Buddha of old year
Offers Buddha of New Year
Sublime suffering.
Christ and Buddha speak
Through pages of passing years
Of winter and change.
Sun and winter wind
Wish to come inside my home.
I will go outside.
December 31, 2015 – Portland, Oregon
For now you may love –
your child held against the wintry cold,
your dreams flickering before you in the fire.
Would you could hold him forever as on his day of birth
when he first looked into your eyes.
But, O Mother, though tears await you
and this son of yours be taken from you,
you will never forget his tender child’s touch,
his first crying or his last;
all his many words spoken to you
after a day of play or from a bitter cross.
On that day, Mary, as on the first,
you shall be joy-filled, God-bearing,
remembered with him for all time,
and we will join you in your song of praise.
1983-84 – Menlo Park, California
Fr. Peter Wm. Gray was a teacher of mine. In 1983 or 84 we collaborated on a Christmas card. His artwork, above, we did not use and I don’t know why because it is stunningly evocative. My poem accompanied the card with another piece of his artwork, also good, but not so striking as the piece seen here.
There are leaves in the Garden of Gethsemane
that grow old, wither, die, and fall to the ground.
Joseph walked among them.
She waited with fearful longing,
her face, filled with joy,
her hands, trembling with fear.
She whispered words, like falling leaves,
carrying Joseph’s heart to the earth.
He did not take his eyes from her face.
He walked about in her dark eyes,
walked among the trees of the garden,
tasted the fruit of the vine;
drinking deep intoxicating draughts.
Her hands stilled,
she smiled.
He raised his eyes to the heavens,
burst into laughter,
and shattered the starry night!
We do not know much else about Joseph –
he was a leaf in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Winter/Christmas – 1988, Las Vegas, Nevada
Long strings of lights fly through our winter nights
held by tall bamboo in Alex and Laura’s front yard.
Three pillars of light for the darkest days of the year,
waving long brightly colored arms in the gusting winds of December.
They greet us with joyful light
on this solemn day of long dark hours.
A sign.
Here comes Karen, bringing the mail,
bundled up for a long day’s journey –
rain hat, boots, postal service blue rain coat.
She bring bills, flyers, and magazines,
in spite of hard rain and blowing cold.
Hail, Karen and fare-thee-well this day!
A sign.
Upstairs, I’ve got my down coat on
looking out the window across Ann’s garden.
Where did all your flower’s go, your iris and your rose?
Gone with the winter winds and rain.
There’ll be another time to plant and prune, Ann,
today is a day for heralding the coming of light.
Portland, Oregon – December 2015
Which-a-way, O Soul, this-a-year?
Which way leads to the clearing,
which to the thicket of thorn and nettle?
Not all the same, not all these falling years
lined with green shoots and golden spinning leaves.
Put on your coat, O Soul, your dark down layers.
Open the door, for she comes and she waits.
Step to the days, past the lighted trees and frozen angels.
Here now the green shoots,
there the fresh leaves and flowers of spring,
here the lush and fragrant stilling heat,
there the golden spilling leaves
in pools of ruffled water.
Look up, O Soul, awaken!
She comes again, clothed in night,
at her feet the path, before her gaze the wintry fields.
Which-a-way, O Soul, this-a-year?
Seattle, Washington – December 2011
Leaves, waiting, cling to cold branches
on trees beside a watercourse,
restless, brittle, resolute.
They twirl in solemn anticipation,
green life gone; spring breath lost –
swift passing season.
Brilliant light sweeps across frozen mesquite and sage,
gathers in rock, cliff, wash, basin,
severs – quiet, unknown mystery – the last hold.
They come down – wintry life swirling in the desert wind.
___________________
Reno, Nevada – 1989
“We can’t predict the fruits of our labor; we can’t even know if we’ll really go through with it. Gratitude requires an unpaid debt, and we will be motivated to proceed only so long as the debt is felt.” (pp. 65-66)
“Having accepted what has been given to him – either in the sense of inspiration or in the sense of talent – the artist often feels compelled, feels the desire, to make the work and offer it to an audience. The gift must stay in motion….Mary Sarton writes: ‘There is only one real deprivation, I decided this morning, and that is not to be able to give one’s gift to those one loves most…The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up.'” (pp. 188-189)
C
From The Gift – Lewis Hyde
Mr. Hyde’s book is a “defense of the value of creativity.” It is not only for the dedicated writer or artist, but for any of us who believe that creativity and gift is at the heart of our being and flourishing in our circumstances. When we cease to create, in our own unique ways, and when we cease to offer our creation or give it away, we lose our heart, our compassion, and we begin to feel that there is not enough anymore, so that we must hoard what little or much we possess. Creation is the understanding that there is more, always more, and giving it away brings the increase.
Some years, Advent arrives quietly
like a mouse who hides behind walls
leaving behind crumbs of rain swept days,
nights when the moon passed through broken clouds,
warm evenings and starlit mornings.
Other years Advent arrives like a crazy mouse
who runs back and forth before our eyes
during a well-planned and lit cocktail party.
We were not ready for him –
his perfect absurdity and his insouciant bravura.
We excuse him to our guests who stand on chairs
hoping they will forgive us and return some day.
This year? That wild mouse!
The extraordinary mouse who assails the year
with babies, houses, and sickness;
awakenings in the night,
hammering in the daylight.
We opened the door of the new year and in he ran.
There was little we could do but watch and scamper from chair to chair.
Seattle, Washington – December 2006
It is now the solemn season of peace
when we wait for the Holy One;
wait for a sacred stillness and loving-kindness
a peace beyond all imagining
to be born within us.
We are the Holy Ones
who give birth to the peace for which we long.
We pray for our enemies,
for men and women –
today in foreign cities
tonight in our own towns –
whose thoughts are tangled up in a violent story
whose ending is too terrible to say.
We bring them, especially them,
the peace we seek.
They are wounded, fearful, angry, and afraid
as we are.
They are confused, frustrated, and overwhelmed,
like us, so like us.
They are mourning the loss of someone
or some ideal of a life they thought could be theirs,
just as we mourn our dead and our broken dreams.
They are strangers in a strange land.
We pray for them.
We welcome them in our deep and open hearts,
hearts not crushed in spite of reasons to be crushed,
hearts that still have a place for our enemies.
If they do not have a welcoming place in us
then they have no place at all.
If they have no place at all
they will bring the fruit of their emptiness to bear
in dark and consuming violence.
Our suffering will continue.
This is the day, a day of waiting
to see whether our hearts will open or close.
The season asks us to choose.
Portland, Oregon – December 2015
In winter I must take care
or darkness will overwhelm me.
I will forget the silence of the earth
spinning in the glistening heavens.
I will see clouds without rain
darkness without stars
sunlight without warmth.
In Winter I must be vigilant
or I will lose my way
in thickets of tangled thought.
I will forget to walk out the door,
to pick up one foot after another.
I will be drawn back in, out of the rain,
by a cunning, persistent lure.
I will forget that always, always,
I am leaving some thing, some place behind –
clutching at my clothing, dragging at my steps,
encumbering my arms, closing my eyes.
But too late. Even for the past –
what was or was not – too late.
Again, again and again, it is Advent.
The coming of some small thing –
some laughter behind me,
some shouting around the corner,
whispers in the eaves, scratches on the door.
A sudden turning –
a pause, a listen, a quickening pulse.
A gathering of will in the face
of something sacred, scared, scarred,
wrapped in wind, rain, cold
like a god forgotten
who will not forget,
pursuing through the days and nights.
Seattle, Washington – December 2003
In Cascadia 