Poetry

Coming Spring

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

For each one now spring
is not what once spring was
when its season meant not a thing
during the bloom and bud of youth
but the coming of a time for leaving
what we knew but did not well love.

Here now, many years now,
I think back to late winter days
before spring sprung through the gloom
and made me swoon with smells
delicious of wet cedar and beach
wafting through the mists of March
clinging still to memories of my home town.

The innocence of then –
when I spent my days ignorant,
too often alone, scared, angry
waiting for life to begin –
becomes the incense of age
curling slow and sweet into the rafters.

The coming spring will not be
what spring was when I was young.
It will be spring, just spring
curling up again from the ground
in shades of green and flowers
softening in layered strands
of long daylight hours perfumed
in scents of lavender, lilac, and lily
longing but for the sweet scent of sun
and the warm breath of the earth.

Portland, Oregon – March 15, 2018

A Thin Illusion

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

Lying on my morning bed
light dawning in stillness
I wake from America’s dream
it’s images spiraling away
snuffed, as a candle’s wick, out.
Diffused with poisons in it’s past
it could not last the night.

It is my drowsy awakening, ours,
to a harsh and revealing sight
the world new in the day’s light
now we have opened our eyes
to see what has always been
while we hid behind a thin illusion,
a finely crafted veil hiding nothing.

The shining ideal, well meant but never true,
called to us in our darkness
deceived and mesmerized us – a chimera
until we forgot it was but kindling
for the refining fire of true democracy –
all equal and welcome – none forgotten.

Awaken, awaken, America!
A more perfect union awaits
but not if we sleep and dream
or if, in our drowsing slumbers,
we allow to awaken again and again
our loathsome and beckoning demons.

Portland, Oregon – February 17, 2018

Waking in Yin

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I wake in the night as a dream
ghostlike slithers into darkness.
A quivering lattice of silence reaches
out in fluttering waves through the room
into the fully awakened night.

From within the fluid dark feminine flow
come resonant echoes wave after wave
sounding as alarms on ships at sea
caught in opaque swirls, spiraling eddies
churning in a storms wake – tossed
taunted, haunted and lost.

My night voyage on high seas
without guidance of moon or stars
under a blanket of deepening mystery
woven by sinewy hands, thread by thread,
out of the deep warm wool of night.

Portland, Oregon – January 31, 2018

“Yin is feminine, black, dark, north, water (transformation), passive, moon (weakness and the goddess Changxi), earth, cold, old, even numbers, valleys, poor, soft, and provides spirit to all things. Yin reaches it’s height of influence with the winter solstice. Yin may also be represented by the tiger, the colour orange and a broken line in the trigrams of the I Ching (or Book of Changes). (https://www.ancient.eu/Yin_and_Yang/)

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Year End at Neahkahnie

/ Korin Thomas / 2 Comments

IMG_20171230_091238488.jpg

Under the low arch of the winter sun
we sit on the edge of the year
on the continent’s shoreline fringe
watching wave surges on the headlands
scrying, to read the signs of the times,
to foretell what is to come.

We cast our vision over a gray Pacific
into its depths, out to its tumbling reaches
as a fisherman heaves a line,
to catch what may come from the sea.

Storms hide in the blurred horizon
monsters rise out of the blue.
Sirens cry from billowing mists
as surging swells roll through our dreams
perilous breakers crash onto our lighted shores.

The year brims over its rim urged on
by profound deep vaults of time.
It pours as from a font down and down
bearing faultless light in trailing veils
with streaming banners and twirling ribbons.
The speckled year slips over its blue edge
into sunsets’ serene and golden bowl.

Manzanita, Oregon – December 31, 2017.  Photo taken 12/30/2017 northwest to Neahkahnie mountain.  In the Tillamook tribal language, Neahkahnie means “place of the Creator.”  (https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/neahkahnie_mountain/#.WkfwAZVy7X4

Star

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In an early morning I saw a star hung from a tree.
She seemed to be held there, dropped
out of a galaxy fleeing fast away
suspended as if from a gossamer line
from the tip of a nodding needled branch.

I sat in stillness watching darkness
pass before me or, closing my eyes,
wandering in my thoughts.
What is, what was, what will be?
A clinging sense of loss
the quickening passage of time
slow motions of aging and remembrance.
Oft I came back to that star
to watch her slow descent –
a soft fall onto a branch below.

A clear and cold December morning
without cloud or fog, rain or snow
revealed the star on her way.
She was finding her way through the heavens
in a long arc – ascent and descent –
carrying fire along the way.

Portland, Oregon – December 23, 2017

Wordsick World

/ Korin Thomas / 1 Comment

If my words do not convey what I mean
fail to say what they seem
when I write of mystery, joy, or death
then what of me or you or we?

When I write of beauty, faith, or the green hills
I wish my words to bestow these –
their vision, hope, their fecundity
to another. They hold, as a pitcher,
my essential gift to the world.

Alas, the contract of words is failing
falling down around us, flung into despair.
When words of government or commerce
are without care or the desire for truth –
then the land is overcome by an evil design.

If their essence is not held by poets –
each word having something to say –
words will lose their sense altogether
and we will forage for understanding
in a rotting linguistic land
where those who lie are held in esteem
they who manipulate, defame, excoriate
are deemed the conscience of the king.

I will write by the lights I see
forgo dim and shadowy flickers
try to say what my heart, in its silence,
knows. Or, I’ll wander onto a sinister path
to join the long and damned procession
of souls wandering mad in a word sick land.

Portland, Oregon – December 19, 2017

Advent in a Troubling Year

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

Something is tapping, pounding
on the door, the windows and the roof.
It wants in, is insistent!
It is the rain.

Something jostles the bare tree limbs
siren slow moans in the vents
demanding entrance in the night!
It is the wind.

Something hurries down the streets
brushing aside the lowering winter sun
scuffling its way into forgotten places – it comes!
It is darkness and winter’s cold.

We clothe ourselves against the rain and strong winds
put up cheerful lights to dispel an entreating darkness
but hope alone will bear our salvation –
it is coat and hat; it is lamp to light the way.

Portland, Oregon – December 2, 2017

The Advent season, in the Christian tradition, is a season of waiting in anticipation of the coming of the messiah.  It is a remembering of the events leading up to the birth of Jesus.  But, the underlying impetus of the season is the virtue of hope – hope that something good is coming, something to save, to redeem, to heal, to forgive.  Hope is a virtue not confined to any spiritual tradition but is essential to all and, in these troubling times, is a paramount virtue to have and hold.  It is the antithesis to cynicism, fear and anger.

November

/ Korin Thomas / 1 Comment

Autumn Leaves

Late November pushes against each branch and shadow
hustling along the clinging leaves and broken spider webs,
sweeping with a broad broom of chill and stinging wind
the last memories of autumn’s crisp intoxication.

Ah.  The fertile land exhales slowly, quieting itself
as if, injured, it seeks a healing and drowsy sleep.
I must go with it into darkness, for all my soul,
as autumn takes it’s leave and winter’s night draws near.

Portland, Oregon – November 26, 2017

The Middle Way

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

Between the sun and the night –
the shimmering moon.
Stringing beads of darkness together
it threads its way through the heavens
leaving in its silent wake
a trail that souls use to find their way.

Portland, Oregon – November 15, 2017

All Souls

/ Korin Thomas / 2 Comments

He was the oldest of us four.
Not long ago he died.  He is no more.
He wanders now in the company of the dead
who have made their way to the shadow lands
where they know the reach of our love, our loss, our dread.

This night they walk through my thoughts,
those who have died, who found their way
on such paths as they chose –
to laugh and live, to love and forgive;
or, over roads they felt obliged to choose,
whose bidding they could not refuse
through need or greed, fame or shame.

However it was for them, they took one more step
and, thinking of their last breath,
took their last breath
while holding the hand of a loved one
or, alone, felt loneliness rise up as in waves
of despair or longing unfulfilled.
Either way, in their last moments they let go
of their precious and only life
for nothing else remained for them to do.

Goodbye and fare-thee-well, you souls.

Goodbye and fare-thee-well, my brother.

Portland, Oregon – November 1, 2017, Eve of the feast of All Souls.