Listen, when silence comes.
See shadows move
through darkness.
Cold and winter breaths
still, wreathe round
small birds in tangled branches
above stones on a path.
Portland, Oregon – November 12, 2019
Poetry
They’ve Gone Away
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
Wings
What might I do, yet become
in the time I have, walking
on the thin membrane of existence?
I am not content as birds seem to be
playing in wild veering arcs
through the thrill of October winds
from branch to dripping branch.
I yearn, scrying for signs.
The coming winter somber skies
fill my autumn senses; cold
adding layers to thought as confusion
or depth. The colors of dying leaves
enthrall…then they fall.
I watch as they brown and decay.
Where are my wings, my play?
Portland, Oregon – October 23, 2019
Third Vision – Dark Winter Wood
In my mind’s eye I have three distinct and colored images or visions. They are primal and essential. I do not know how they emerged or formed. They are clear, unchanging, and have been with me for as long as I can remember. This is the third.
A road fades deep twilight into night
in a still and snowfallen winter wood
dark but for a hushed and pale glow
from nowhere, as light from a ghost.
Whether at the end of the road
or its beginning I do not know
only that I am neither afraid nor cold,
waiting – in silence and in thrall.
Portland, Oregon – September 11, 2019
Writing this, I cannot but think of Robert Frost’s, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Except for the horse and the forked road, my own mental image bears resemblance to the image in his incredibly beautiful poem.
Second Vision – The Promontory
In my mind’s eye I have three distinct and colored images or visions. They are primal and essential. I do not know how they emerged or formed. They are clear, unchanging, and have been with me for as long as I can remember. This is the second.
The promontory, solemn and lonely, forbidding and cold
meets the tumbling waves of the sea on hidden beaches
forlorn reaches under a withering lost and leaden sky.
It is a place I cannot go, it would deny me entrance there
where, forbid as all else it forbids, it stands alone
over the waves watching as a sentinel without wonder or awe
waiting as one waits for dawn when still it is deepest night.
Portland, Oregon – September 10, 2019
First Vision – The Garden
In my mind’s eye I have three distinct and colored images or visions. They are primal and essential. I do not know how they emerged or formed. They are clear, unchanging, and have been with me for as long as I can remember. This is the first.
I am, in a sunshine spring
overflowing in golden green
garden growing in dripping rows
dew dropping blueberry branches
berries bright, fragrant glistening
reflections of star spun sun speckles.
Manzanita, Oregon – September 2, 2019
Fire and Rain
A rain forest burns beyond me
under the fading golden blue shine
breezy late summer evening
sun’s set in the Pacific northwest.
The smoke comes, reeking, seeking
wherever we are in the world
come it will, soon and very soon.
Images of fire scroll up
across the pages of the world.
Fire, blazing under the nibs of pens
melting quills, frizzling keys
forming the matrices of creation
as we awaken, singed and scorched
by kindling we used to light the fire.
I feel the flames around me
smell the acrid smoke enfold
hear the cries of people running
birds screeching in panic,
anaconda, anteater, iguana
golden lion tamarin racing
for their lives, living beings
wanting just and only what I want.
None I know, will never see
but must know, see as they are now
fleeing fires razing the green reaches
to the height and breadth of the Amazon –
silent and vast reaches I only knew
from pages of my child’s geography book.
Portland, Oregon – August 2019
As I write, the rain forests of the Amazon are burning out of control with madmen watching unconcerned, complicit, and culpable. What can poetry do to address this insanity? Not nothing.
Jerusalem
Jerusalem, Jerusalem….
I stood within her ancient walls
before the sacred foundation stones
with my fingers touched them
saw in their crevice’s green growth
birds alighting and in the silence below
heads nodding in murmured prayer.
Above, transfixing, a golden dome
rose into the eastern heights.
O, City of Peace –
do not, I pray, rest in the ages
lost in the pages of sacred script;
nor wait in silent surrender
as those who abuse you strut and shout.
Was it not so that chicks and lost lambs
once gathered within the wings of your embrace
and found balm and sustenance for life?
Holy land – I wish your blessing and desire
to be a place of sanctuary, a refuge
where all may come to dwell in love
welcome the stranger, orphan, widow
who seek the healing of your sacred pools.
Bless the holy men and women
who, all over the world, creeds rising,
abjure the violence and ignorance of the age
who seek the peace and hope of your name.
Portland, Oregon – August 21, 2019
Wilderness
The peoples have left the lighted paths
feel now their way with outstretched hands
along choked and darkened roads
city slithering alleys, ruined country lanes.
Behind them they hear disturbed voices
a babble of whispered tongues speaking
what was, could have been, may be.
The ground become a shaking wilderness
changing, unknown and new, boiling
as darkness eclipses a failing light.
A gloaming gathers in heavy folds
weighing down, turbulent, roiling.
Bleak the countryside, the burning fields
ruined trees of ash and smoke;
the drowned land, the melting ice,
animals set adrift in unknown seas.
Fare-thee-well and so sorry
to have forgotten and lost you.
What has become the solace of green gardens
freshets of bubbling life from cold streams
swirling down from glaciered mountains?
Where the sweet murmur of silent prayer –
faith, hope, love, sacred forgiveness –
becoming light within a child’s dream?
What world will the people choose
having so much lost and still to lose?
And I – what will I choose
within the light of knowledge I possess
of what I’ve done and failed to do?
Portland, Oregon – August 19, 2019
Elegy for a Crow
Into our front window flew a crow
as I sat outside on a summer morn.
Toward me she came in slow glide
stilled wings brushing cool
the air that touched my face.
I turned to watch her walk
drunkenly down the drive
seeing in basement windows
her dazed and dazzling self –
black, beautiful, broken.
She flew away during the day
by evening she was gone –
mended and on the wing?
No. Flying low, again she came
landing hard near where we sat
her pursuers fast behind:
“Caw, caw, cawing….”
Evening’s light gave way to night
as I went outside to see if she lived.
There she lay on a path next the rose
while in a moment more stood and stepped
as I went indoors, trying to let it go
this drama in the life of a crow.
When morning came she was gone
so it seemed, all day long.
In the evening, cool drinks under shade,
I raised my eyes to see
beneath the rose, dead was she.
Close by me she had flown
came once and again and again
at last to stay where she chose.
Did she find sanctuary here
or just the dying light beneath the rose?
What can I know of death for a crow?
I can barely speak or know
my own hurt, disease, suffering,
or what I did to make it so.
Portland, Oregon – August 6, 2019
In Cascadia 