Poetry

Before Birds

/ Korin Thomas / 2 Comments

Before birds in ancient forests sang
swirling winds made grasses rushy sound
leaves flutter crisp on autumn branches.
Ocean waves on crumbly beaches
pounded sounds on shalely shores.
Rain splash, tornado whirl,
branch break fall into needle leaf
fern rustle – winter ice crack
snap of spring in river gurgle
noisy ramble down to silent lakes.
On, on the sounds of tumbling water
in rivulets to the sea or whishing
soft silent into the air spin
whispering around the world til plop!
N’er a chirp or cacklecaw, by Gawd,
for there were no birds
to sing the morning praise! 

Portland, Oregon – March 12, 2020

So say the geologists, the first trees appeared in the Peleozoic era/Devonian period while birds first appeared in the Mesozoic era/Jurassic period. There may have been millions of years between the time of the first forests and the first birds.(https://www.infoplease.com/math-science/earth-environment/table-of-geological-periods)

Ashes, Ashes

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

“Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.”

We begin with the end –
how our bodies will be
when we let go
of our last breath
when the blood in us slows,
stops, and our hearts
drum no more inside.

Ashes as warning
signs on our foreheads
soon washed away
leading us darkly
as, with solemn steps,
we cross winter’s desert
for the oasis of spring.

Portland, Oregon – February 26, 2020.  Ash Wednesday

The Closing Door

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

fairy-door-1
Fairy door on oak – November 29, 2016

P1000745
Fairy door on oak – February 11, 2020

One day the fairies will close their doors
lock the locks and retreat to the places
where, though we may seek them,
we’ll not be able to find them.

The welcome offered by the green
glorious world may be withdrawn;
the joyful play of creation in the garden
of time – the cosmos in slants of sunlight
on the floors, shadows in corners, swaying
branch movements in the pale air – may
no longer find a place in human words.

Still there is time, the precious gift
given, offered to peoples who alone
count the minutes, stash them away
into the past, wondering, fearful,
how many more may yet be theirs.

Portland, Oregon – February 18, 2020

This is our front yard oak tree, damaged by a hit and run driver. The injury is giving way to the healing work of a great tree.  I like to think that the artwork of our granddaughter, Audrey, acted as a bandage to assist in the healing process.  Then, all the children in the three years since who have stopped to play by that door.

Winter in Cascadia

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

The earth moves beneath storm fronts
bearing sacred gifts of snow and rain
falling as if from tender hands
windblown over the land –
drenched, dripping, drowned
in emerald green down – winter
making its way in dun and drear. 

Portland, Oregon – February 11, 2020

The Blank Page

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

The blank page waits, offering no help but for intimidating silence
steering me away from the emptiness to the view out the winter window –
the dreary garden
the falling rain.

The cursor blinks unmercifully, questioning all my choices –
my use of time that wraps around me and flies away;
the mistakes I’ve made in the material world, yesterday,
the ones I’ll make today and tomorrow, thoughtless and unaware –
the tedium of idleness
hours stealing away.

A word pokes its head out of the brambles following a line –
where it is going or where its path will lead I cannot tell.
Something is trying to emerge out of the thicket – a small bird
poking around from branch to branch, alighting, vanishing
seeming careless or carefree, wandering through the tangled growth
seeking something just beyond its reach, knowing it is there.

I, the bramble and thicket.
I, the bird.

Portland, Oregon – January 23, 2020

Day’s End

/ Korin Thomas / 1 Comment

Each day is an end –
a sun’s set or moon’s fall
over the horizon’s hidden edge.
It was always that way,
always that way.
We will go over our own horizon
one day, our dazzling sun
aflame in the tapestry of heaven –
that twinkling star far away
from someone watching out there.

This day’s end will be a winter sun
setting over the windy Oregon coast –
ocean gobbling up the flames,
rain cooling the waters.
The moon will wander
between clouds and the night
to mark the end of another day.

Portland, Oregon – January 1, 2020

Darkening Days

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

Perhaps it is the settling in of winter
I mean when I write of darkening days.
Yes.  That is what I mean.
Or, the darkness descending
on one growing old.
I mean that too –
I am one within the other.

I wake in the night
open my eyes to see
darkness. I wait for fear
as when I was a child.
Fear does not come, only
silence as at the end
of a difficult journey
when I lay down my coat
take off my hat and shoes
and sit to gather my breath.

I search for understanding of darkness
unfolding in many forms and disguises.
Each day might reveal some new thing
about what is coming, what lies
in and beyond the seamless
sacred realm of darkness.

Portland, Oregon – December 11, 2019

 

Sentient World

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

I sit outdoors in every weather
letting come, inside or out, what comes.
Today it is steady rain and chill.
I take cover in the garage
sitting on a camp chair
before the open door.
I see down the long drive
the last oak leaves hanging on
in the face of December
soon to fall to winter’s floor.

Out in Cascadia’s realm I am
being drawn into the phenomenal world
scented in the calm and quiet of natural life –
wild and mysterious in sensual appeal.

Wool cap and down jacket, warm boots,
fingerless gloves for work –
finger tips getting cold now.
The steady rain turns to a slow drizzle
as my thoughts slow and still.
I hear whispers out there, seekers
searching for listeners.
The sentient world
trying to tell me something.

Here I am.

Portland, Oregon – December 7, 2019

Advent – Come!

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

I do not wish for more to come than has come
piling up in thick layers, smothering
the society we have stitched from the cloth
of history, woven with strands of doubt
of error, patched with blood and care.

We wake in the morning with relief
having flailed through sleep fragments
dream chaos and thickening coughs
that push silence to the far corners,
peace into the dark and hidden closet.

“Do not come!” if what comes are more
battered days of human failure and betrayal.
“Go away!” Let us have the time we need
to repair what is breaking in us –
our beliefs, the symbols we thought
would sustain our already fragile faith.
Let racing time slow to accord
with this natural season – fallen leaves,
frozen ponds, sun’s light sliding
low and long across the wintry horizon –
the seasons’ lights, the veiled half moon.

We have time enough for this, to quiet and still.
It is enough to say, because we’ve learned
from our traditions and hold to them
as to a branch hanging over an abyss,
unknowing and feebly but from deep within: “Come!” 

Portland, Oregon – December 3, 2019.  The season of Advent is a Christian liturgical season which ends on December 24th, this year.  It is a traditional time of waiting, of stillness – in hopeful preparation for the coming of joy – silent night, holy night, night divine. May all traditions be welcome to join in this sacred time.

Stories of Our Lives

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

We tell stories of our lives
as we remember they were
and believe they are:
clear and distinct memories,
what we learned in school,
works of our hands,
beauty we have seen and touched,
who we loved and lost;
all our senses ablaze for a time.

We do not know well our own stories
they, as wildflowers, growing
in fields abloom, bending in every breeze
sleeping at night among the stars –
winter comes and they are gone.
So we in our fields bloom,
bend, sleep, then go our way.

I watch as indistinct shadows move
behind a thin and trembling veil
telling me about my life –
things strange and unfinished,
without beginning or end.

I see flickering phantasms
playing on creation’s silvery screen
that seem to be about me
but, as in a dream, make no sense
as if I am in and out of my own life
becoming things I do not remember,
as if I were a tree or,
on its branches, a tiny bird.

If only we knew our whole story
told by one who knows,
can tell its whole arc
however long, its shape and texture,
and where it bends into the night.

I wonder if poetry can follow
the thin thread thrown from the heavens
down onto the green fields of life
and tell where it has come from
and where it goes?

Intimations of immortality
may follow that twisting line
to describe the contours of being
formed from cosmic nothing –
hidden, revealed, washed away again
as endless breakers on sunlit shores.

Portland, Oregon – November 16, 2019

Gratitude to William Wordsworth for his sublime, “Ode on Intimations of Immortality.” (https://www.bartleby.com/101/536.html) I highly recommend reading this masterpiece. In my own poem, I use “intimations of immortality” as a way of saying how poetry may be able to describe what other artistic forms may not. But, of course, all art forms, even to include the sciences, try to speak to the mysteries of life.