Beautiful, I don’t know how
Your smile became an ocean wave,
Tumbling everything over
And over with
Crushing saltwater power,
Your eyes, binary suns
Burning through the world, and
I’m blind now, obviously,
But the heat remains,
Washing through your hair
A whispering
Autumn breeze
Through the shivering
Aspen, somehow,
Beautiful.
Category Archives: Verse
Swimming Lesson
Can’t leave this one alone …
I never knew that I’d been blind;
And then I met your eyes.
There was nothing in the world,
And then his hand
Fell on her shoulder.
The neighbors said
He’d been a strong swimmer
And he fell into your eyes.
I never knew
I never knew that I’d been blind;
Then I saw your eyes.
There was nothing
In the world,
And then his hand
Fell on her shoulder.
The neighbors said
He’d always been a strong swimmer
The day he fell into your eyes.
Sacraments
I am serious about my religion.
I don’t take its sacraments lightly.
They may cause you discomfort:
A long walk, a trusted companion, an open fire.
I cannot imagine a relic, a book, or a doctrine more sacred.
Perhaps you doubt them.
Perhaps I doubt yours.
A walk through a wood
A walk through a world
A friend
“Man’s best friend”
A crackling campfire
“The most tolerable third party”
A sworn companion
The Logos fire
Henry David Thoreau
A boiling star
Kissing the Killer
Nevada Fall, Merced River
Throughout the lowlands singers sing
of your deep, feminine soul;
How reclining, you roll down your bed
amidst your veils and embankments;
They marvel at your fluent, accommodating ways,
how you slip through the world,
flowing around every obstacle,
rounding every edge, and
polishing every turn.
You compel us, it is true, down to where you lie.
Your eyes are limpid pools—it is true what they say,
and it is rumored far and wide that you mirror
the soul.
But the footing is treacherous around you. Your tender loam
gives way beneath our fingers and toes,
but your glistening bones are more hazard still.
It is true what men say, but I know you better yet.
I know you,
murderer.
The bones of old trees and bush
lie tangled in your arms.
I see your work.
Yesterday you might have been
merely a pool, and another, and another;
hung upon a sparkling, trickling necklace
virtually breathless and still
patient, accommodating
womb of a myriad, humming
vampires;
Algae multiplying,
colonizing your thickening blood.
The next day, you might be only lichen and bone.
Dry, white, crumbling bone, anchored deep within the earth—
or deeper still.
But now—
Now!
You gallop across mountains and vandalize
the sleepy canyons, tearing away the flesh and
leaving more bone drying in the sun,
your locomotive snarl,
your hissing, boulder-cracking roar!
Undulating waves, rolling and smacking,
sucking in air, mist storms exhaling!
Water the tyrant.
Water the destroyer—butcher, leveler,
Fury: skull-smashing and bone-snapping—sinew twisting;
Too murderously quick for suffocation; utterly
ruinous and
Beautiful kiss me.
phone, revisited.
phone (fon) Informal—n. A telephone.
—v. phoned, phoning. To call or transmit by
telephone.
Please accept my apology
for having stooped so low,
resorting to quotations.
Take heart: I don’t cite authority lightly,
but that phenomenon that’s femi-nine—
ambiguity demands one be specific
with one’s sources of information.
I’m sure it’s nothing there’s just a
minor misalignment between the words
and their intention.
Surely it’s a simple matter of definition.
Rest assured, no sooner had she spoken it was written,
and mapped to every match in Webster’s latest
collegiate edition.
Here be where the visitors
seek advisement in these affairs,
among the natives who—
having heard a word more often—
might be a little more familiar
with words whose sounds are similar,
having only sound in common.
Daena
Verses celebrating Daena, that celestial maiden of ancient Iran; symbol of faith and conscience. … This is largely plagiarized from the Vendidad (Fargard 19) and Hadhokht Nask, employing some degree of arbitrary license.
♦—♦—♦
At the end of the third night,
when the dawn appears,
it seems to the soul of the faithful one
as though he were delivered
amidst plants and aromas;
it seems as if a wind were blowing from the region of the south,
from the regions of the south, a sweet-scented wind,
more sweet than any other …
And it seems to the soul of the faithful one
as if he were inhaling that wind into his nostrils,
and he thinks: ‘Whence does that wind blow,
that sweet-scented wind … ?’
And it seems to him as though his own Daena
were advancing toward him on that wind,
in the shape of a maiden fair,
bright, white-armed, strong,
tall-formed, high-standing, full-breasted,
beautiful of body, noble, of a glorious seed,
of the size of a maid in her fifteenth year,
as fair as the fairest things in the world.
‘Then comes the beautiful,
shapely, strong and well-formed maid,
with the hounds at her sides,
she who can discern right and wrong,
with great following, happy,
and of high understanding.
And the soul of the faithful one addresses her,
asking: ‘What maid art thou,
who art the fairest maid I have ever seen?’
She answers him: O thou
youth of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds,
of good religion,
I am thine own conscience!
‘Everyone did love thee for that greatness, goodness, fairness, …
strength and freedom from sorrow,
in which thou dost appear to me;
‘And so thou, O youth
of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds,
of good religion!
didst love me for that greatness, goodness, fairness, …
strength, and freedom from sorrow, in which I appear to thee …
‘I was lovely and thou made me still lovelier;
I was fair and thou made me still fairer;
I was desirable and thou made me still more desirable;
‘I was seated at the fore
and thou made me foremost,
‘through this good thought,
through this good word,
through this good deed of thine; …’
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen