No Way
 
People in this world look at things mistakenly, and think that what they do not understand must be the void.  This is not the true void.  It is bewilderment.
                  —Mustashi
 
In the Russian River, in 1967, high on LSD, I cleaned out a cavity in a redwood stump and filled it with wet sand.  I pounded it in.  I saw how each tree in the forest had been laid out on its own separate crystal plane, in its own dimension.  And, picking up a small squarish rock from the stream bed, I could see myself and the clouds behind me reflected in its wet glittering micaceous surface—a rock larger on the inside, so it seemed to me, than out.
 
where
understanding
failed
ideas of God
filled in the holes
 
night sky
a million, million stars
fall
into our open eyes
sink to the bottom
 
ultimate
tanka in fives, perfectly
balanced
twists at the end
without any words



*Charles Tarlton says “I am a retired university professor from NY living now in California.  I used to teach politics, but now all I do is write verse.”