Late November pushes against each branch and shadow
hustling along the clinging leaves and broken spider webs,
sweeping with a broad broom of chill and stinging wind
the last memories of autumn’s crisp intoxication.
Ah. The fertile land exhales slowly, quieting itself
as if, injured, it seeks a healing and drowsy sleep.
I must go with it into darkness, for all my soul,
as autumn takes it’s leave and winter’s night draws near.
Portland, Oregon – November 26, 2017
Between the sun and the night –
the shimmering moon.
Stringing beads of darkness together
it threads its way through the heavens
leaving in its silent wake
a trail that souls use to find their way.
Portland, Oregon – November 15, 2017
He was the oldest of us four.
Not long ago he died. He is no more.
He wanders now in the company of the dead
who have made their way to the shadow lands
where they know the reach of our love, our loss, our dread.
This night they walk through my thoughts,
those who have died, who found their way
on such paths as they chose –
to laugh and live, to love and forgive;
or, over roads they felt obliged to choose,
whose bidding they could not refuse
through need or greed, fame or shame.
However it was for them, they took one more step
and, thinking of their last breath,
took their last breath
while holding the hand of a loved one
or, alone, felt loneliness rise up as in waves
of despair or longing unfulfilled.
Either way, in their last moments they let go
of their precious and only life
for nothing else remained for them to do.
Goodbye and fare-thee-well, you souls.
Goodbye and fare-thee-well, my brother.
Portland, Oregon – November 1, 2017, Eve of the feast of All Souls.
In silence I wait, in stillness watch
to discern the movement of darkness
sifting through the window,
sliding across the floor.
I listen for rain on the roof,
the susurrus sound of wind in the trees
through their glistening autumn leaves.
I await familiar sounds of night –
the whistle of a train and its rumble on the tracks,
a siren moaning in its coming and its going,
the dull delirium of clanging steeple bells
to tell me of saints and seasons,
to chime again and again that all will be well.
This night, the whistles and sirens fade
to the chirp of a cricket, just one,
sounding out alone in the darkness –
All will be well. All will be well.
Portland, Oregon – October 19, 2017
The world begins again –
strains against the bit of the past
clenching blind fists towards the unknown
hitting at the blue sky as in a dream.
It is the horror of harrowing flight
into steel and concrete
before falling in fire
curling in sickening ash billows.
We stumble out of gloom into a dim light
that beckons if still it is not bright.
We were slit by wings of darkness and fell
exploding in fear driven flames
smoldering in the black smoke of anger.
They are gone.
We remain.
Flay we each other in words
forgetting in ignorant blame who died that day.
We did. That day.
Portland, Oregon – September 12, 2017
Ashes fall lightly from an orange sky
pretty ashes in tints of dead gray
black and white ashes from deep forests
and time tendrils curling into darkness –
blown as gritty fleck and smudged scrape
through the screen, onto the windowsill,
my face, the thin needles of the front yard pine.
They are scorched ash bit remnants
flung by heated wind as memories of life
on evergreen slopes and their ravines-
until wildfire snatched them in flames
and sent them to us, memento mori,
as grit for sweeping from our shining surfaces.
Ashes. Ashes from the orange sun and moon
brushing over our human lives, burning us,
as fire blooms and ash clouds billows.
Portland, Oregon – September 6, 2017
The Eagle Creek wildfire, as I write, is devouring forested lands of the Columbia river gorge east of Portland. Ashes have been falling for days now. It has rained, here in Portland, only .7″ over the summer. This is only one of hundreds of fires blooming in the American west. This one, however, hits home, literally. That always makes a difference.
The cacophonous world bites bits of our lives
as we walk – solace seeking, peace searching.
The din drone of engines, gas gutted,
drain our own life’s fuel, our pulsing cells,
works to pull from us our awakened lives
in naturally silent places but for bird call,
leaf flutter in cool evening breezes,
sounds of the setting sun in frizzled flares –
can I hear them if I try? I can hear them –
quavering sounds of interstellar space
touching the intricate floating air I breath.
Portland, Oregon – August 29, 2017
Late summer latitudes in quiet heat.
Listless breezes brush floundering flowered
stems for deadheading – as fields of lost minds
are plucked and thrown, as useless, away,
once their lovely charms become
relics of distant blurred memories.
Too many to remember but the first ones
growing by a white picket fence, four in all,
flowers in a row, planted long ago –
spring flowers now bending their faces to the ground.
Late summer thoughts of fading flowers –
deadheading browned blooms by evening’s light.
Portland, Oregon – August 22, 2017
We are aging, my three siblings and me. We were born and grew up by a short and low white picket fence. The idea of “deadheading” as applied to persons may be a troubling concept, yet it stands in recognition of our participation in the cycles of life shared with all of being.
Photo is my own, taken August 30, 2017.
Early morning is warm in an orange blush
without breath from a cool moonlit breeze.
My exhalation is the only suggestion of air
in a room with open windows, still curtains.
Summer trees – still life water color greens
on a hazy blue field of pastel blurs
in two empty and emotionless dimensions.
The beginning of heat, organized by degrees
as blocks of Fahrenheit – Celsiun colonnades –
mass across the landscape in radiant ripples,
floating mirage waves, one after another
distending to each wilted and pale horizon,
piling up in a haze, distant wildfires ablaze,
its onslaught a precision incursion into desire.
I can long for the sweet breath of spring
the cool falling of autumn into its season
even the sharp piercing of winter’s night
to little avail in this advancing heat –
summer’s gift to my waiting life.
I shall learn from its surrounding presence
to still, breathe, water my life’s pathways.
Portland, Oregon – August 3, 2017
Days without rain swimming in summer’s warm bath –
crunching pine needles, spring blooms wilting brown
over dusty dry fissures widening under the heat.
Open windows for the cooling sere night sky
with its silky moon and, at dawn, fresh breezes
before the windows close, curtains drawn
dark and cool within. While out? Gathering heat
and every hard surface a glare – wall, window –
as white wisps of cabbage moths flutter two by two.
Breathe in the warm still breath of summer
as it lingers through the horizons of the day –
fresh morning bird song to a slip of wind
through leaf flutter at twilight exhalation.
Smell summer in its morning dew and milky dust;
taste it’s strawberry sweetness dripping
into the folds of lips, tongue, throat – falling
down and down into the heart, into the body
into the petals of earth’s flowers spun and rare.
Portland, Oregon – July 25, 2017
Photo is my own – Echinacea in our summer garden.
In Cascadia 