We shall take a walk in the woods where nature we will meet in fern and fir and wildflower where fungi blooms abundantly. There will be wildlife as well hidden in growth below stealing about without a sound or cracking sound of branch above. If we have not woods to roam then may we search the heavens for nature blooming brilliantly in starlight forests strewn. I would have the woods to walk when I can and if I'm able. If not I'll turn my aged eyes to fields of night where stars are born. ‐---------------‐----------------------------------- Portland, Oregon - July 27, 2022
Aging
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
Shadowlands
I grow older as days grow shorter
fading too soon to twilight
flowing into the flowering darkness.
A gray and slithering fog greets me
on winter mornings lingering ’til noon
swirling in cold wind and drear damp
while in the near distance tall firs
blend into an evergreen gloaming.
Some winter days the fallow forgotten sun
cold shining clear and transparent
lies low across the southern horizon.
I pull on my warm coat to sit in the chill
watch the sun move through bare tree branches
creating movement of light all around me.
I live in these flickering shadowlands –
diminishing days among silvery threads
woven through the world’s dark lace.
Portland, Oregon – January 30, 2019
Coming Spring
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
Deadheading
Late summer latitudes in quiet heat.
Listless breezes brush floundering flowered
stems for deadheading – as fields of lost minds
are plucked and thrown, as useless, away,
once their lovely charms become
relics of distant blurred memories.
Too many to remember but the first ones
growing by a white picket fence, four in all,
flowers in a row, planted long ago –
spring flowers now bending their faces to the ground.
Late summer thoughts of fading flowers –
deadheading browned blooms by evening’s light.
Portland, Oregon – August 22, 2017
We are aging, my three siblings and me. We were born and grew up by a short and low white picket fence. The idea of “deadheading” as applied to persons may be a troubling concept, yet it stands in recognition of our participation in the cycles of life shared with all of being.
Photo is my own, taken August 30, 2017.
Now I Lay Me Down
“Now I lay me down to sleep…”
I recited as prayer, imploring the night.
Sixty years have passed in cool water
slow movement beneath the River Bridge
as now I turn out my bedside lamp
no longer reciting my plea of childhood faith
asking God to take my soul in its nights death.
Still, I then slept through the dark hours
waking with the morning light, undisturbed
despite wind shaking the tall cedars,
creaking in the walls or even the calls
of monsters under my bed patiently waiting.
Perhaps if I say this child’s prayer tonight
as I lay me down to sleep
I’ll sleep his sleep until morning light
awakens me and not open my eyes
to darkness and still silent hours.
Portland, Oregon – March 14, 2017
This is “inspired” by a common prayer for children: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” It the version I said with my mother.
Dutch Elm Disease and the Birch Grove
I was surrounded by trees when I was a boy –
cedars mostly and three apple trees with sad fruit.
In front, branches hanging over State street, lived two Dutch elm trees.
They had a tree disease and someone cut them down.
I knew those two trees as a boy –
squirrels racing along their branches,
birds flying about in their branches.
My father said, “they have Dutch elm disease.”
It meant nothing to me.
I came home from school one day and they were gone.
I didn’t mourn. I looked at the stumps then went on with boyhood.
Today, men came to my yard and cut down my birch trees.
They have a disease, they said, the bronze birch borer disease.
They are dying so they must be cut down –
nothing left but to make them into wildlife snags.
Bugs will live in them and birds will come to feed on the bugs.
It is painful being an adult, saying, “cut down those trees.”
“Those trees have the birch borer disease, so they must go.”
Now they are gone – the leaves gone –
the small spring green leaves, yellow autumn leaves,
the tangle of thin whippy branches.
Come on bugs and birds!
What’s left of my birch trees is all yours now –
I wait for you to come with spring after this long winter.
Portland, Oregon – January 10, 2017
Photo is my own, taken this date after the largest snowfall in Portland in a long time! The trees were cut the day before.
Door to Another World
There are doors to other worlds
where fairies live in green gardens
fly among all the flowers
feast on fare from foreign lands
hover lightly over still pools.
Emerald and sparkling places
of dreams and visions interlaced
with spaces where magic can evoke
wonder in her eyes, beholding
enchanted realms, mythic times, and love.
Have the passageways been secreted away
the thresholds steely barred
locked before the coming of gray beard
aged walker on fading narrow paths
wandering soul with stick and cap?
She will say it is not so, having keyed
the rusted lock, turned the spider webbed latch
and opened the vine-encrusted door.
“If only, Grandpa, you could see what I see,
beyond the red door in the green fields.”
Portland, Oregon – December 2, 2016
Photo, my own. Artists? My dear granddaughter and a Cascadian oak.
La-Di-Da
Others, when I was young, seemed la-di-da –
before them rich, full lives
strong, beautiful and confident, lithe
knowing the words, numbers and the tunes.
I watched them run over our springtime fields
hair flying loose in the warm greening sun
without blemish, wrinkle, or scar.
Youthful friends of mine they –
they were, they were, la-di-da, la-di-da.
I see them still gathered
in fields long gone, kicking
through autumn fallen leaves.
Their years succumb to days
lost in a forgetting haze
when they were young and la-di-da.
I did not know them after all
Like me, trying to find their ways
wandering – la-di-da, la-di-da, la-di-da.
Portland, Oregon – August 2, 2016
The Oxford Dictionary (Oxforddictionaries.com) definition of “la-di-da” is “pretentious or snobbish.” I can’t argue with the Oxford Dictionary people, except that this is not my meaning for the phrase. I take the sense of it as used by the Diane Keaton character in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. There is no definition. It is just a sense of carefree or careless. At least that is what it means to me.
Fire and Water
My evening fire burns
slowly in a drizzling calm
waiting for a breath –
A silent forest
green breeze; bending river rush
glacial fed chill wind.
Behind, ceaseless sound
river coursing down and down
flowing, no effort
Pouring over rock
carrying away mountain
no need for my hand.
Quickens now my fire
a warm blaze rising at last
crackling in twilight
Keep I it a while
for the night is passing fast
soon will embers be
A little longer
how much longer I don’t know
the rain quickening.
Late June, 2016 – La Wis Wis campground, south of Tahoma National Park.
Photo is my own, taken from La Wis Wis campground. The river is the Ohanapecosh flowing from the glaciers of Tahoma.)
In Cascadia 