The Calculus of Now

In the calculus of now, nothing can 

be learned, no process to create       

a model of some A plus some B

or some A minus some B equaling 

a definite C.  Taught the way poems

and plays and stories teach that impeccable 

cosmic logic beyond the realms 

of logic though with the certainty 

of conclusions.  Who can say how now,

with its delightful, insidious results 

comes to be?  Not me.  I can say,  “This

is this and that is that” but know nothing 

of how I am in this moment, know there

is no way I could have predicted

the certainty that is occurring.                             

Not that I believe in some divine plan,

but I do believe in some divine mystery

that keeps seducing me into here

and now and the next moment to follow.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

Exposed

I cannot read certain authors

without feeling ashamed.

As if all my flaws are exposed.

 

The gift of writing 

is the double-entendre:

what is said,

what is meant,

the layered lexicography 

of experience,

the masterful placement 

of what fits.

 

I keep reading – pissed, pleased, perplexed.

 

Not to hear the echoes of words,

not to follow the Ariadne thread –

blasphemy.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

North of Dawn

The cloud to the north of the sun

is a color no name can name.

 

I refrain from the blasphemy 

of trying but not the praise

 

I feel in being in the presence

of the unnamable before my eyes,

 

within my heart like a prayer 

enticing me to dance what 

 

is beyond the realm of words

but not experience.   My love

 

for words is only equaled by my

distrust of them to capture what

 

may not be caught like the color 

of that cloud just north of the sunrise.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

The Janitor

The Janitor

     “a caretaker of a building”

I never cleaned a church.  There was

always a janitor, some parishioner

who took care of that, cut the grass,

shoveled snow.  They seemed to work 

as a team, my father and the janitor.

Dad would spend his time searching 

scripture for the next sermon, counselling 

broken hearts, visiting the sick, praying.

Weddings, funerals.  And the janitor 

would come in midweek. Begin in the Sunday 

school rooms dusting, sweeping, wiping

down, picking up.  Notes written hastily.

A quarter, a dollar discarded he’d put in his

pocket to put in an envelope then put the money

in the offering.  “The forgotten offering,” he’d

say, laugh.  Then move into the sanctuary where

discarded dreams sat in pews, distracted thoughts

lingered, prayers said never intended to go higher

than the ceiling.  Week after week he’d clean.

And on Sunday morning, third pew back on the left

hand side from the pulpit, he and his family would sit. 

Dad would enter the platform from a side door, glance 

first to Randolph and nod,smile slightly as if saying, “Good job.”  

The congregation left behind what they wanted to and what

they didn’t know they left Dad and Randolph picked up.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com