Month: August 2016

Late Summer

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

Dog Days 2

Cool and lush of spring –
memories in shades of green
saturated life, complex form,
growth from a dark womb
beneath our feet, bearing us.

Summer follows in lighted waves,
early morning until the evening star.
Swells of shimmering warmth pour
through the ripening garden.

Late summer withering heat
wilts the barely tended
unwatered places barren brown
in needles and fallen stems
lying quiet in decay.
The harvest comes to be
uprooted, prepared, devoured.

Portland, Oregon – August 27, 2016

Photo is my own, taken this date.

Eyes Unclouded By Longing

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Searching for words
to express the delusion
of longing – its promise
and long fall into sadness
as the sun lowers
behind a house and a fence
as a spider clings to a web
on the window above a shelf
on which resides Maxwell’s
“On Poetry.”

Yet! Here are words, now
in awakening present!
Not longing fulfilled
but me in lamplight
with the darkening sky
and the spider who moves
with the breeze flowing
through the open summer window.

Portland, Oregon – August 23, 2016

Title is from the Tao Te Ching, #1, translation by the Rev. Dr. Raymond B. Blakney, 1955.

Seal Rock Morning

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Seal Rock Mornng

I know what is out there –
the ocean and its profound depth
pounding in waves against headlands
rolling in swells beyond horizons.

This morning an enveloping gray
shrouds the deathless reaches –
waves press upon the shore,
white billow sprays follow
perfect curls of falling water shattering
as blue crystal on crystalline fine grains of sand;
beyond, the slow rise and fall of deep water
tidal motion in moon drift.

What is faith if not remembering
brilliant blue beneath an azure sky?
More than this.  Nothing without this –
the implacable gray veil
masking infinite swells,
blue in the colored world
gray on an oceanside morning
black in the deep night sky.

Central Oregon Coast – August 20, 2016

Photo is my own, taken August 20, 2016 over Seal Rock beach, Oregon.

Birds of Existence

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My past and future exist
nowhere other than as birds
who from the fountain fly
away as the water pours
in wings and they are gone.

Where did they go these birds
of existence flying away?
They were mine I thought
captive somewhere inside me
trembling and I thought it breath
exhaling memories, breathing
in all that I wanted to be –
yet they fly away from this sacred
moment as currents of air
ruffling the overarching leaves.

Portland, Oregon – August 15, 2016

In memory of my father who passed away on this date in 1994.

Beautiful Teachers

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

Some believed, knew you
in their own heart
without reason cared
for you when you were
seven going on eight.

Always, in your memory, they
knew, felt kindness, saw
your need, kept your face
before theirs.

How could they remember
that small face – my name, me
being in the world when
their world was full
without me, my squinty eyes
chewed fingernails, anxious being
even before grade three?
How did she know I needed
her smile, her recognition of me
when there were so many others?

How she did it I do not know
she did not say it in words.
But if I raised my hand
among the others, if she did not
call my name, I saw her face
see mine, her smile lingering fleet,
calling another but I knew
she saw me and I knew
I was there.

Portland, Oregon – August 7, 2016

Dedicated to wonderful teachers, especially to my second grade teacher, of happy memory, Mrs. Samuelson (1960).  Twenty-five years later, after having been gone from my home town for many years, I came back to share an important moment in my life.  She was there, in the front row, all white hair, in her eighties.  I was so grateful for her being there but I had to ask, “Do you remember me, from 2nd grade?” “Of course I remember you.” And I had absolutely no doubt that she did.

La-Di-Da

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Others, when I was young, seemed la-di-da –
before them rich, full lives
strong, beautiful and confident, lithe
knowing the words, numbers and the tunes.
I watched them run over our springtime fields
hair flying loose in the warm greening sun
without blemish, wrinkle, or scar.
Youthful friends of mine they –
they were, they were, la-di-da, la-di-da.

I see them still gathered
in fields long gone, kicking
through autumn fallen leaves.
Their years succumb to days
lost in a forgetting haze
when they were young and la-di-da.
I did not know them after all
Like me, trying to find their ways
wandering – la-di-da, la-di-da, la-di-da.

Portland, Oregon – August 2, 2016

The Oxford Dictionary (Oxforddictionaries.com) definition of “la-di-da” is “pretentious or snobbish.” I can’t argue with the Oxford Dictionary people, except that this is not my meaning for the phrase.  I take the sense of it as used by the Diane Keaton character in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall.  There is no definition.  It is just a sense of carefree or careless.  At least that is what it means to me.