Holy Seasons

Silent Spring

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

This will end. We will be.
Closing doors, still spaces, spring
streets abloom with children.

The world is slowing silent
into layers of contemplation,
stillnesses of reflection
we had lost, unexperienced
in our futile failed flail
against the scourges of history
read as “Black Plague”
as wars others fought in and died.

It is our plague now, our war.
We do not know who will live
or die but all will suffer –
this, our common grief.
What will be if we pass this time
without insight, humility, or will
to make of closing doors
entrances to a transformed world?

Portland, Oregon – March 19, 2020. Vernal equinox.

Ashes, Ashes

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“Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.”

We begin with the end –
how our bodies will be
when we let go
of our last breath
when the blood in us slows,
stops, and our hearts
drum no more inside.

Ashes as warning
signs on our foreheads
soon washed away
leading us darkly
as, with solemn steps,
we cross winter’s desert
for the oasis of spring.

Portland, Oregon – February 26, 2020.  Ash Wednesday

Day’s End

/ Korin Thomas / 1 Comment

Each day is an end –
a sun’s set or moon’s fall
over the horizon’s hidden edge.
It was always that way,
always that way.
We will go over our own horizon
one day, our dazzling sun
aflame in the tapestry of heaven –
that twinkling star far away
from someone watching out there.

This day’s end will be a winter sun
setting over the windy Oregon coast –
ocean gobbling up the flames,
rain cooling the waters.
The moon will wander
between clouds and the night
to mark the end of another day.

Portland, Oregon – January 1, 2020

Darkening Days

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Perhaps it is the settling in of winter
I mean when I write of darkening days.
Yes.  That is what I mean.
Or, the darkness descending
on one growing old.
I mean that too –
I am one within the other.

I wake in the night
open my eyes to see
darkness. I wait for fear
as when I was a child.
Fear does not come, only
silence as at the end
of a difficult journey
when I lay down my coat
take off my hat and shoes
and sit to gather my breath.

I search for understanding of darkness
unfolding in many forms and disguises.
Each day might reveal some new thing
about what is coming, what lies
in and beyond the seamless
sacred realm of darkness.

Portland, Oregon – December 11, 2019

 

Advent – Come!

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I do not wish for more to come than has come
piling up in thick layers, smothering
the society we have stitched from the cloth
of history, woven with strands of doubt
of error, patched with blood and care.

We wake in the morning with relief
having flailed through sleep fragments
dream chaos and thickening coughs
that push silence to the far corners,
peace into the dark and hidden closet.

“Do not come!” if what comes are more
battered days of human failure and betrayal.
“Go away!” Let us have the time we need
to repair what is breaking in us –
our beliefs, the symbols we thought
would sustain our already fragile faith.
Let racing time slow to accord
with this natural season – fallen leaves,
frozen ponds, sun’s light sliding
low and long across the wintry horizon –
the seasons’ lights, the veiled half moon.

We have time enough for this, to quiet and still.
It is enough to say, because we’ve learned
from our traditions and hold to them
as to a branch hanging over an abyss,
unknowing and feebly but from deep within: “Come!” 

Portland, Oregon – December 3, 2019.  The season of Advent is a Christian liturgical season which ends on December 24th, this year.  It is a traditional time of waiting, of stillness – in hopeful preparation for the coming of joy – silent night, holy night, night divine. May all traditions be welcome to join in this sacred time.

They’ve Gone Away

/ Korin Thomas / 2 Comments

Faces and names I’ve not forgotten
held in my bones and memory.
I touched the flesh of each one,
listened to their electric thoughts.
I still can hear their voices as once
we played catch, drove wildly, walked
sacred paths, gazed unknowing
down the corridor laid before us –
at its end a door closed
before I could get there.

My first best friend
playing from yard to yard
stole away one afternoon
and has not come back.

I knew a guy for a little while
who could make me laugh.
No word for forty years.
A few days ago he went away.

My high school friend died.
His white Mustang carried us
through our town, cruising
with all the others.

My brother went back home
and cared for our mother.
Both have gone through the door
but my questions remain.

He was working his work
high up in the wires.
His work carried him away
on a warm desert day.

Hers is a familiar story
of one who should not be gone.
She is gone and in death
I wrote a poem about her.

That’s enough for now.
There are many others.
I’ve lost track of most
and I’ll probably never know.

May all of my faithful departed
through the mercy of saints
and angels, heaven and earth
rest in peace.

Portland, Oregon – All Hallow’s Eve, October 30, 2019

April

/ Korin Thomas / 2 Comments

There go the daffodils drooping
as tulips open over wilting leaves.
An afternoon sky, chill and cheerless,
drops in a cold drizzle dripping
freely given glistening pearls.

The world works in wetness
needing neither my attention or care.
My fleeting form in its fields fades
into the evening’s twilight,
dissolves into the ocean’s night.

Seek shelter where you may.
Nap, dream, wake to a window full
of world spin, star revolve, sun set.
Stay out of the way, lie low, listen.
What will come is coming whether
I wish to hurry it ploddingly along
or stand in its bewildering way.
My wandering through the dripping garden
or along my mind’s fog-laden pathways 
will not deter the wet world,
catch its fall, change its course.
What may be is that, blind fool,
I may fall, caught slip-sliding away
if care is not the watchword of my day.

Portland, Oregon – Eve of a birth day, April 16, 2019

Atman – The Wild

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Known spaces, familiar, old, understood.
Others talk of the wild, I pass them
on streets, have worked with them, schooled
with ones who did things, thought things I
could not and feared to step into their chaos.
I did not know, kept forgetting the silent
unassailed wild, the forgotten formless
danger, fear, uncharted space
nearby. Close, like a whisper.

The Atman* – my self, unknown, eternal.

Wild human forms have played
in the world, carved their images
in our thoughts, sacred pages, field notes
with names as if they were human
beings who strode the earth as I do.
They were the Buddhas, Christs
foraging in wild places, lying on straw
walking from place to place
from time into our time –
becoming immortal living beings.

Here am I. Out there is wilderness.
Not far, not out there at all.
In the morning I take my coffee
to sit in the season’s weathers
feel the air on which birds fly
through branches or where they perch
singing of their lives and loves.

Who is this being living in me
tugging at my coat and hat
hiding within my heart
crouching behind my own familiar face?

Portland, Oregon – April 8, 2019

*”Atman is the immortal aspect of our mortal existence, the individual Self, which is hidden in every object of creation including humans. It is the microcosm which represents the macrocosm in each of us, imparting to us divine qualities and possibilities and providing us with consciousness and the reason to exist and experience the pains and pleasures of earthly life.” (https://www.hinduwebsite.com/atman.asp).

Death’s Delight

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A day will come for me
not so soon, far away
I pray.  I cannot know
no one can but for some
who choose, for them I weep;
when all the lights I’ve known
soften and fade into what was
and shall not be again.
We know of what I write
it is death and death’s delight.

Delight? Why say so?
Say so for, as with all things,
death has the desire to be
what only it can be
and when I enter death’s abode
I will fulfill its promise
to usher me into hallowed halls
where what being is left to me
will be and if there be
no being left of me
then, it will whisper my name
through chill corridors
up drafty stairways
through cracks in the walls
out the broken windows
where fresh and lofting winds
lift the limbs of evergreen trees
flow over the rivers and seas
at last to summit the mountain’s top
where hangs a springtime moon –
full and lustrous, old and cold,
floating serene in the ocean of night.

Portland, Oregon – March 20, 2019

Vernal equinox

The Storm

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A storm has come.

I am caught
between my home and my being;
where I live, who I am.

A sickness lays the land waste.
I shelter, sleep on a death bed
not yet my own, where others have lain.
I feel their souls push into me
from behind, they slide through me
go before me. Come! See!
We’ve been here before.

Let them be.
I bear their burden into the unknown,
my passage marked by weight
of all I carry, of beings,
companions on the way.

The storm flits and frets about
laying waste to my place and past
but not to me or my own.

Portland, Oregon – March 13, 2019

Lenten springtime.