Ordinary Time

Eyes Unclouded By Longing

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Searching for words
to express the delusion
of longing – its promise
and long fall into sadness
as the sun lowers
behind a house and a fence
as a spider clings to a web
on the window above a shelf
on which resides Maxwell’s
“On Poetry.”

Yet! Here are words, now
in awakening present!
Not longing fulfilled
but me in lamplight
with the darkening sky
and the spider who moves
with the breeze flowing
through the open summer window.

Portland, Oregon – August 23, 2016

Title is from the Tao Te Ching, #1, translation by the Rev. Dr. Raymond B. Blakney, 1955.

Seal Rock Morning

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Seal Rock Mornng

I know what is out there –
the ocean and its profound depth
pounding in waves against headlands
rolling in swells beyond horizons.

This morning an enveloping gray
shrouds the deathless reaches –
waves press upon the shore,
white billow sprays follow
perfect curls of falling water shattering
as blue crystal on crystalline fine grains of sand;
beyond, the slow rise and fall of deep water
tidal motion in moon drift.

What is faith if not remembering
brilliant blue beneath an azure sky?
More than this.  Nothing without this –
the implacable gray veil
masking infinite swells,
blue in the colored world
gray on an oceanside morning
black in the deep night sky.

Central Oregon Coast – August 20, 2016

Photo is my own, taken August 20, 2016 over Seal Rock beach, Oregon.

Birds of Existence

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My past and future exist
nowhere other than as birds
who from the fountain fly
away as the water pours
in wings and they are gone.

Where did they go these birds
of existence flying away?
They were mine I thought
captive somewhere inside me
trembling and I thought it breath
exhaling memories, breathing
in all that I wanted to be –
yet they fly away from this sacred
moment as currents of air
ruffling the overarching leaves.

Portland, Oregon – August 15, 2016

In memory of my father who passed away on this date in 1994.

Beautiful Teachers

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Some believed, knew you
in their own heart
without reason cared
for you when you were
seven going on eight.

Always, in your memory, they
knew, felt kindness, saw
your need, kept your face
before theirs.

How could they remember
that small face – my name, me
being in the world when
their world was full
without me, my squinty eyes
chewed fingernails, anxious being
even before grade three?
How did she know I needed
her smile, her recognition of me
when there were so many others?

How she did it I do not know
she did not say it in words.
But if I raised my hand
among the others, if she did not
call my name, I saw her face
see mine, her smile lingering fleet,
calling another but I knew
she saw me and I knew
I was there.

Portland, Oregon – August 7, 2016

Dedicated to wonderful teachers, especially to my second grade teacher, of happy memory, Mrs. Samuelson (1960).  Twenty-five years later, after having been gone from my home town for many years, I came back to share an important moment in my life.  She was there, in the front row, all white hair, in her eighties.  I was so grateful for her being there but I had to ask, “Do you remember me, from 2nd grade?” “Of course I remember you.” And I had absolutely no doubt that she did.

La-Di-Da

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Others, when I was young, seemed la-di-da –
before them rich, full lives
strong, beautiful and confident, lithe
knowing the words, numbers and the tunes.
I watched them run over our springtime fields
hair flying loose in the warm greening sun
without blemish, wrinkle, or scar.
Youthful friends of mine they –
they were, they were, la-di-da, la-di-da.

I see them still gathered
in fields long gone, kicking
through autumn fallen leaves.
Their years succumb to days
lost in a forgetting haze
when they were young and la-di-da.
I did not know them after all
Like me, trying to find their ways
wandering – la-di-da, la-di-da, la-di-da.

Portland, Oregon – August 2, 2016

The Oxford Dictionary (Oxforddictionaries.com) definition of “la-di-da” is “pretentious or snobbish.” I can’t argue with the Oxford Dictionary people, except that this is not my meaning for the phrase.  I take the sense of it as used by the Diane Keaton character in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall.  There is no definition.  It is just a sense of carefree or careless.  At least that is what it means to me.

The Good

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Small birds converge on the fountain’s edge
as bees do, as does my gaze.

In the morning I filled the fountain
for my own pleasure – its gurgling
sound, reflection of sunlight in shimmer
of water over pouring.
The bees and the birds too
find their own pleasure there  –
I in them, we together
drinking of light, refreshment
cascading, dripping life.

I did not change the world
today, make my presence known;
did not seek the fullness of good,
find its summit or its source.

I filled the fountain to its brim
stepped back, sat down and,
since it was what I could do, watched
the everlasting procession-
birds and bees, creation ceaseless
pouring as water over the rim.

Portland, Oregon – July 26, 2016

The Big Trouble

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12524180_10208261914760098_3349950172527373784_n (3)
In deep with time –
travelling companion on the way
parsing the curved paths
dividing the light of the sun
meting out portions of the moon:

“There you may go but
not there, never there.”

A ghost tramples before
and behind, catching
at my heels, breathing
down my skinny neck, creeping
cunning fellow taps
on my shoulder –
when I turn around
like the oldest joke he is
not there, never there.

July 21, 2016 – Portland, Oregon

The image came to me from a Facebook posting but I cannot find good attribution.  I cropped out attribution of the quote to Buddha because my online research did not show that he actually said/wrote this. Nevertheless, the quote – which can be found in many places in the webiverse – is evocative, if a bit “deepity.”

Finally, something obvious – too obvious for verse: Do I have time or does time have me?

Moon of the Red Blooming Lilies

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Outside my window grows the summer
sweet garden – resplendent, redolent, still
in the morning dew damp chill.
She does not know about the hours, how
a clock tick captures in mechanical tock.

She knows the sun’s arc, pouring
rain, warm sweet laying ground
under silver white moon urge
tide surge and nights sweeping
over flowers unfolding in rose, lavender,
sweet pea, all the tall grasses –
unfettered by segmented time
broken moments of loss or dread.

I?  I know about time, succumb
as if it were my only
spun and twirling destiny.
What few seasons come and go
that we bloom –
flowers of creation’s fertile desires –
Unfolding under the moon
of the red blooming lilies
without time but this.

Portland, Oregon – July 9, 2016

My title, “Moon of the Red Blooming Lilies” comes from my recent reading of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, a classic telling of the tragic story of the destruction of the native peoples of this land, from the side of those who were destroyed.  The author, Dee Brown, does a masterful job of telling the story.  He often added the names of seasons as the native peoples called them.  In this case, the “moon of the red-blooming lilies” corresponds roughly to July.  It is a book I should have read long ago and recommend highly.

 

“Images Like Picasso”

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Darrell's Painting Edited

What face do I see when
this painting I look on
hesitantly, bewildered –
an animal wild or
an artist cast out?

Darrell draws on the streets
scraps and leavings.
Thus, his mournful face hangs
reproachful, purchased a pittance
cash and a little talk
on an early morning Seattle street corner.

In parlays with darkness
he loses again and again
his daily life’s work –
faces in wide-eyed astonishment –
given cheap to survive.
They mean what I cannot know or say.

What, in this horned face blood shot
scapegoat, cast out, cries “Hey?”
In forlorn darkness, destined
for ignominious attempts
at survival in hostile places –
urban street corner
six-o’clock in the morning
I, in a rush, he
cries out, “Hey, hey!”

Thus came to me on a morning
a scapegoat in ceramic and oil
Darrell or an image his?
Since, my inquisitor hangs
silent, strange and afraid,
his gaze fierce, wild
encountered on the corner
crying out, seeing me
knowing my face.

“Hey, I think you’ll like this…”
as if I could understand
wild unremitting abandonment,
the work of his hands
what he faces daily,
his own life cast out
offered in a frenzy of loss,
anger and haunting delusions;
mad tales of aliens
specters of sinister doings.
I only have tame considered words;
spared I the wild visions,
the lonely street corners.

Portland, Oregon – June 15, 2016

“Images Like Picasso” was Darrell’s name for this painting. I received it from him on May 1, 2008. He did not tell me his interpretation of this work. The poem is my own interpretation.

I have not seen Darrell for several years now. The last time he was selling his works outside of the Seattle Public Market. He recognized me even through the crowd and gave me his, “Hey, Hey!” He asked if I would buy him lunch and I did. It was the least I could do and certainly not as much as I might have done.

Most of Darrell’s works were done on scraps of wood or chips of concrete he found. He also used broken ceramic cups and, in the case of “Images Like Picasso,” he used an abandoned piece of ceramic tile.

Good Land

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Living on borrowed land
tilting in decline plane
to Columbia river current
strong, pushing to the sea,
meeting in turbulent confluence
moon tides, surf, susurrus,
setting sun of America
dying light of a dream.

What shall I tell them
who come upon this land
of what I did or said
when the land washed away
to the river and the sea
when the sun sets on them?

I will tell them
of my garden and my plans
that also washed away
down the northwest slope
into Columbia’s roll
splashing frolic into the great ocean.

May 2016

Inspired by Wendell Berry – The Gift of Good Land

“To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of creation.  When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament.  When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. In such desecration we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.” (p. 181, North Point Press edition)