Poetry

Death’s Delight

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

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.

The Rabbi’s Answer

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Conversation on Loon Lake, Alaska, night, Rabbi Shulman having just climbed out of the cold waters of the lake into the fishing boat:

Joel: “Rabbi, what are you doing here?”
Rabbi Shulman: “You go where the search takes you.”
Joel: “What’s it like down there?”
Rabbi Shulman: “It’s dark, Joel.  It’s dark and it’s deep.”

What is out there when it is dark and deep
where we come from, where we sleep?

I see it outside my night window
hear the flailing of winter winds
as shadows and ghosts who won’t
make themselves known
except I quit my warm home
its lights and human comforts
to go out where I can hear
the Spirit’s sensual call, feel
its chill breath on my skin
dive into deep baptismal waters
be born again from out of a dark womb.

Portland, Oregon – February 28, 2019

My opening lines are from a 1994 Northern Exposure episode titled “A Fish Story,” spoken by characters Rabbi Alan Shulman and Dr. Joel Fleishman.

Seeing through Fog

/ Korin Thomas / 2 Comments

Pacific northwest winter mornings
shrouded in fog – cold, dense, dripping
from evergreen branches, fir and cedar,
sifting through blurred spaces and still swirls.

I see what is out there in the reaches
beyond the gray shadows laying
silent in the movement of days gone
away, lost in memory, shaken
awakened from the depths of slumber.

As a child I lay in bed
listening for the sound of trains
passing in the night; in the darkness
to the deep and resonant sound
from across the bay, of a foghorn
wakening the night, putting me to sleep
as if it were my own mother
coming to calm the terrors of my night.

Portland, Oregon – February 19, 2019

Shadowlands

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I grow older as days grow shorter
fading too soon to twilight
flowing into the flowering darkness.

A gray and slithering fog greets me
on winter mornings lingering ’til noon
swirling in cold wind and drear damp
while in the near distance tall firs
blend into an evergreen gloaming.

Some winter days the fallow forgotten sun
cold shining clear and transparent
lies low across the southern horizon.
I pull on my warm coat to sit in the chill
watch the sun move through bare tree branches
creating movement of light all around me.

I live in these flickering shadowlands –
diminishing days among silvery threads
woven through the world’s dark lace.

Portland, Oregon – January 30, 2019

‘Twas the Night

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Before it came to be, in a twinkling
long away, there was but lorn darkness
without light, form, or play.
Nothing spinning, nothing bright
just a hum, a still murmur
on a cold, empty night.

Who can imagine, who wonders aloud
what caused it to be, our heavenly shroud?
So long ago, so far away
came a great light, with a bang so they say
but nay, rather with a shudder then a click,
the lighting, bright flaring, of a wick
in a vast, silent, and dark night
with none, so we think, to see its light;
propelling stars, engendering moons,
birthing water and stone, morning and noon.

The cold lowering winter sun
breathes with frosted breath,
gleams on snowy fields and frozen streams.
Far away we are from where we once began
standing on creation’s slender lip
where was night, nothing, all, and then…

Portland, Oregon – December 20, 2018, eve of the winter solstice.

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Deciduous Lives

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Autumn Leaves

When in spring green leaves grow
under the sweet canopy of a swelling sky
so grow our spirits within us, larger and lovelier,
expanding into the radiant fissures of life
bursting their seams revealing a broad firmament
to touch with fingers of life the hand of infinity.

Summer comes, its lush garment wraps about our lives
and we play with an ancient and unmerited inheritance –
gifts of intellect and desire, urgent love and sorrowful loss.
Our branches and leaves broaden, tangle, and cross
knitted through with warm air flowing through senses unfolding –
flower sweet, bird note, blue sky, rough bark, bitter cherry –
the sensuous warp and weft of the seamless garment of life.

It does not last, the canopy of spring, the garment of summer.
It falls down around us in russet patches torn and worn.
We look then to see our bare arms waving leafless
naked against the cold reach of approaching death
yet it is not death after all but sleep and dream
under the blanket of winter, its wind and rain and snow.

Portland, Oregon – December 11, 2018

Photo is my own of our front yard maple.

The Slow Fall of Advent

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Advent – a slow fall into winter.

Bright crystalline stars
crisp brittle plate moon.
In an instant it could shatter,
break back into a dark and dreamless sleep.

It holds, a thin fluttering veil
all that we know
hung upon the perfect tree
an ornament on the Christ tree
architecture of night divine.

It holds, flung into the cold –
a play of fluttering bright lights
strung into dark and holy nights.

I cannot recall where I was when I wrote this, only that I wrote it in 2009.

Thanksgiving

/ Korin Thomas / 2 Comments

On a table in front of me cut stems of lavender lie
that days before grew, rapt within a November sky.
Plait them into the wreaths of December
through branches of pine and cedar to remember
the fullness of spring in clear and washed lights
summer’s warmth in ripples of radiant sun bright
pulling from the lavender it’s sweet scent, lifted,
lingering in a fragrance lost, borne aloft
in wild winds and rain blown waves
breathing as the world on us this day.

Waldport, Oregon – Thanksgiving day, November 22, 2018