The first breath of autumn comes as gray and cool cloud cover breaks before a September sun finds its way into morning. The rest of the day all bright and clear! Yet, the remains of morning - exhaled dry leaves, fallen pine needles - scent the day with memory and sadness. This day for many years has come when, though I knew it was near, I did not know when I would feel a season ending never to return. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Portland, Oregon - September 14, 2021
Author: Korin Thomas
Impermanence
Big lake. Small town. Deep forest. Sinuous river. The phenomena of young life passed into memory - fragmented and culled. Swimming in fresh water fishing from Mac's dock. I lay on warm sand beaches beneath summer cumulus clouds floating by and with them going to another place in time. We ran the thin strand past the lighthouse and foghorn over the dunes to see the town, across open water in low horizon, lit by the lights of home. There lived those who knew me - a child, a boy, a young man. We went to school, played ball, rode our bikes and tossed our papers. I worked in a main street store after school and into the night. All of this and these were as once I lived by a lake and in a town near a forest and a solemn river. As I live now they are gone. ____________________________________________________________________________ Portland, Oregon - August 22, 2021
Orange
Orange. Sun set color tinged - smoke of fires. Another hot day. Our rain, our cool are for another someone far away. They grieve for the rain we for the drought. We both are without. Let it be. Together we grasp the meaning of the orange and the gray. _____________________________________________________________________________ Portland, Oregon - August 14, 2021
Fire and Flood
Living poets find words to part veils that confound and confuse our vision disturb even the flight of migrating birds. We are woven together in the ether of life, tethered, as the ground flows below and the sky, luminous in star strewn cold night, churns. Fire and rain - dire and dread. Birds forage in brush and brine for food. Finding none they move on with loss of lands they had loved. To where shall we fly to find our way with fires before and floods behind? -------------------------------------------------------------------- Portland, Oregon - August 11, 2021
En Plein Air
At the end of day, the sun sets and the wind blows. Out in the yard I see the trees I planted and the perennials - red columbine, elderberry, flowering currant. Four years now grows the Pacific Madrone glory of the pacific northwest, beautiful native gangly in youth and lost, like an eleven year old boy. As for the flora, so the fauna of the land - squirrels, racoons, brush rabbits eating grass. The crow caws, black-capped chickadees songs. Spiders spinning, bees buzzing, bugs galore gorging. We live our lives, all who live, on the earth and stone. Between and around us all, infused within all flow the airs of summer - scented, sensual, seasoned by flower fragrance, dried grass browned and blown. Pine needles drop, drooping leaves and stems abound in the drought year, no rain for months now. Of all that I might wish to see of what the world has to give what I see here is enough for me, a cornucopia of excess living in the plain light of day, doing business with the air taking nourishment from the earth, pollinating, procreating pouring over the pristine nectar of the flowers of the field. It is enough for me. For healing, nourishment, abundant life it is enough, enough, and more than ever enough. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Portland, Oregon - August 5, 2021 "En plein air, a French phrase meaning "in the open air," describes the process of painting a landscape outdoors, though the phrase has also been applied to the resulting works. The term defines both a simple technical approach and a whole artistic credo: of truth to sensory reality, a refusal to mythologize or fictionalize landscape, and a commitment to the idea of the artist as creative laborer rather than exulted master."(https://www.theartstory.org/definition/en-plein-air/)
Mythos
We have heard the ancient stories
the pantheon of Greek and Roman tales
telling of a mythic, mischievous world
that existed once upon a time:
Epic dramas of men and women,
strange creatures who roamed
the old world; wild gods who created,
destroyed, interceded, interfered.
We do not recognize them –
neither the creatures nor their gods
the meaning they held, the comfort
they gave, the terror they wrought.
They are lost to us, wrapped in marble,
versed in crumbling pages
telling of peoples – aliens and strangers –
and time – forgotten and obscure –
we no longer remember or understand.
The truths they told about life and death,
love and loss, victory and defeat
are buried, hidden beneath thick shrouds
meant for the dead and the past.
Let them lie moldering where once they lived.
Other tales are forming now, being born
from the womb of our own terrors and demons
our deepest hopes, our indwelling strengths.
What will our ancestors hear told of our days
when a thousand years have passed and we,
long gone and our shriveling days are forgotten?
What, within the epic myths we created,
wrote down in verse, recorded in song
will they read and remember, sing and dance?
That the world may then be a place to spend the glory,
days under a healing and benevolent sun,
a story must emerge from our small lives
of great beings and supernatural events
that changed the careening world’s course,
renewed the common will to achieve marvels
that will be, for our distant and beloved kin,
the stuff of heartrending drama.
May the lyric words, sublime, filled with meaning,
tell in gratitude how the unknown gods
came to us, inspired wisdom and courage,
drove us to compassion and mercy’s might,
willed us to create verse, song, dance, works of art
all telling the glory of their ancient past
ringing clarion the sublime essence of our days.
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Portland, Oregon – August 1, 2021
What Comes
Shimmering water falls
down mountain flanks
lit in setting sun gold –
bounding, bountiful, born –
bearing what will be.
Waters to take me away,
deliver me to realms
I can wait for but not know.
A bird lands on the fountain
drinks from its flowing font.
How did she land just there?
She is gone, flown
into lost and lone realms
of what I once knew.
Where shall I land
that I might drink fresh water,
swim in a pool near a beneficent brim –
pierced by silver, lit in gold?
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Portland, Oregon – July 21, 2021
Heatwave
All is still. The quiet gathering
of heat, searching in waves
for every corner and shadow.
We stop our lives and wait –
motor, pounding, playing
sounds missing from the day.
Here the dragon moves.
We long for it to pass us by
sitting in our dark and silent spaces.
Calm pervades. A great long breath
pours over our land and our thoughts
in slow and silent exhalation.
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Portland, Oregon – June 28, 2021
Today it will get up to about 115 degrees in Portland.
At Rest
When at rest I am alone.
Not measured by what I do
by what I’ve done.
Compassed then by time and space –
what may be or may become of me.
At rest, I fall short of the mark
figured along these vast metrics.
Without line to follow, goal
whereon to set my gaze
I wallow – at rest.
Shall I learn to allow
rest to overtake me?
In its open arms
release unto time and space
to welcome what may come?
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Portland, Oregon – June 8, 2021
Memorial
They lie in green fields lost and lone
washed in dark oceans and cold seas
in rice paddies and river bends
on golden beach strands and in the coves
rocky and cool in the shadows.
No headstones or markers remain
but the overarching trees, the headland stones
whereon last they laid their heads, unknowing.
Snowdrift prayers over whitened bones
dunes of drifting sand under which they lie.
The breathing and breathtaking world
is memorial for all the fallen, taken away
who become again grainy mineral and spirit.
They now and still extend the forgiveness of death
to the millions more who will die in senseless war.
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Portland, Oregon – May 30, 2021.
From Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
In Cascadia 