Darkness begets morning
dripping in dawns of seed birth
reaching up through summer days
crackling storm rains veiling
purple twilights in evening showers
of scarlet and billowing sun sets.
Black nights peel the illusions of sleep
in dream layers revealing at dawn
a warm light peering over the horizon
waking creation to forgotten hope
that must be, must be, it must be
or it will not be it will cease to be.
Portland, Oregon – July 18, 2017
“Spes salve” – Latin: “Saved in hope.”
I am closer to ALL than I knew
their symphonic pulses moving
harmonically through me over in
around me beneath and above
me tolling, trilling, drumming
singing origin songs of birth curving
in limb, bone, facet flowering
from cold spring ground spiraling
out of summer cirrus skies curling
in turbulent tidal waves flowing
in ground glacial ice and stone swirling
through the earth’s molten core.
The chill autumn sunlight found me
in the morning as I wakened.
The dark night sky spaces
felt my breath, shimmered in ripples
when I closed my eyes to sleep.
They have all along known me
offered themselves, wondered
at my blind and pleading steps
as I thought them only senseless
spinning reeling silent spaces
forms and movement that shared
no thought for me or my days.
I went my way to borderlands
to the high hills and long vistas
listening for voices in silence
whisperings of life, beauty, joy
waiting there to see the green ray –
signs in the sky, silver portents
in a gathering of littered stones.
They were speaking all along
singing sphere’s celestial songs
dancing – all fouetté, entrechat,
pirouette, grand jeté – brilliant
multi-colored, flowing, fragrant
sensuous as the evening twilight
on a summer’s spoken and soft eve.
Portland, Oregon – June 27, 2017
“For more and more people, the spirit no longer comes down from above. It emerges up from matter and is there for those who are willing to accept the earth’s complication and see the spirit in the storms [that] body and matter throw at us.” Attributed to C.G. Jung in an article from the magazine, Parabola, Vol. 42, No.1; “The I Ching and Synchronicity” by Annette Lowe.
With time comes waiting.
Without waiting comes noise
work, play, forgetting, anxiety.
Silence – the voice of waiting –
stills bones and heart beat
calms the near horizon
quiets fear, stems it’s tide.
Wait.
What will be
will come
in time.
Portland, Oregon – June 14, 2017
Before letters written words came
myriad forms, stone, leaf, paw,
strung together in movement –
frond sway and flutter wing
silky stream, fiery steam pool
inking the tablet of the skies
scribing with shadows the deep seas.
Before lettered words a world wound
round in the whorl of stars spin;
buds opened in evergreen seas
brushed by unnamed winds
sweeping a land hushed in sounds
of thrush, river rush, slither
over dry sands – creosote, sage –
audible in the motion of sun set.
Eden – without name, limit, or god –
spelled in the language of vines
tangled in crow screech
through the misted morning air
murmured in whale song
through chambers of the deep.
Aleph-beth, letters on paper
long after the running deer ran.
Deer as stone glyph, paper mark,
pixels on a screen – thoughts
of a deer running through deep forests
of consonant, vowel, marks
to show how the deer paused, drank
from a clear pool, leaped
over a fallen tree, laid down
on a mossy bed to sleep
to dream the dreams that deer dream.
Portland, Oregon – June 13, 2017
“With the introduction of the aleph-beth [alphabet], a new distance opens between human culture and the rest of nature….With the phonetic aleph-beth, however, the written character no longer refers us to any sensible phenomenon out in the world, or even to the name of such a phenomenon…but solely to a gesture to be made by the human mouth.” (From The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram, Vintage Press, p. 100).
Land’s end Pacific rim sun’s dip
over curling wave thrash.
Onshore cold evening breeze
with birds aflutter, chasing
through bent shore pines.
Thrash, curl, chase, bend –
as dreams I have had
waking on a washed horizon
scratched by wave plumes
thrown up as sheets on a line
falling into the golden surf,
Yachats, Oregon – Pentecost, June 4, 2017
Photo is my own, north of Yachats, Oregon, June 2, 2017.
In the human heart is a space
large enough to hold another
or a world tossed in the heavens.
In the deepest dark of night
we may sense it even in us.
We imagine it is ours
attached to our being
fixed in proximity to our days
then, with our death, it goes away.
We know not much of our heart
expect so little of it, cannot
fathom its cosmic reach, the way
it belongs to us but is not ours alone.
That is the way with the martyr.
In a moment they understand,
touch an infinite and unspeakable glory
barely knowing that, soon,
their lives will be over.
Precious time have they to say
words of love and forgiveness
yet their actions speak for them
about the ways of the human heart
when it opens to all the world.
Portland, Oregon – May 30, 2017
Dedicated to and inspired by the Portland martyrs, Rick Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, who gave their lives protecting two young girls on a train in Portland on May 26, 2017.
There was another who stepped up and lived. He also is to be counted among those called courageous and a hero. He is Micah David-Cole Fletcher who wrote this poem from his hospital bed:
I, am alive.
I spat in the eye of hate and lived.
This is what we must do for one another
We must live for one another
We must fight for one Mother
We must die in the name freedom if we have
to. Luckily it’s not my turn today.
Without thoughts I look for words
strings of words with meaning
wisdom born of wellsprings
dug deep through urgent years.
Hah!
Where are these effervescent pools
whose brimming edges overflow
with sensuous penetration
into great rivers of enlightenment?
Hah!
Lessons in fading school rooms
lamp lit nights reading to sleep
walking trails beside rivers –
the circuitous interstices within.
Hah!
So. I must form thoughtless words
out of twilight and a cool breeze –
without meaning, answering no question
mimicking shadows and whispers.
Hah!
Portland, Oregon – May 25, 2017
Teaching of the aimless way
nothing to seek, find, or lose.
My self, pale in this body,
stumbling through years unto age
living through breath, beating heart
in company with all
no one less than another
tree, spider, crow – animate
inanimate – wind, stone, star;
a share of an onshore breeze
infinitesimal part of the bright moon
all on our paths in movement
within limitless space beyond
the reach of time and its claw –
a chimera, imagination creation
but so beguiling is it not?
Portland, Oregon – May 18, 2017
Our lives form each day
in acts of continuous creation
ever dissolving into the past
moment by moment –
conceived as a verdant garden in spring.
Lives opening as flowers in a meadow
beautiful for a time
folding to close as twilight comes
and in the night bend back to earth.
Each day something new
stumbled upon in old growth
hidden beneath broad leaves
from the past, forgotten.
Each moment a new being
as in the garden on the first day –
a sweet morsel satiating
deep and fragrant longings
opening as tulips, apple blossoms
loveliness in scents of wine
wintergreen and myrrh.
Portland, Oregon – May 16, 2017
Photo is my own, taken May 7, 2017, in our garden.
Evening in a slow sun set
through evergreen limbs climbing
into a cloudless spring sky
backlit in golden pale blue light
set in motion by a breath of cool air.
I close my eyes.
The glorious gilded field remains
in flickering shadow movements
surrounded by the choir of birdcall
smell of pine and turned earth –
the floating world of silk rustling
lotus blossoms, deer in sacred fields
lit in sunset over a western rim.
Portland, Oregon – May 8, 2017
In Cascadia 