Month: November 2016

Door to Another World

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

fairy-door-1
There are doors to other worlds
where fairies live in green gardens
fly among all the flowers
feast on fare from foreign lands
hover lightly over still pools.

Emerald and sparkling places
of dreams and visions interlaced
with spaces where magic can evoke
wonder in her eyes, beholding
enchanted realms, mythic times, and love.

Have the passageways been secreted away
the thresholds steely barred
locked before the coming of gray beard
aged walker on fading narrow paths
wandering soul with stick and cap?

She will say it is not so, having keyed
the rusted lock, turned the spider webbed latch
and opened the vine-encrusted door.
“If only, Grandpa, you could see what I see,
beyond the red door in the green fields.”

Portland, Oregon – December 2, 2016

Photo, my own.  Artists?  My dear granddaughter and a Cascadian oak.

Advent – Again

/ Korin Thomas / 4 Comments

advent-pic-for-2016

This liminal season in somber tones
of rain as sounds on rooftops
dripping splashes from creaking eves
blowing swirls of drizzle around summer chairs
forgotten in the sodden backyard tangle.

These darkening hours in shades of gray
among the wilted stems and withered leaves
in a wet mess where in spring grew the green garden
budding in bright lime and lush leaves.
Now, an oozing palette of soppy yellow-brown
fused in an organic, slippery, molding life.

Advent – the threshold over which I hang
suspended between the earth and heaven –
posing still the questions I asked when,
as a child, I turned out the lamp to sleep
or, later, woke to a dark and breathless silence.

The only answer I’ve received
among all the bright or forlorn possibilities
is the answer of the season:

Wait.

Be still.

Awaken.

Portland, Oregon – Advent eve, November 27, 2016

In Memory of a Friend

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

In Seattle, rain poured down in heavy salty drops.
From my office window I watched them fall,
listened to them pound on bus windows
on the day my friend closed her lovely eyes
and let her soul drop its beloved garment
to put on a glory familiar to us all –
its brilliance does not surprise us.
She walked in her earth’s garment with grace.
When she looked at us we believed we were beloved.
In her gaze a pardon came over us like absolution
as baptismal waters flowing from a heavenly font
and we were buried with her in the delight of God’s favor –
such was her rising in the morning with the desert sun
and resting in the cool of the evening beneath the heavens.
Blessed are we to have been given a moment of sanctuary
in the place she made for us out of the tender spaces of her heart.

O you scarred and wounded world –
look upon such graces as humanity bestows
in spite of the darkness that deeply abounds.
Remember there are souls walking the earth
who, but for their masks of mortality,
are but fingers of the immortal one
clutching hold of what was, is, and will be
forever and ever.

Seattle, Washington – November 20, 2001

I wrote this when I heard of the death of a dear friend – Marsha.

The Day After

/ Korin Thomas / 6 Comments

Feeling of slow motion fall
through northwest November rain
as the world I thought I knew
passes through watery elements
washed, drowned in apocalyptic fear.
Too soon to say, know, fathom
how to remake a world, create an idea
with others from broken pieces,
fractured remains of the dark day –
now the day after.
Time and rain are tools we have
things we will need to begin.

Portland, Oregon – November 9, 2016

The day following the horrible, terrible, no good, bad day in America.