Archive for the ‘Existential Moment’ Category
Image by kenne
This morning I read an article by Jorge Guerra Pires on the question of whether the universe requires a supernatural designer often centers on the idea of “fine-tuning.” Proponents of the Strong Anthropic Principle (SAP) argue that the delicate balance of cosmological and physical constants provides “irrefutable proof of a creator God”. This argument posits that life-prohibiting universes are vastly more probable than ours, suggesting that our existence — which mathematician Roger Penrose calculated rests on odds of $1$ in $10^{10^{123}}$ possible states — is “wildly improbable” by chance.
Rather than responding directly on the fine-tuning argument, I decided to write a poem:
At the edge of the observable,
light runs out of breath.
Beyond it waits
either an architect
whose blueprints were constants,
or a vast ensemble
of unseen realms
rolling cosmic dice.
Both are grand.
Both are unprovable.
Yet here we are—
a thin film of consciousness
spread across a pale planet
that shouldn’t exist
and yet does.
The mystery is not which answer is correct.
The mystery is that
we were given the question.
— kenne
Playing The Street Walker Role In Bisbee — Image by kenne
Looking for Business
the Copper Queen hums behind her,
old ghosts drinking warm beer,
laughing at the living.
she checks her lipstick
in a classic car window—
there’s music from the bar,
the kind that makes a man
believe in one more mistake.
she’s not young, not old,
just caught somewhere
between the promise of morning
and the price of staying alive.
the evening leans in close,
and business is business
looking for an afternoon quicky.
— kenne
Hose Bib — Image by kenne
Hose Bib Metaphor of Life
there’s a small sadness
in calling the plumber
for something you’d have solved
with half a hangover
and the wrong tools
a few years ago.
but the plumber’s a good guy.
he fixes it quick,
smiles,
says it wasn’t a big deal.
I nod, pay him,
–watch him drive off
with my former life
rattling in the back
of his truck.
— kenne
Joy In Her Existential Moment — Image by kenne
Ode to Reading
To read is to consent
to a kind of possession—
a consciousness overlapping yours,
momentarily indistinguishable.
Each sentence rearranges
your sense of the world,
as if the architecture of thought
could be borrowed,
then returned, slightly changed.
We call it solitude,
but it is not loneliness.
It is the purest form of dialogue—
one mind recognizing
the shape of another.
Books do not speak;
they inhabit.
You close one,
and still it whispers
behind your ribs.
Image by kenne
Life will test you—
with loss,
with longing,
with the long silence
of waiting.
But you are
not meant
to bow forever.
Stand,
even if trembling.
Walk,
even if slowly.
For every forward step
is an act of becoming.
— kenne
Illusion — Image by kenne
Invented Frames
We live inside the scaffolds we’ve drawn—
lines of thought mistaken for walls,
for safety, for truth.
Every morning, we reassemble them:
beliefs, titles,
the quiet architecture of purpose.
We speak as if the frameworks were air,
as if their edges weren’t of our own making—
words pressed into meaning,
meaning pressed into habit.
But look closely:
the seams glow faintly,
the way a photograph
burns at its borders—
revealing not nothing,
but the hand that held the match.
To see that,
to accept the illusion and still go on—
that is the closest thing
to being.
— kenne
Desert Reflection On the Water Above Sabino Dam — Image by kenne
Is life just a reflection of what is real?
I get it, but I don’t get it.
I stride the world silent to others,
yet to you I unfold like a long summer evening.
You know the tides within me,
the rise, the hush, the shifting shore.
What I withhold from the multitudes
I share freely with the one who holds my hand.
— kenne
Climate Change II by kenne
From space, the planet cracks—
thin blue seams opening
like a whispered grief
the universe can finally hear.
My old friend, Tom Markey, On The Beach at Vidanta Puerto Peñasco (04/11/13) — Image by kenne
(Tom and I continued to walk, hike, and travel together til his death on August 17, 2022)
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
— from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
On This Rainy Day — Image by kenne
On This Rainy Day. . .
. . . I share the following:
. . . he went his way,
Down among the Lost People like Dante, down
To the stinking fosse where the injured
Lead the ugly life of the rejected.
And showed us what evil is: not as we thought
Deeds that must be punished, but our lack of faith,
Our dishonest mood of denial,
The concupiscence of he oppressor.
And if something of the autocratic pose,
The paternal strictness he distrusted, still
Clung to his utterance and features,
It was a protective imitation
For one who lived among enemies so long:
If often he was wrong and at times absurd,
To us he is no more a person
Now but a whole climate of opinion. . . .
— from In Memory of Sigmund Freud by W.H. Auden
Girl Atop Windy Point Pinnacle — Image by kenne
Windy Point Girl
She’s up there now,
short-shorts and sunlight,
heart beating faster
than the climb.
Wind takes her hair,
makes a banner of it—
victory in a wild language
only mountains understand.
Below, Tucson sprawls,
small as toy houses,
streets like veins
spilling into desert.
She smiles,
pushing back her hair,
as if the world itself
were hers to love,
and for a moment—
I swear it is.
— kenne
Monument Valley — Image by kenne
Not Till We Are Lost
Not till we are lost
do we learn the song
the dust’s been singing—
how red earth remembers
every footprint,
even the ones
that never came home.
The sky don’t answer—
it listens.
— kenne
The Dance of Life by Ann Morris in Sculpture Woods On Lummi Island, Washington
“Dance of Life”
She rides his head—
not in conquest,
but in surrender to his power,
her thighs molded to its bronze,
her back arched
like a bow strung by breath.
The beast below—
all muscle and stillness,
its rage quieted into form—
bears her weight
as if memory itself
had learned to carry desire.
Light drips down her flank,
touching metal,
touching dream—
and for a moment,
stone, flesh, and want
are one continuous motion.
— kenne
Photo-artistry by kenne
The Photographer
He lifts the camera
as if confessing—
the lens a small mercy
between himself and beauty.
Each click
is a way of saying I see you,
and also I can’t bear to lose you.
In the mountains,
he photographs what he loves,
and what he knows
will never belong to him.
Mt. Lemmon Autumn — Image by kenne
Golden Stillness
High on Mt. Lemmon,
the leaves burn gold—
not in dying,
but in remembering their light.
Below, the San Pedro Valley
breathes in silence,
a vast mirror
where the sun learns to meditate.
I feel the boundary dissolve—
between mountain and man,
between seeing and being seen.
The wind passes through me,
whispering:
nothing ends,
it only changes color.
