Month: March 2017

Now I Lay Me Down

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

“Now I lay me down to sleep…”
I recited as prayer, imploring the night.

Sixty years have passed in cool water
slow movement beneath the River Bridge
as now I turn out my bedside lamp
no longer reciting my plea of childhood faith
asking God to take my soul in its nights death.

Still, I then slept through the dark hours
waking with the morning light, undisturbed
despite wind shaking the tall cedars,
creaking in the walls or even the calls
of monsters under my bed patiently waiting.

Perhaps if I say this child’s prayer tonight
as I lay me down to sleep
I’ll sleep his sleep until morning light
awakens me and not open my eyes
to darkness and still silent hours.

Portland, Oregon – March 14, 2017

This is “inspired” by a common prayer for children:  “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” It the version I said with my mother.

The Requirement of Spring

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

still-winter

Ash Wednesday it opened, the first daffodil
under gray skies, near the rock pile, just the one
blowing about on its pale green thin stem
come brightly unfolding in winters chill.

Now a cold wind pesters about from all directions
bringing dark clouds filled with hail bits, blasts of rain,
threats of snow in the night and in the early morn.
Still it is winter and still just the one daffodil.

Spring comes, I know, all else says it’s so, but spring
leaves us wanting it bright and quick to come
hurry to usurp this winters persistent and dark rumble
wearing at our willingness to wait, so weary.

Come, spring!  Why need you an equinoxian turn
when other seasons linger long or too early arrive?
Come, spring!  Bring on your abundant breaking
through the doors of winter as has this daffodil done.

Portland, Oregon – March 5, 2017

img_20170305_160656639

Photos are my own, taken March 5, 2017

Sanctuary

/ Korin Thomas / 2 Comments

Where is the place I can go, to hide
where no one can find me, secreted
within moss encrusted glades, lost
under stars hovering in radiant silence?

I did not find this place when I was young
or in the years when I gave my life to labor.
Then, thought I, rest will come, a time
of ease, when I can tend my spring garden
under the sheltering gaze of the past
beneath the western setting sun.

Yet, shouts of the present sound about me
calling my name, “where are you, where are you?”
I am loathe to say, “here I am, here I am”
wishing to tuck my head beneath broad leaves
into shadows cast by evergreen sentinels
watching over me, whispering stories
of what was, what is, what may yet be.

Hemmed I about by witnesses ancient and holy
birthed under the canopy of these northwest woods –
the peoples of the land chanting in my ears
pacific surf pounding inside me,
rattling old bones of memory and fear.

There is nowhere to go in this age
no sanctuary or safe harbor where I,
untouched by the swirl of clamoring voices,
can say “All is well, all will be well”
and feel inside that it is so, will be so.

The world – old, resplendent, grace filled –
beckons me out of all my hiding places
with the calm of wind through cedars,
the delight of birds alighting on branches, preening.
They are the touches, voices, and movements
of the present in its oft forgotten glory,
filtering, through green lavish life, the cacophony
swirling, in and all about me, furiously.

Portland, Oregon – March 3, 2017

I began this piece thinking about sanctuary for my brothers and sisters who fear deportation from our country.  I need do what I can to support and assist them.  But, as to poetry, I find that poems bend back to self before they can go elsewhere.  For poets, the question is appropriate: “It’s all about you, isn’t it?”