September 2017
David Scheler
david.scheler@gmail.com
david.scheler@gmail.com
I have a wide range of interests that include gardening, fishing, cooking, music, oil painting, and poetry. I have served as a member of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission, and my poems have been published in a number of journals, including the Aurorean, Avocet, Comstock Review, Main Street Rag, Mid-America Poetry Review, Reed, and Trestle Creek Review. I have recently reacquainted myself with the French language, and have translated over 100 of my poems into French.
Author's Note: While pursuing degrees in philosophy and art history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, I became intrigued with ancient mythology. Years later when I revisited mythology, I became interested in the mythical themes that are shared by many cultures. This led me to “The Golden Bough,” and the studies of archetypes pursued by Carl Jung and his protégé, Mary Louise van Franz. I also started to research the Tarot in terms of its history and its relationship to myth. At that point I began began writing the poems that have become this book, which I have titled “Labyrinth”—a series of 29 poems related to these ongoing myths and memes. My motivation to write it comes from an urge to explore the metaphysical rather than the epistemological nature of what we perceive, believe and profess as knowledge. The final six poems in the book feature more musings rather than the philosophical, Tarot and mythological themes contained in the first installments. The final poem is a "conclusive/inconclusive" Zen notion in the form of a haiku.
L A B Y R I N T H
P O E M S XXIII - XXVII
P O E M S XXIII - XXVII
XXIII
THE FINE LINE
She poses questions
that straddle the border
between boredom and terror.
Her vertiginous dance
floats on the disks of a scale—
life and death rest on the fulcrum
that balances weight against light.
She tries pulling the power of joy
from grief’s arid vortex,
the shadow made visible
through the command of contrast:
that space between day and the dark.
If she clings to the tightrope
she risks a miss at the journey
down side roads in starlight
or floating on backwaters.
If she lets go of the thin string
she fears collapse
like a black star
falls into the point
of infinite density.
She’s learned all of the melodies
and lines to the songs
we whistle in the dark.
Yet, she’s still uncertain
about walking that fine line
or rushing the limits
as she runs out of time
trying to realize
what she is not.
She’s been taught to take care
in feeding desire to fatness
and knows
you can’t stab a wound
to kill the pain.
XXIV
SALT-MIST PINES
Listen to the wind blow gentle.
What does the silence tell you
in the faint sighs
through icy salt-mist pines?
She whispers
like a coy lover,
a cool seductress
of the night.
Does she entice me
back to breakers,
or, like a beacon warning,
summon me from shore?
The sea-breeze, in her muffled murmurs
beckons in the salt-mist night.
Who is she
who weeps alluring pleas
suspended in the pines?
Is this voice
my haunting muse
or the old moon’s dew
that whispers secrets
through icy salt-mist pines?
XXV
TRACKS
Night is a sleepless winter;
white wind blows drifts
across a landscape
of woven shadows
cast by naked trees.
Beneath the accretion
of chill and memory,
a blood-scent swirls
across the open river.
A wolf pack hunts
in my distant howls.
XXVI
DECK OF DEFINITIONS
Deal me another hand
from your deck of definitions.
I’ve dragged my cards through razor wire;
they’re shredded from
too many hands played
in others’ assembled systems.
But you, the Queen of Swords,
safely smug on intellect’s throne;
with all the rules you’ve learned to play,
are these rules universal truths,
or controls created by myopic fools?
or are these rules you made—
just to perpetuate the game?
With a tattered deck
carried in my sack,
I wonder if my cards
can be shuffled on your table
in this game of designations.
I can bluff and even raise,
but how high are the stakes I wage,
betting on your definitions?
I’ve got another card
hidden up my battered sleeve;
I am the Joker running wild.
I could bet and even pay,
but it’s only you, Queen of Swords,
who wants to play.
I laugh at decks of definitions.
Who controls the dealer’s hands?
Spinning cards of random regulations,
do we really know the master plan?
To me it’s just a game
of made-up silly hands.
I’ll see your five and raise you ten
that I’ll play solitaire again.
I’ll see your five and raise you ten,
I cannot bluff or bet this much
and hope to win the game again.
XXVII
TEMPEST
Changing personae
like a worn-out cast
of characters, actors
in the theater of the looking glass;
I discard the Cards
as costumes of the dead.
Oh Queen of Cups,
I am only a breath,
the white fog you exhaled,
captured in the mist on the mirror.
The Deck—
scattered leaves
in the wind.
XXVIII
In Time
Plum blossoms
open
in a slow eternity
red leaves will fall
soon.
THE FINE LINE
She poses questions
that straddle the border
between boredom and terror.
Her vertiginous dance
floats on the disks of a scale—
life and death rest on the fulcrum
that balances weight against light.
She tries pulling the power of joy
from grief’s arid vortex,
the shadow made visible
through the command of contrast:
that space between day and the dark.
If she clings to the tightrope
she risks a miss at the journey
down side roads in starlight
or floating on backwaters.
If she lets go of the thin string
she fears collapse
like a black star
falls into the point
of infinite density.
She’s learned all of the melodies
and lines to the songs
we whistle in the dark.
Yet, she’s still uncertain
about walking that fine line
or rushing the limits
as she runs out of time
trying to realize
what she is not.
She’s been taught to take care
in feeding desire to fatness
and knows
you can’t stab a wound
to kill the pain.
XXIV
SALT-MIST PINES
Listen to the wind blow gentle.
What does the silence tell you
in the faint sighs
through icy salt-mist pines?
She whispers
like a coy lover,
a cool seductress
of the night.
Does she entice me
back to breakers,
or, like a beacon warning,
summon me from shore?
The sea-breeze, in her muffled murmurs
beckons in the salt-mist night.
Who is she
who weeps alluring pleas
suspended in the pines?
Is this voice
my haunting muse
or the old moon’s dew
that whispers secrets
through icy salt-mist pines?
XXV
TRACKS
Night is a sleepless winter;
white wind blows drifts
across a landscape
of woven shadows
cast by naked trees.
Beneath the accretion
of chill and memory,
a blood-scent swirls
across the open river.
A wolf pack hunts
in my distant howls.
XXVI
DECK OF DEFINITIONS
Deal me another hand
from your deck of definitions.
I’ve dragged my cards through razor wire;
they’re shredded from
too many hands played
in others’ assembled systems.
But you, the Queen of Swords,
safely smug on intellect’s throne;
with all the rules you’ve learned to play,
are these rules universal truths,
or controls created by myopic fools?
or are these rules you made—
just to perpetuate the game?
With a tattered deck
carried in my sack,
I wonder if my cards
can be shuffled on your table
in this game of designations.
I can bluff and even raise,
but how high are the stakes I wage,
betting on your definitions?
I’ve got another card
hidden up my battered sleeve;
I am the Joker running wild.
I could bet and even pay,
but it’s only you, Queen of Swords,
who wants to play.
I laugh at decks of definitions.
Who controls the dealer’s hands?
Spinning cards of random regulations,
do we really know the master plan?
To me it’s just a game
of made-up silly hands.
I’ll see your five and raise you ten
that I’ll play solitaire again.
I’ll see your five and raise you ten,
I cannot bluff or bet this much
and hope to win the game again.
XXVII
TEMPEST
Changing personae
like a worn-out cast
of characters, actors
in the theater of the looking glass;
I discard the Cards
as costumes of the dead.
Oh Queen of Cups,
I am only a breath,
the white fog you exhaled,
captured in the mist on the mirror.
The Deck—
scattered leaves
in the wind.
XXVIII
In Time
Plum blossoms
open
in a slow eternity
red leaves will fall
soon.
©2017 David Scheler
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