The Old Gods

by Ed Hack

The old gods of the fields, of wheat and corn,
of rye, of vegetables, are dying back
into the earth. The autumn's silver horn
of knife-edge light rings out the time of lack,
of ice as pitiless as life can be,
of frozen ground entombing old spent earth
that sleeps exhausted as the naked trees
that wait, like ice-bound earth, for their spring birth.
The shriveled tassels of the corn are brown
and limp, tied to the bridge to celebrate
the harvesting of Time. The river sounds
like all that crashes to its end to sate
the hungers of its life. A rush. A roar.
And then an evening as it spreads out
and leaves the falls behind. Now less is more
as water calms, a mind without a doubt.
The old gods do not say a thing. They wait.
They know that Time's another word for Fate.

Fall

by Ed Hack

Late in the day the falls look like alum-
inum, sun blazing out a sheen like shields
upon an ancient field where men are numb
with bloody death, yet all refuse to yield.
Odd thought this autumn day with summer heat
as couples chat outside a coffee bar
at tables right across the way and treat
themselves to ease. The river travels far
to plunge with its low roar and glow
like metal tempered by the sun. Old folk
who're bent with Time amid the leaves that blow
and tumble in the silver light like hope
deferred as yellow shines from inside out.
This world is falling down--just look about.

Morning Mist

by Ed Hack

The sun burns off the mist--no mystery,
but still. . .I wake up into morning mist;
the sun is softly radiant in trees
enmeshed in glowing gems, the dawn's last gift
before the clarity of day. Each gain
means loss, the basic mathematics of
our lives. You see. It leaves. The light explains
the rules. The worlds below, the worlds above,
the worlds inside, delirious with need,
arise like dawn, mature through afternoons,
demand the rest of night where dream exceeds
the reach of thought to ply the deep mind's loom.
Like mist our dreams with their peculiar skills
burned off by day. No mystery, but still.

Last Night's Storm

by Ed Hack

Day dawns with mist and meadow soaked with rain
and sun across a swath of grass as crows
are barking loudly through the air. The train
is rumbling, speeding by, its horn a low,
long, mournful note that ribbons out like smoke.
A rabbit hops into the brush away
from hunger's eyes that circle in the cloak
of distances of sky, weak blue, not gray
that shattered into rain's strange mystery,
exploding air and what the crazed world flings,
hysteria of fire broken free,
the world seen by the flash of angels' wings.
There're diamonds glinting in the grass from last
night's storm, perfected by its lightning blasts.

Like Everything In Time

by Ed Hack

Dull day. The light's an afterthought, mere sheen,
not shine, a something left behind, a used-
to-be whose smoke has thinned, what's almost seen
like half-remembered dreams you cannot lose
because they linger in your bones. But just
like that a streak of sun and dullness lifts,
it vanishes like hopes you couldn't trust.
And then, like everything in Time, clouds shift
and light that seems a shadow of itself
returns, a mirror in an empty room
that waits to be fulfilled, an empty shell
upon a beach where mindless ocean booms.
And now, again, the sun, and all it brings--
the glow of things, as if the light was wings.

The After-Light

by Ed Hack

The after-light, late afternoon, a spill
of silvered glow as clear as ice that holds
the world before light leaves. The tree is still
as breath when something mortal has been told,
or beauty has just caught you by surprise--
a red, thin Cheshire Moon in early spring,
or Dogwood ghostly as the evening sighs
before the world goes black and stars can sing
their silver song of Time more quietly
than snow. You blink. You can't believe
your eyes. This is a kind of piety,
this haunted glow that cannot last, reprieve
from change's avalanche that pours and roars
each second's tick on life's storm-pounded shores.

Misty Morning

by Ed Hack

It's all quite still in mist--the distant pines,
full-grown and dark, the bare, thin dying tree,
the purplish winter brush en masse, a line
behind the still-wet grass. The day's decree
is gray, again, light shrouded in a veil
spring trees glow through, banked fires that seem to purr
through misted air. White dogwoods float as pale
as ghosts; around them nothing wants to stir.
This silence is as deep as Time, a gap
between that doesn't need a single thing.
This is a land for which there is no map,
and what it gives is only what you bring.
Two pair of geese fly low, fly side-by-side,
honk twice, are gone. Their echoes quickly die.

Rare Morning

by Ed Hack

A chatty, misty morning for the birds
between the dawn and brighter light, a kind
of pause before real day begins, disturbs
this balanced and exquisite fragile time.
And here's the gold patina that ignites
the tree, but softly through the mist. A dove
repeats its hooting, dying call as light
clicks up one notch. This is what morning does.
But still no sharpness in the air, no edge
that shows this moment's passed--the day preserves
its gentleness as if this is a sketch
of paradise, which some few might deserve.
Another click, the light is plainer still.
The noise is coming soon. Now, peace, distilled.

The Price

by Ed Hack

A smear of broken glass is what the ice
is now. It's here because it's in the shade.
The wind-kill twigs, the torn oak leaves, the price
the cold exacts so earth can be remade.
Small bits of night with wings, five black birds land,
make tiny storms of leaves to find some seed
then launch themselves away. The world's unplanned,
except it's not, for need must answer need.
And therein is the paradox of this
catastrophe, this cross-eyed gift of life.
A squirrel ransacks the leaves, the loaves and fish
of all that's left behind the winter's strife.
An atom casts a shadow too. No grist
too small for life, for nothing can't exist.

Hawk Against The Sky

by Ed Hack

The circling, minute adjustments of
its telltale wings, its ancient circuitry,
black diamond of its brain. Who speaks of love
but all the while neglects the hawk is free
to babble on unmoored from fact, that black
shape circling now. So much summed up in names--
a plunderer, a rapist too, and rapt
in holy light. The hawk's beyond all shame,
like God who breaks us into faith. Against
the gray or sun-dazed light raw hunger guides
its circling flight, impeccable and cleansed,
angelic wings' dark silence as it glides.
Whatever else sky is, it's home to hawks--
implacable and circling, their force.

Another Rainy Day

by Ed Hack

The storm's set free the tree's dark rushing voice,
raw whispering of branches crazed by wind,
of leaves still caught in night. This isn't noise
but language that the silence holds, the kin
of light asleep in stone. The roiling gray
is odd right now, a knot gone slack, as rain
sweeps down and slicks the leaves that drip and sway,
explode, fall limp as wind unwinds its skein.
The knot's undone as air turns gray-glare clear.
The day has taken hold, the rain relents,
though leaves still fly in gouts of wind that shear
then pool, uprear, collapse in wild ferment.
And then a change, vague shadows show, the sun
a broken bulb--it's not quite light but crumbs.

Weather For Hawks

by Ed Hack

White winter light and blue that long ago
forgot what mercy is. A morning for
a hawk. The clouds are silvered gray and glow
a razored glare, raw light you can't ignore,
that blinds the eye that cannot help but look.
The perfect light for hawks. And when it dims
the silver has a wicked gleam, a hook
that skewers nerves, edged pain up to the brim.
The wind is polishing the upper leaves.
Bright points wink on, wink off. We are what is
irrelevant. We are what we believe.
The hawk is real, the rest self-serving myth.
We wake, we work, we love, we war, we talk,
we plan. While high above, the circling hawk.

Rengetsu (7)

by Ed Hack

The freezing wind
Along the shore
Has frozen the lake:
The ferry boats have
Been captured by ice.

The freezing wind along the shore, she writes,
has seized the lake and captured ferry boats.
There is no place, she knows, that one can hide
from ice. The sleet assaults her hut. No hope
or fear assails her now--death's changed all that.
With nothing left to lose she did not kill
herself but cut her hair to walk the path
the Buddha chose, surrendered to the will
of life, accepted all that is. The cold
blows through her tattered screen, and keeps
her up all night. She ages, she grows old
in life, and in the end it's life she reaps.
Those ferries stuck in ice--they're not what she
became. She chose the hard way to be free.

Niwa, The Garden (for NT)

by Ed Hack

Niwa, she says. The garden always waits
for you, is there inside the silence you
long for. The path will lead you to a gate
where Bamboo chat in dialect the news
the wind conceals. And round into the sun
you'll walk as light leaps into emptiness
where everything is born. There is no sum,
no calculation there, no need to guess,
no right or wrong. There's just the path that flows,
the boulders where the kami live, the stones
that are the water's secret self that glow
in ocean glints and shimmer into foam.
Be still and you'll be there, she says. It waits
for you to walk the path, come through the gate.

Najimi

by Ed Hack

The winds are busy in the trees. Some give
so easily, the feathered ones. Some nod,
while other's don't, the old, who've outlived
centuries, gnarled and weatherworn, the gods
right after Time began, who gave a shape
to emptiness, perhaps are emptiness,
as Lao Tzu insists. The Garden shows fate's
signature--shadows, ripples, wind's caress
or ripping teeth, najimi, balance, in
what's here--old stone against the water's play,
the light and dark, the soft and fierce, the yin
and yang of all there is, not one lost stray
is possible, and all things on their way
to something else, for nothing ever stays.