Feeling of slow motion fall
through northwest November rain
as the world I thought I knew
passes through watery elements
washed, drowned in apocalyptic fear.
Too soon to say, know, fathom
how to remake a world, create an idea
with others from broken pieces,
fractured remains of the dark day –
now the day after.
Time and rain are tools we have
things we will need to begin.
Portland, Oregon – November 9, 2016
The day following the horrible, terrible, no good, bad day in America.
Thesis
Antithesis
Synthesis
It is time
when change,
a young person’s game,
is forced on us all.
The abyss opens
old men fall, whimpering,
begging for mercy who gave none.
Wise women, who birthed cultures,
step to the edge but cannot stay their feet.
Poets forget words and dreams
resort to formulaic constructions
as if rhyme or meter mattered a whit
in making a new world.
We are lost in a sea of change
who did not read the signs before us
telling of the surging wave
swelling from deep tremors
conspiring with the worlds winds above
to tell us that we had lost our way.
Our Noah awaits us
in a boat too small
a sea too big
without oars, rudder, or mast.
Portland, Oregon – March 30, 2016
The “Hegelian Dialectic” expressed above as “thesis, antithesis, synthesis,” is taken from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel who introduced a system for understanding the history of philosophy and the world itself, often called a “dialectic”: a progression in which each successive movement emerges as a solution to the contradictions inherent in the preceding movement.
Source at:
http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/philosophy/history/hegel_philosophy_history.html
Your faces I do not know
your skins are new
like mine when I was young
when I saw the pale sun
leaning over my home town
felt the sharp tang of winter
that, without mercy,
stripped away my childhood
my school days
my boyhood friends
my first loves and lost loves.
I – left with only what was to come
times and places unknown,
without hearts, warm greetings
absent friendly faces and kind words;
spaces waiting for me
to step into their paths
write their words
let their futures become flesh in me.
When I turn from here
see your faces no more
I will visit again that formless void
of what will be –
that place that is never filled
always empty, hungry, waiting
for me to step into it
name it
tell its story.
Seattle, Washington – January 28, 2014
Claustrophobia readings present local writers in very small settings in Seattle, hence, “claustrophobia.” I had never read my works before and a dear friend, Rachel, asked if I would read. I did, was affirmed beautifully, and I remain grateful for the experience.
I am alone with the quiet and the chilling sunshine
the ticking clock and wind-blown light
nothing to do that must be done.
I’ve left my work life behind me
paid days of anxious scribbling;
spreadsheets, meetings, report drafts, coffee
while I gazed out my cubicle window over the Salish Sea
plied by ferries moving white and green across the sea’s deep blue.
Or, I looked long into the dense fog of winter dark early mornings –
fog creeping silent up to my own window high above
so that neither ferry nor sea could I behold –
just a gray shimmer quavering shadow,
ghostly hovering there before my eyes,
suggestive of an unknown, future, less scripted life.
I watched, as the mindless gray gave way to a full and lustrous winter crisp moon
crackling white in the cold dark morning.
Its brilliance washed the water’s expanse with a rippling shimmer of moonlight,
illumining the churned and opalescent wakes of ferries,
shining as if on ships making their ways to heaven across a vast sea
to where the moon itself lives when it sets over the western horizon.
Oh, how I then complained of my tedious days of work,
the numbing aspect of time ground to a halt.
My companions allowed me to expound at length,
on the baffling politic of management concern!
These are such companions as one needs in life,
who see you through the hours of countless working days
and are content to have you return again the next
in spite of all manner of gruff, and you understand they are true –
the good fortune of work, forgiveness there, and a task, well done at the last.
Still, it is the moon over the sea
the sun’s shine on the mountains snow-capped peaks
the ferries slow movement over the water
and the curling, implacable fog I remember
from the days when I was paid for the work I did
unlike today, with its ticking clock, its windblown light
and with nothing to do that must be done.
Portland, Oregon – February 23, 2016
The picture, above, is of a small portion of the Salish Sea, otherwise known as Puget Sound, on which sits the great city of Seattle. The photo was taken through what was my cubicle window by a colleague who now claims that view. I thank her for this.
Some years, Advent arrives quietly
like a mouse who hides behind walls
leaving behind crumbs of rain swept days,
nights when the moon passed through broken clouds,
warm evenings and starlit mornings.
Other years Advent arrives like a crazy mouse
who runs back and forth before our eyes
during a well-planned and lit cocktail party.
We were not ready for him –
his perfect absurdity and his insouciant bravura.
We excuse him to our guests who stand on chairs
hoping they will forgive us and return some day.
This year? That wild mouse!
The extraordinary mouse who assails the year
with babies, houses, and sickness;
awakenings in the night,
hammering in the daylight.
We opened the door of the new year and in he ran.
There was little we could do but watch and scamper from chair to chair.
Seattle, Washington – December 2006
In Cascadia 