The sun slow settles silent
over the hidden horizon
behind cedar drooping branches –
in this evening, clear and sere.
Sourceless light remains
as glow, halo of the holy world –
hallowed by wind sea, and stars
before even the birds sang.
Glory of eternal essence
shining in each moment
that ever was and ever will be
when even the birds no longer sing.
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Portland, Oregon – May 11, 2021
When what is coming
comes…will I be there, awake,
or be someone long gone
hiding in memories
lost in dream fields?
The great temptation comes
in drowsy days and gleaming nights
when I am sleepy or star struck
apt to forget or lose my way.
Save me from the times of trial.
Deliver me from beguiling evil
that stalks what is and will be –
sounding like dissembling words
acting in elusive, evasive ways.
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Portland, Oregon – April 29, 2021
I know it is behind me
pulling as I pull,
desiring to go back
in time and to places
that memory recreates
to be what they were not,
to write another story
than the one I’ve already
written about my own life.
A cart filled, tied down
bearing what I would let go –
deeds done and failed to do
words said and failed to say –
forgetting and leaving
them behind in the wake
of the road I’ve travelled.
Yet. These live side by side
with all that was and that
I can never wish to leave behind.
I feel their presence – faces
places I knew, thought I knew,
did not know – the burden
of grief and loss when I left
parents, dear friends, sacred
spaces I still long for when
my heart sinks into my soul
bearing the friendship of remembrance.
I pull it all along behind me
moving more slowly with age.
None of it may be lost or left
behind, not the entwining love
or the wrenching loss.
Each of my days now flowers drenched
in bright sun and falling rain.
Most I cannot remember, lost them
over the wide fields of lush life
become now a bouquet picked
from all the sweet days I can recall
and from the ones I’ve long forgotten.
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Portland, Oregon – April 12, 2021
I see a basin of water
reflecting branches darkening
inside the spring sun’s set –
wind ruffled image.
I open my eyes
see water branch wind.
Close my eyes. Still.
They are there.
I cannot change
what I see in the water
the wind or the branches.
Nothing more. No answers.
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Portland, Oregon – March 29, 2021
We will not be
when the world turns
hurtling itself further
into the circle wide.
We had time and love –
not time enough for forever.
We spent our lives playing
dancing and dying in green fields.
Neither alpha or omega
first or last, beginning or end.
Swirling movements for a time
points of turning, turning, and turning.
If only it could last
our human being wanderings.
We leave our poems and art
our music to thrill the spheres.
Creative gifts given, written
played, drawn and colored
sent as gifts – what we loved –
out where only others go.
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Portland, Oregon – March 8, 2021
Often, mornings I sit with wild birds
who poke about among fallen leaves
gathering what our bit of earth provides.
To them I offer a human greeting: “Hello!
How do you fare this day, going about?”
Older now, forgetting my youthful doubts
I have expectant hope of twittered replies
as they’ve come grudgingly to know me
as one who sits under our cedar tree
a tweet, perhaps, from a nearby chickadee.
No less do I hope that when I pray
for you, thinking mercy, grace, and love –
healing in your moments of human need –
that mercy, grace, and love will find you.
Just so, because we share a part in life,
becomes fixed between us an anchored cord
pegged to sacred ground, pinned fast
to a round and boundless eternal realm.
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Portland, Oregon – March 3, 2021
Tonight, ashes eve.
Tomorrow, ashes drawn
feeling them there
where I cannot see them.
Not this year. This isolation.
No one will spread oily ashes
in the sacred sanctuary.
I will remember them –
ashes of yesteryears –
gritty scrape and black
and find myself, again,
looking to the saving season.
Lent. Remembrance, remorse
for the sick and the dying.
Salvation out of suffering –
born of darkness, like life
escaping the jaws of death.
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Portland, Oregon – February 16, 2021. Eve of Ash Wednesday in the Catholic liturgical year.
It is not mine, this bit of lovely land
where I have a home, some sitting chairs
a place to cook a meal, sleep at night.
No. Not mine. None of it.
Not the warm room, the living garden,
or even family and friends
who walk with me these broken paths –
who love, long, and linger here
where once only the land lived alone
under the solitude of the roving heavens.
Snow came today, wet and winded wild
covering in slush, cold, and broken sunlight
these sacred paths that know my steps,
have heard my voice and felt my hand.
My enchanted and mesmerizing world
catches each cold borne snow drop
falling from a drear and darkening sky
as if winter blooming flowers dissolving
on window panes, lanes and pathways,
glistening on shriveled autumn brown leaves.
A caretaker am I with nothing to call my own
but to call it home and roam from place to place
on this bit of earth, this plenteous portion
where fertile land meets the porous sky,
as western red cedars dig fragrant and deep.
Here below, squirrels furl tail squeal and, above,
a squalling murder of black crows circle.
It is not mine to have, all of it, as it is.
I live on this land, love and linger over it
yet I myself belong to another, maybe
the heavens themselves, the sun and stars
who cared for this place long before I came to be
have always seen it as their own and will fawn
over their jewel, set in space, blue and white –
the bright stone of earth set in the starry crown.
————————————————————————————————–
Portland, Oregon – January 27, 2021
I live here – kicking along the 45th parallel
between tropic tangle and arctic ice.
A warm hard rain pour in January
greets me in the saturated morning
while I watch from in between, getting wet.
This winter drizzle, chill damp nights,
belong to the realm of burgeoning –
frizzled messes of underground roots
plunging chaotic where they cannot be seen
entwining with others of their kind
where leaves and flowers are born
in the dark cold wet wormy wild ground!
I should go inside where it is warm
with electric gadgets to keep it all safe.
But where then the dark dreamy winter
in these temperate climes and soggy bogs?
Out here, creatures are beginning to stir –
bugs in every downed log, caught
in the tangle of brush by the back fence,
within the rock pile gathering emerald green moss.
All the wonder of life being born and I…
I am pushing out waves of steamy breath
somewhere along the length of parallel 45
under forgiving stars on this winter night.
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Portland, Oregon – 45° 34′ 18.44″ N – January 14, 2021
At the end of the year I shall think about the dead –
death and the dead, thousands of thousands
who should not be dead but alive but are not.
They are not here. We have lost them
and they will not return to us, not in this land
in this realm of creatures moving among shadows.
What do they see, the dead who lonely died
in sanitized sick beds, surrounded not
by their family or friends but tubes and screens
pulsing beeping whirring digital machines;
by sacred scared nurses who little knew
of the lives they led in these exhausted wheezing bodies?
And what do they see who, without tender care, lay
in their homes, trembling and confused, and then go away?
What do they see, now that they are no more with us
no more living in the lovely and fertile land of home?
They look back, moments on their death beds,
and on their away journey, to where they lived
to see the heartaches of who walked with them,
sang or danced with them, and even, even
birds on branches who saw them through windows.
Now they see with death’s eyes the consoling beauty,
the inconsolable transience of frail human life
passing by as if on sailing ships and night trains.
They have another journey ahead of them.
Their hearts, the hearts of the dead, feel
the weight of their passing away and know
there is nothing more they can do but love,
hold dear all they knew or forgot or never knew.
It is the land of the lost they leave as they go
into the swirl of the planet’s swing among the stars.
Yet, all is not lost to them. They know and remember.
More even than love perhaps, they forgive.
What more can they to do but forgive – all of it!
Let it slip slide away into the jeweled dark night –
the imperfections, injustices, violations
inflicted by everyone who little understood
though they tried and tired themselves in trying
hoping for their own moments of sweet love and grace.
Even the blue and green world confounded them
for they could not possess or fathom how gracious,
lovely, and holy was the place that held their crib and coffin.
They see what in life they could not see.
Overwhelmed in death they mourn for the living,
contemplate suffering – all they loved,
who loved them not, each day seeking to become real,
to heal what in them was lost and was broken.
What more for the dead but to see and in seeing
to stretch disappearing hands to all –
all who gave them life, who came before them,
generations of souls who stopped a moment
to look back and wept for those who remained,
comforted them in their heartsick grieving
and breathed on them one last breath
their final gift, their last token of life and
breathless, walked off into the shadowless light.
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Portland, Oregon – December 30, 2020
“…and all such things must be utterly clear to the dead. They have finally left the problematical cloudy earthly and human sphere. I have a hunch that in life you look outward from your ego, your center. In death you are at the periphery looking inward.” (Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, p. 10; Penguin Books, 2008.)
In Cascadia 