In just a while I have to go Into the rain and cheerless cold And leave this warmth that comforts me Before the coming of the snow. For just another moment more, Until I do another chore, I'll watch the rain as it comes down, I'll wait beside the open door. No one can say what's there for me Beyond the hills, beyond the sea. So close to home I'll stay today Where I may love and I may Be. And on this dreary solstice day Into the world so dark, so gray I'll go, but just one minute more Before I'm off and on my way! ________________________________________________ Portland, Oregon - December 21, 2021. This poem is my attempt to mimic Robert Frost's perfect, "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening." No one can match the brilliance of his work, but it was fun to try given the parameters he set for his piece. It's a challenge because I'm not used to sticking to a strict style in terms of rhyming patterns and syllabic rhythms.
Advent
Christmas Moons
On this chill night in mid-December a waxing one-third moon, the Cold Long Night moon - shows itself in pieces through the red cedar stiff branches, tall and evergreen. She is a sign on this dark and clear night, harbinger of chill in silver and white. In pieces yet whole, as we, broken bright. She has moved silent and slow over ice and brilliant snows of dark Decembers. She hung three-quarters full on the boughs of heaven when first I heard the silver bells and saw tinsel stars above, adorning and adoring. Myself? A babe with cries imploring! At twenty years of Christmases my Cold Long Night moon was nowhere to be found. She was a new moon, no moon wandering unseen over the land. Myself unseen. I was barely a man. When still too young I stood behind altars and ambos shielded in embroidered vestments, collared white. I read the Gospel of Peace. That night, the waxing Cold Moon, almost full, filled with light the desert night. I remember it not at all having lost it among all the words. Many years have gone and now the Cold Long Night moon continues its descent into the ocean just beyond the cedar horizon. On Christmas? She will be three-quarters full, waning, likely to be lost in rain, hidden by scudding clouds holding snow and ice. Never mind. She will be there, seen or unseen, as she has been for all the years I've ever known. ______________________________________________________________ Portland, Oregon - December 13, 2021
Darkness. Silence. Waiting.
When you see darkness and hear silence you know that Advent has come. Look around. Sit still. Speak not. Wait for what is coming. Wind in the trees. Dog bark. Traffic hum. A human cry, far away. This is Advent. This is the season. It is dark out there, perilous chill. We light our candles, consult holy books to little avail. They do not know our paths, what ways we were set upon when we were born. There are choices we still can make, must make for the good of us all. Only this, to walk on the dark paths, to listen but not hear a call. Our words are meaningless now, our thoughts like clouds passing away. Let us wait to see what, or who, will come. ____________________________________________________ Portland, Oregon - Eve of the Feast of St. Nicholas. December 5, 2021 Of all the liturgical seasons set by the Christian faith traditions, Advent is the most meaningful to me. The watchwords of the season are three: Darkness, silence, and waiting. But, beware! Advent is a pseudo-preparation for Christmas. We cannot wait for an event that happened long ago. We can only wait for what is still to come and woe to anyone who thinks they know what that might be! Therefore, no matter what one thinks of the Christian traditions, one cannot doubt that darkness, silence, and waiting are conditions of human life that must be taken seriously.
Following the Star
Over this troubled land winter is settling
with it’s mystical bright star wandering
the heavens in celestial movement
designed to guide sojourners on their way.
I feel it’s tug at my own true and exalted nature,
it’s sudden pushes and swift kicks, and try,
fitfully, to align my orbit with its stellar path –
and yet….
I’ve reasons for dark fear and cold resentment
thinking of my lost country and it’s fractured souls.
I struggle to hold on to what, when I was young,
I learned in school, in church and, through the years,
tried to practice when I wrote, worked, played, and loved.
It is not simple to uncover, buried
in teachings, rules, sermons, and books,
the lessons best to keep close and careful guard.
Countless are the numbers of those who,
in times and places, walked with me on the way.
Some have stayed by me through the years
and some stayed not long enough though from each
I learned a lesson or failed to learn and left and lost.
I have often wandered from the path
that follows that rogue and roving star.
Always it has sought to seek and save me
wherever I came from or where I was going –
from Lake Huron’s shore to my home here
where I can almost hear the Columbia river roll
in riffles and rapids to the Pacific realm.
Yes. I’ve reasons for dark fear and cold resentment
thinking of my lost country and it’s fractured souls.
Yet, over the land and the souls of the land
hangs the luminous star without name or creed.
It sings in the darkness of this winter season.
I listen for it through the dark nights.
I wait for it’s song sung by the winter rains.
Follow. Follow. Follow.
This it seems to say but says no more.
_________________________________________________________
Portland, Oregon – December 16, 2020
The Forest Adventurous*
Advent.
Adventure.
________________________________________________
I stand in the realm of pale winter’s light
at the entrance to a deep forest darkness
without scrying sign, portending trail,
or vanishing point to guide my way.
The winter solstice is near. It promises, always,
short lit days, long dark hours, hints of snow.
Confused and worn memories tug at my coat;
expectations, desperate to steer my steps,
clutch at my ankles, grab my cuffs, pull on my belt.
The hidden path in front of me waits patient,
without fear, demand, or remorse.
I feel it’s invitation from out of the darkness –
whispers, voices, songs, blown by winds
near me, around me, in me.
Portland, Oregon – Season of Advent, December 6, 2020
Joseph Campbell relates a passage from La Queste del Saint Graal regarding the Arthurian myth and the beginning of the Knight’s quest for the Holy Grail: “They thought it would be a disgrace to go forth in a group. Each entered the Forest Adventurous at that point which he himself had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no way or path. You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path. Where there’s a way or path, it is someone else’s path; each human being is a unique phenomenon.'” (Pathways to Bliss, p. xxvi.)
Darkening Days
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
Advent – Come!
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.
The Slow Fall of Advent
Advent – a slow fall into winter.
Bright crystalline stars
crisp brittle plate moon.
In an instant it could shatter,
break back into a dark and dreamless sleep.
It holds, a thin fluttering veil
all that we know
hung upon the perfect tree
an ornament on the Christ tree
architecture of night divine.
It holds, flung into the cold –
a play of fluttering bright lights
strung into dark and holy nights.
I cannot recall where I was when I wrote this, only that I wrote it in 2009.
Wordsick World
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
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.
In Cascadia 