymns of praise
When I am abandoned,

And to remember the bounty
Of breath
In that instant
When it
Ceases.

--Mr. Gobley

Before the screen

Before the screen there was the page, the scroll, the tablet, the stone.

There was a way of seeing--understanding, envisioning, comprehending-- through reading, first for a select few, then a few more; then everyone who could read had the chance to "revise," remake, the world.

Then the mind's eye became a screen, and the screen was outside the mind, and the screen became the mind's eye.

Then the mind ceased to be a mind.

Then everyone had a screen.

And no one had a mind.

--Mr. Gobley

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