Violet gray
winter abandoning
bird trembling
in violet gray.
Stones in desert foliage
speak of Christ
violet flesh
gray eyes
troubled, fearful.
Fire on the water
water violet gray
in the morning.
Hymns, antiphonally,
Gregorian tones
in violet gray.
Hush! Hush!
whispered season
a waiting, afraid
of violet bursting
gray emanating
dubious death
questioned arising.
Menlo Park, California – March 9, 1984
Lenten Series
I am alone with the quiet and the chilling sunshine
the ticking clock and wind-blown light
nothing to do that must be done.
I’ve left my work life behind me
paid days of anxious scribbling;
spreadsheets, meetings, report drafts, coffee
while I gazed out my cubicle window over the Salish Sea
plied by ferries moving white and green across the sea’s deep blue.
Or, I looked long into the dense fog of winter dark early mornings –
fog creeping silent up to my own window high above
so that neither ferry nor sea could I behold –
just a gray shimmer quavering shadow,
ghostly hovering there before my eyes,
suggestive of an unknown, future, less scripted life.
I watched, as the mindless gray gave way to a full and lustrous winter crisp moon
crackling white in the cold dark morning.
Its brilliance washed the water’s expanse with a rippling shimmer of moonlight,
illumining the churned and opalescent wakes of ferries,
shining as if on ships making their ways to heaven across a vast sea
to where the moon itself lives when it sets over the western horizon.
Oh, how I then complained of my tedious days of work,
the numbing aspect of time ground to a halt.
My companions allowed me to expound at length,
on the baffling politic of management concern!
These are such companions as one needs in life,
who see you through the hours of countless working days
and are content to have you return again the next
in spite of all manner of gruff, and you understand they are true –
the good fortune of work, forgiveness there, and a task, well done at the last.
Still, it is the moon over the sea
the sun’s shine on the mountains snow-capped peaks
the ferries slow movement over the water
and the curling, implacable fog I remember
from the days when I was paid for the work I did
unlike today, with its ticking clock, its windblown light
and with nothing to do that must be done.
Portland, Oregon – February 23, 2016
The picture, above, is of a small portion of the Salish Sea, otherwise known as Puget Sound, on which sits the great city of Seattle. The photo was taken through what was my cubicle window by a colleague who now claims that view. I thank her for this.
If I say, as the title of my site indicates, that I write in Cascadia, I must be sure I understand what that means. I must want to be defined by a place so beautiful, but for what reason? Why not say, simply, “Tom Writes” and let it be done with? Is my own beauty, such as it is, not sufficient for the task – the creative and necessary task of my days? I suppose it is justification enough to say that, as a writer, I require a muse. Cascadia is a stirring muse; she is a breathtaking representative of all the muses of my life – person, place, or word. Let me then be old-fashioned and offer an Ode to Cascadia.
I looked down from a high tower
into your valleys, your mountain green meadows
wildflowers all abloom in abandon
and saw there my own self
wandering, infinitesimal, on a trail below.
A path wandered by the black bear,
by the ancestors who called the mountain home
named it, Ti’Sqaq – Who touches the sky.
The rivers and salmon were their friends –
the grandmothers and grandfathers
I cannot claim as my own.
I saw you walking there below the broken cloud layer
underneath the great trees
wide, so that you could not put your arms around them;
tall, so that you could scarce see their fringed tops –
they dwarfed your skinny frame.
You stopped beside a stream of fresh flowing water,
rock strewn freshets of clear and cold companionship-
splashed your face, dipped your hat,
sat to consume your meal.
You watched the stream rush past you,
knew it was on its way to the sea
but could not hear that distant roar –
crashing waves, billows curled, flung in windblown rain.
There the stream was lost
having found its way at last
to the place where you also were going.
Portland, Oregon – February 18, 2016
To see a picture of the tower I refer to, please see the photo, above. To see a photo of the valley that forms the inspiration for this piece, please see my About page. The trail is visible on that page. You cannot, however, see me down there.
The flag in the upper right is the proposed emblem of Cascadia.
It is curved, old, deep –
punctured, stretched, twisted.
Emptiness fills its hollow core.
A vibrant electric thrum
bumps along the walls
of this place we know –
do not want to know –
pushed behind our hidden door.
It beckons us from there –
knock, knock, knock.
Our deepest past
calls to us from remote well-springs,
life-bearing pools that seem, in dreams,
to be precipices, hidden caves, cataclysmic seas.
Silence, its name and substance,
waits for us to still, remember, open the door
to let in, at last, sweet mercy –
handmaiden of the living god
however we name her or call the holy.
Portland, Oregon – February 14, 2016
Lenten springtime-Year of Mercy
Thicket, tangled winter barren,
through which small birds pass with ease.
I cannot pass through my own thicket,
its branches every which way crossing
bending, diving, reaching,
creating celestial star tracks
floating grains of blown ash
from fire, pyre, or soul
burning days behind,
wandering from time into eternity.
Ash Wednesday – February 10, 2016
Portland, Oregon
My photo is of our snowberry (symphoricarpos) in winter.
I saw my own shadow today, briefly
in the pale, drear, moss encrusted northwest green.
It did not seem to care about winter or spring
or even that I cast it lightly.
It seemed careful, I suppose,
only for the ground over which it passed.
I was concerned about many other things.
Portland, Oregon – Groundhog Day, February 2, 2016
In Cascadia 