What I cannot say
being awakened in each moment
is what I want to say
to convey to myself the holy –
ineffable, silent, mystery – tremendum.

It comes.
If I can live through this moment
the next will come
bearing its lights and fullness.

It is the end of words
what they try to mean
when they wish to say
just one thing,  only one.
Too much, just the thought
before the word.

I saw a bear cross a raging river.
My heart filled with joy –
clapping and shouting
rejoicing in the being
of that moment –
raw power in power
with my eyes to see all
all before me.

That was not it.
Not enough that joy
too little that exhilaration.
What was it?  What was it?
What happened when the bear,
confronting the raging river,
to herself said,
I will leap
into the roiling waters
I will see
what will come of me.

Portland, Oregon – August 15, 2018

This experience of seeing the bear cross the White River, which carries the snow/ice melt of the Emmons Glacier from Ti’Swaq (AKA Mt. Rainier), the largest glacier in the contiguous United States,  happened to me  just a few days ago.

We hang on its rim, the precarious
edge of a world waiting to fall
into space
abandoned
alone.

What we knew is falling into darkness
and we float on ethereal seas.
Our own ground – mountain and lake,
plain, fertile land, stream
pitch of hill, soggy lowland –
is careening into a field of stars
spirally spun over a golden sun
receding in spark and flame,
as a galaxy opens wings around us.

It is a new world to be born
out of our flame-licked ashes.
What we could have done to stop it
has not yet been done
nor can I see that it will be done.
The hour has come.

Portland, Oregon – July 19, 2018

Between here and there is a great darkness
beyond the blue into deathly cold, breathless deep
space – empty but for the ceaseless tug of home.

I see them brightly hanging
celestial ornaments adorning the tree of life itself
on infinite branches in curves and shadows,
on ghostly clouds spun as silk by the setting sun.

I am but one of many opening my eyes
to the movements and lights of the night sky
adoring the lovely pair as they swoon
to the sounds of an ancient melody played
on lyre and harp fitted with cosmic strings.

I would go there, to the moon
to the dreamy dark chill of Venus
to look back on the earth
to see where from I came.
There it was just beneath a warm calm
summer evening, velvet dusk fading slow to night
waves stringing along a blissful shore.
Not far away. Not far away at all.

Portland, Oregon – June 19,2018

Photo is my own, taken from our upstairs west facing window, on June 16, 2018.

Before the creation of the earth
I fell into a crack in creation
falling through the stars
in a cosmic cradle careening
in timeless and empty space.

I landed at last on a wide beach
in waves of blue water and clouds
swirling above my naked head.
I stood, looked about me,  breathed.
I walked up into the headland
to the brow of a cliff and there
below me, the wondrous beach –
the monotony of waves one after another.

I was afraid to explore more
the leafy interior – its sounds
movements in the slithering underbrush
of those also fallen into this place.

I fear I have never left the beach
but, enthralled, watch over the ceaseless waves
letting the clouds pour over my naked head
as if not a thought or care had I.

Portland, Oregon – June 12, 2018

My inspiration for this comes from a piece in Parabola, Winter issue, 2017-18 entitled “A True Story.”  The author is a teacher of writing who asks students, at the beginning of the year, to  “lie to me” or, to write a “false biography.”  She says that “…it reveals more about its participants than a standard autobiography.” So my writing here is a bit of stream of consciousness, to see what would come, spontaneously, if I tried to write a “false” autobiography. Neither Mr. Freud nor Mr. Jung will I let read this.

So full is the world of sorrow
the grief of what is ending
the horror of what has begun.
So large is the scale of grief
that I cannot immerse myself in it more
than what comes at me in waves.
I grieve in small ways, symbolic
changes in life, to my own small life,
that strike me, move me to sorrow –
not as a young man, over the loss
of one who is lovely, but over loss
in the world, of life
in forms other than human.

Today, they came to cut down a tree
whose branches gave me comfort
its very largeness felt of strength
an endurable and lovely presence.
Here now it is cut and, tomorrow,
they will remove its last branches
though yesterday it was well and tall.

I watch, as rain falls,
nurturing the ground where, tomorrow,
the tree will give way
and something else will grow.
I will as well, rooted here, for now.

Portland, Oregon – May 31, 2018

I wrote of this tree in a poem I wrote called Deodar: https://incascadia.wordpress.com/2017/02/18/deodar/

I understand that my life is hidden.
It will end – as a lost seed
flowing in a neighborly breeze
falls on hard ground. Yet
I imagine myself as one planted
taking root in the grainy earth
where I will bud, flower, and grow
becoming essential, a necessary part
of the shadows and lights of being.

But no.

I see, in the clear lights of day,
when the floating currents of air
lift the leaves of the birch grove
throwing fluttering shadows across the yard –
cedar fence, blooming ground, tulip leaves
one by one falling in splendor –
that I am not essential at all,
my face, my words, or any part of me.

My true and fragrant self, my only self,
becomes, is revealed in unexpected places
undeserved moments when fully I sense
the breeze flowing through the leaves
climbing up in the birch grove and,
aware, see on the rotting fence planks,
on the littered ground, the flickering shadows
of those leaves and feel
on my arms or in my hair
the same breeze that makes them move
and their shadows so dance
in the cool and stills of early morn
or in the warm and scents of the dying eve.

Portland, Oregon – April 25, 2018

Infinity extends from each point of being
as radiant pings in humming vibration
tingling into and beyond the warm light of stars
embracing a formless and fragrant canopy
of chill and clawing stillness
set in thrumming motion
from where I stand
biting my nails
in the center of the circle.

Portland, Oregon – April 3, 2018

Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell translation, #19:

Throw away holiness and wisdom,
and people will be a hundred times happier.
Throw away morality and justice,
and people will do the right thing.
Throw away industry and profit,
and there won’t be any thieves.

If these three aren’t enough,
just stay at the center of the circle
and let all things take their course.