ROBERT WARD |
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Robert R Ward grew up in the North Santiam valley foothill country east of Salem, Oregon. Hard-scrabble years, followed by a hitch in the US Army. In 1966 he moved to Seattle, Washington. Except for an educational hiatus from 1983-86, he has been employed in various aspects of Bio-Medical research since then. In 1985 he received a Masters degree in English (Creative Writing) from the University of Washington; the senior Professor on his thesis committee wrote of his thesis: "There may be an active intelligence operating here, but…" With his English degree and an inquiring mind, he found employment with the Sleep Research Group, part of the University of Washington’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, where he continues to work.
CONTENTS
Who Defines the Limits of Abstraction? A Great Circle Does Not Define the Intersection of Two Spheres Every Good Ending Contains Another Beginning An Atlas Is A Collection of Maps Some Memories Lie Beyond the Edge of Any Map Definition Is More Than Drawing In the Edges Every Action Implies a Similar If Opposite Reaction Coordinate Systems Current Theories Remain an Inadequate Explanation of the Data Complex Magnitudes Are Relative To the Distance of the Observer Principia Mathematica Surprise! Once Again White Rabbits Have Invaded Your Dreams
WHO DEFINES THE LIMITS
OF ABSTRACTION?
Vertical iron bars and horizontal straps
interlock, form a grid, rectangular
and intractable. This quadrilateral surface
intersects another at right angles, two
planes defining a space, a coordinate
system within which, with proper
indexing, every point could be precisely
located. The tiger pacing behind those bars,
whose feet, the size of saucers, silently
measure, step by step, a universe
almost too small to be mensurable,
yes, the silent tiger, has identified
all the points within the empty solid
of his space and waits. He knows,
this memorable tiger, in the deep truth
of his heart, that dense trees still
drape limbs over dusty trails leading
down toward water, sweet and cool
in the late afternoon. Were he to rest
his supple bulk on such a limb,
a thirsty roebuck, unwary in the mild
light might stray beneath.
Slowly the tiger's eyes close, slowly
open. The man standing before the cage,
watching, blinks. His wary smile is wry
as he remembers: once, on an October
afternoon twenty-five years before, high
up the headwaters of Ollalie Creek,
he had met a mountain lion, a cougar,
eye to eye, without intervening
*
A GREAT CIRCLE DOES NOT DEFINE
THE INTERSECTION OF TWO SPHERES
Together, each night, we go to bed,
ships adrift on sleep's intangible
ocean; a tiny convoy crossing territory
unmapped, unknown. Moving west,
always west, following the sun
toward a distant sea, a wagon crosses
a sea of grasses, a milk cow tethered
to the tail gate, a brass bell tolling
every fourth step. Or, earlier, smaller
wagons moving west toward a smaller sea;
bright wagons, these, and the dark, dark-
eyed men who drive them dangerous,
the knives at their belts having drawn
many souls. These men know steel, learned
when their fathers' fathers' fathers walked
in the deep valleys beneath the Himalayas,
when wives learned the Threefold Way:
illusion, number, and truth. Their knowing
might be shells from a long dry sea,
dug from a mountain top: still they whisper
of ancient winds stirring banners,
the bright brassy hue of battle. And so,
to Damascus and beyond, until the great
Western sea, whose most western shore
is the east of all easts, is reached
and the great circle comes closed. And every
night we now sail outward, pushing
toward territory that might give landfall,
memories of brass and steel our compass rose.
*
EVERY GOOD ENDING CONTAINS
ANOTHER BEGINNING
Across the incalculable desert, whose high
vacant wastes drink up the unwary,
a caravan moves carefully; horses,
camels laden with evident goods, take
one steady step after another. Brass bells
laced to their harness make small music,
harmonize with the heated winds;
to the south and east, great peaks
support the sky, their jagged fingers
ripping scant clouds to shreds. Silent
men, robed and dark, ride the horses,
watch the unfolding terrain with eyes
that cut through every pretense. They
carry weapons worn with use; the birds
that circle high above their steady progress
have sharp eyes too. Day after day
they ride in silence; their journey long
and tempers short, death already too likely,
they avoid everything but the obvious.
This circumspection proceeds from common
sense: the sword is a powerful
argument for civility. At night, in safe
camp, they drink bitter coffee,
talk of the stars, the sea; sometimes
travelers share tales, information;
imagination will father other caravans,
press out toward continents rumored
and rich. These men value many
currencies, not all carried in a jewelled
purse and they have memorized many
maps. When, at journey's end, in the towns
and bazaars, they trade their goods, they then
walk amidst tables of goods, pyramids
of oranges and lemons, silk in brilliant
bolts, brighter than the rare birds, whose
stellar songs ring above the shrieks of vendors,
amidst the fruits of their labors, their eyes
seeing everything. They return home
thus, lay their swords within reach
and sit with their children, sleep in the dark
glowing eyes of beautiful wives. Water falls
through a fountain, a breeze stirs; time
and they hold themselves, for a moment, still.
But the desert air never rests, nor imagination:
the last journey, the last map will never be made.
*
AN ATLAS IS A COLLECTION OF MAPS
Dark streets form a grid
where anything can happen; splintery
neon shows up broken faces, shattered
illusion; quick movements there startle.
Predators prowl alleys, canyons, even
shallow channels, illusionfish
swim alone, even at night. When highways
probe into the foothills, pass through
the abrupt mountains, their rising turns
are carefully calculated. Raw stone weathers
slowly, its sharp edges always a reminder.
Stretching and stretching, roads reach out,
find one place or another, beads along
a string, then end in the oddest places. Almost
all these roads lead away from home, but
a mindful traveler can make his way
back. Bearing enough burden, a pilgrim
carries no more than he needs; he sees
the hawk, the sparrow, and in the tender
fields, the flocks of sheep that slowly graze
before their trip to market. How often the noisy
bazaar riots with color; spices cling to heated
air, dance above grills. Just come in from
a far country, a man in white thinks
of his mother's kitchen, the place that is home.
*
SOME MEMORIES LIE BEYOND
THE EDGE OF ANY MAP
The world lies at one end,
or the other, of the road that passes
your doorstep. High mountains, strata
buckled upward like paper crumpled
in angry fists, wait out there; forests
replete with stunning birds whose feathers
would ornament the true love of your heart,
match her eyes' silken green, the red
pulse of her blood. Still, you take awkward
notes, pretend that your atlas has been
stolen, or mislain. Not fear exactly,
of course not, and anyway, the atlas,
its mere existence, proves that all
the necessary roads are known, destinations
all too commonplace. Perhaps this is true.
On the other hand, when spring first
comes fair, and tulips make their spear-
headed assault on the sun, the running air
often carries a hint of spice you
do not recognize, smoke from a wood
not found in the neighborhood lumber
yard. The lawn needs mowing; the car
could be washed, but, you have even dreamed
of a spring in the foothills to the east,
a spring that wells up through broken stone, spills
down a mossy rock face, whose bright water restores
memory. Perhaps you will remember having drunk
there before; if not, you will find the road there
still leads both back to, and away from, your door.
*
DEFINITION IS MORE THAN DRAWING
IN THE EDGES
Empty, a desert void, the sea sweeps
away to a horizon as precise as the curve
of a microscope's lens, leaving the small
ship to follow. This ship, its sails straining
to hold the wind, has sailed so far
that it has fallen off the map, could be
near the end of the world. Sailors tanned
by wind, sun, time, walk carefully, listen
for roaring water, a nearing abyss.
They have sailed beyond every known
territory, beyond imagination, fear; this
vast openness has become the shape
of everything, the stuff that forms dream.
Only their hearts hold true declination,
wife and daughter, lover, become the rose
their compass traces and so they go
on, following a heading that may lead
some place, and will, they hope, finally
bring them home. The sun rises and sets,
but their food supply is the only clock
they need, landfall or starvation,
sunrise or sunset. And when the horizon
cracks apart, reveals an island, or some
unknown continent, they will smile, rest
their hands on one another's shoulder
momentarily. Then they will think of home:
fire on a hearth, and winter barred beyond
a door; a daughter or wife, the dark-
haired barmaid at The Three Bells, a
tankard of October ale, and so
thinking, they will reprovision, fill the water
casks, prepare to sail again, eventually to
home, back onto the map, bringing
with them charted waters, found land;
this way blank spaces are mapped, voids filled.
*
EVERY ACTION IMPLIES A SIMILAR
IF OPPOSITE REACTION
Engaged by mathematics' clear
and supple constructions, the mind
turns inward, follows a logic's linear
reach, a road which never diverges.
In this the moon almost agrees; ever
circular, her center follows a path no ant
could trace, an arc flying across
the night, never-ending. No mean
feat, the moon's memorable returning
month by month, one shape recalling
another. Or the sun. As a small boy might
swing a blue-green ball on a string, the Sun
holds each planet's tether in its wide
turning, round and round, filling
the long void, steady as light's sweet
sweep through space. The whole of it
can be held, night and day repeating
and the turning years gathered,
as a thought, one thing containing the other,
or given as a smile, a flower, any
gift whose giving is not calculated.
*
SOME DEFINITIONS TRANSCEND
COORDINATE SYSTEMS
Forever parallel, even in the sharpest
switchbacks, steel rails reach for a vanishing
point, abstract as a study in perspective.
The woman on the platform is abstracted,
her wide-brimmed hat invites the wind
to play; its slim band is the same cool blue
as her dress, coordinates well with her smart
jacket. She waits, listensWhistles
echo through the covered station; trains
select tracks, then move toward destinations.
The woman has selected a destination; her
ticket is in her hand; thereon a name
which she quietly recites to herself, calling
forth images of falling water, trees that sedately
comb the air for arrant shadows, and peace. Parallel
tracks stretch from where she now stands to the place
she intends to visit; this can be diagrammed,
made into a map. What cannot be mapped:
her destination will be her vanishing point;
the tracks come and go; she will remain, and go
on into an infinite distance, so far from this
place, that, finally, her perspective will extend
beyond parallels, encompass meeting points.
*
CURRENT THEORIES REMAIN AN INADEQUATE
EXPLANATION OF THE DATA
Even the densest atoms hold little
more than nothing at their core;
those tightly bound nuclear particles,
definitive hadrons, exist only as intersections,
extra-dimensional knots in an unfolding
process we perceive as space-time.
Planets are hardly better, all that
solidity an illusion, cool wisps
of a star that got the better of itself.
But think of that, the lovely redhead
whose wide hips exert an attraction that
could easily draw you into orbit
was once truly radiant, her light perhaps
the mark that alien mariners made
their course by in some finny past.
But for now, her smile is the brightest
beacon in your world. What does
it matter that four billion years
from now the sun will sweep every-
thing away with one cosmic wink?
The grass grows greenly, the sun merely
warm; her hand remains firmly in yours,
certain as the equation of matter and light.
*
COMPLEX MAGNITUDES ARE RELATIVE
TO THE DISTANCE OF THE OBSERVER
Some maps are made only
for the mind: these territories are narrow
but very deep. In their complex existence
they appear as if both inside and outside, as
the strange spaces between atoms
and stars resemble one another; only
the curved path of light, the dense notation
of tensors link them, hold everything together.
When the geometer shaped the earth,
three dimensions framed river and mountain;
he found the day's round movement time
enough. Once numbers were unbound
they bred and bred: large, larger, small,
smaller until this multiplication overran
reason and territories outnumbered the possibility
of maps. But numbers never add up,
their sums fall short of sunrise,
the supple turning of a sunflower's heavy
head: numbers remain inside the mind,
cannot bridge the complex distance
that separates heartbreak and laughter.
*
PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA
How cleverly the hidden green grows
redder holding the summer close; full,
the fall looms, a gradual going when greens
have gone golden and beyond. The fall:
a sudden tilt into space, open,
dismaying. Distances, no longer planar,
become dizzying, dimensional; time compresses
into seconds, fractional and divisive,
when, once, the sun's slow arc
was distinctly fine. No bite can be unbitten;
fine white teeth will never forget the tart
juices' quick flow, nor the brain its
deft formulation, the thought that holds
the round rolling planets close, keeps
the tides' lunar balance. These are only two
coordinates, however, in a system complex enough
to hold both apples and Newton comfortably
*
SURPRISE! ONCE AGAIN WHITE RABBITS
HAVE INVADED YOUR DREAMS
The interior, numinal world entertains,
makes your dreams dance the quaint
arabesques of disinclination, dislocation;
you could not catch that white rabbit
if you tried. And as for the watch--
a ship's chronometer keeps perfect time;
the captain, or the first mate, one of the ship's
officers at any rate, shoots the sun
(not an act of hubris, but of sober and
calculated scientific rigor) with sextant
at precisely the right moment--oh! accurate
timepiece!--and everyone on board
knows, even in the hot dreamy dog day
doldrums, where he is at. Latitude then,
fixed as the movement of earth around sun,
inflexibly. Cruel chains. Galley slaves knew
a fixed orbit when they sat in one.
But the lions had it no easier, once
confronted with the idea of Christianity
(just think, all that masonry. those suitable
stones reaching upward, a babble of adoration)
they knew the veldt would never again be
enough. Taste. And time. Those ticks,
grains of sand trickling down a rabbit
hole, infinite, infinitesimal, so deep.
That's how it is with dreams: confused,
they ramble, climb all over the place
until the alarm goes off, and that first
cup of coffee sets everything right again.