Poetry at Sangam

SangamHouse

 










ALL OUR WONDER UNAVENGED by Don Domanski

1

particles of evening warm themselves in the afternoon sun
pieces of solitude gather slowly     one under each ginkgo leaf

I sit on a rock of saddlebacked granite
                                                      I sit in a world of abundance
a handful of bees goes down to the river     two handfuls return
you deadhead the dog rose and two stray curs appear

you deadhead a memory and two more appear
longer and deeper and more alive than the last

I remember my mother seated at the kitchen window
her cat’s-eye glasses staring out into the night
trying to find divinity and divinity’s reasons

my mother believed God moved the sparrows around day after day
as a teenager I believed the sparrows moved God around
all the inexhaustible crutches He leaned upon
all the underweights of silence to find His way

now the only god I believe in are the sparrows themselves
                                                                unaltered by my belief
their wings contain hollow bones where a pantheon could pass through
and they do     hundreds pass through at every moment
this is how they fly     by allowing passage to earth’s beliefs
the little deities of the big thunder and the rain that falls.


3

a few clouds move in     riding the intersections of ancient thought
across the sky     old ideas that floated upward     Confucian dialogues
Sumerian rumours     prayers to Pallas Athena     Persian satires
Druidical ethics     not gone     not absorbed     not forgotten     just there
influencing us still     carrying our lighter burdens and the clouds

from where I sit clouds cast shadows on the flowerbeds
perennials along the fence that bloom like glossy photographs
of themselves     bright flowers stripped from shining pages
from catalogues that never mention the plant that doesn’t exist
the imagined yarrow that the mind owns
                            that has neither root nor stalk     leaf nor flower

all my thoughts are a divination with yarrow-sticks
and a mere filament of flame     a single mouse hair burning
deep in a canyon     lighting up less than an inch of dead embers
the big fire     the full consciousness having moved on immediately
travelling constantly     never resting while in nature
while under Heaven’s luminous regard.


5

late afternoon and the western sun-door still ajar
some hours to go before it closes     shadow hours
for the food gatherers to return to their mounds
for chickadees to follow their old ways
                                                fables without end

cosmologies of shadows gather up the light
                                    from under hostas and azaleas
many stories to be joined into one before night comes

only one story after the sun slips over the horizon
                                                                  the one and the manifold
My face is the face of the Disk this is the deceased speaking from
The Egyptian Book of the Dead     from the other side of darkness
the bright side and its holy office trying to give us a hint
                                                                  an initiation into eternity
so we might find the eternal in perceptual experience

so we might find our way in the world     and the oncoming twilight
is the perfect time to find our way     so the Celts believed
that sacred in-between time     between worlds     betwixt night and day
when all crossings are possible     freeing us from duality
Dharma Path the Buddhists call it
Pollen Path of Beauty to quote the wisdom of the Navaho
and the bees would agree returning once more from the banks of the river.


Excerpted from Selected Poems 1977 — 2021, Don Domanski, Corbel Stone Press (2021)

DON DOMANSKI