Each day I wake to dim light spreading slowly, sending away darkness, spreading out the land. Here it is! I say to myself - the new day not yet broken! Hope swells in waves. Then, as the sun shines or the rain pours and the cold, comes news of the world washing over me, bending my wishing spirit, my heart's desire, my weary and forsaking hope. What to do but work and pray? One hand holding the sacred earth the other the splendorous sky. Another night begins - autumn eve writing under lamplight. Bent but not broken, my hope. _________________________________________________________________________________ Portland, Oregon - October 8, 2021
Climate Change
What Became of Summer?
All the years I waited through winter for summer, it's warm and calm breezes, sinking toes into beach sand, lying in green grass under slow clouds drifting as if going nowhere, nowhere. Playing catch with my cousin, bikes out all along the Monument Road to where, in winter, ski slopes rose above Silver Creek, and in summer all green wood and forgotten meadows. We did not know what would come of summer when we also silver were, that it would not be what it always was that healing season after the winter storms. Now I wish for autumn leaves, the coming of rain and cold - healing after burned leaves, drowned fields, the empty air where once swirled myriad butterflies, birds and bees. Where the species once abundant swarming in all the fields, forests, and farms? I will take a breath in autumn, a deep breath as calm, as balm watching the rain fall hearing it on the roof, pooling in the ruts. Here is the cool wind from the west that brings an end to summer and to what summer has become. _________________________________________________________________ Portland, Oregon - September 29, 2021 I write from the Pacific Northwest of America. While other places in America and the world experienced devastating rains and flooding, we experienced devastating heat and drought. I support the fullest of the Green New Deal to begin to take seriously the effects of human caused climate change.
Orange
Orange. Sun set color tinged - smoke of fires. Another hot day. Our rain, our cool are for another someone far away. They grieve for the rain we for the drought. We both are without. Let it be. Together we grasp the meaning of the orange and the gray. _____________________________________________________________________________ Portland, Oregon - August 14, 2021
Autumn Eve
Autumn eve in smoke and ash.
Autumn leaves making their solemn way.
These are not the days when I was young
piling leaves and setting them afire
watching the drifting smoke and smelling
the sweet smells of summer going away,
walking to school, chattering, laughing.
What do children know these days
of the days we knew?
What do they know of what
we never knew, imagined
or nightmare dreamed
when we were young?
I feel for their fall into autumn –
what more they will know
will suffer and grieve
long after I am gone.
Portland, Oregon – Eve of the autumnal equinox, September 21, 2020
Written during the season of wildfires on the entire west coast of America, blanketing large areas with smoke and ash, destroying homes, killing some. These things are deathly harbingers of a climate change we humans have brought about. No doubt.
The Closing Door
Fairy door on oak – November 29, 2016
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.
Fire and Rain
A rain forest burns beyond me
under the fading golden blue shine
breezy late summer evening
sun’s set in the Pacific northwest.
The smoke comes, reeking, seeking
wherever we are in the world
come it will, soon and very soon.
Images of fire scroll up
across the pages of the world.
Fire, blazing under the nibs of pens
melting quills, frizzling keys
forming the matrices of creation
as we awaken, singed and scorched
by kindling we used to light the fire.
I feel the flames around me
smell the acrid smoke enfold
hear the cries of people running
birds screeching in panic,
anaconda, anteater, iguana
golden lion tamarin racing
for their lives, living beings
wanting just and only what I want.
None I know, will never see
but must know, see as they are now
fleeing fires razing the green reaches
to the height and breadth of the Amazon –
silent and vast reaches I only knew
from pages of my child’s geography book.
Portland, Oregon – August 2019
As I write, the rain forests of the Amazon are burning out of control with madmen watching unconcerned, complicit, and culpable. What can poetry do to address this insanity? Not nothing.
Wilderness
The peoples have left the lighted paths
feel now their way with outstretched hands
along choked and darkened roads
city slithering alleys, ruined country lanes.
Behind them they hear disturbed voices
a babble of whispered tongues speaking
what was, could have been, may be.
The ground become a shaking wilderness
changing, unknown and new, boiling
as darkness eclipses a failing light.
A gloaming gathers in heavy folds
weighing down, turbulent, roiling.
Bleak the countryside, the burning fields
ruined trees of ash and smoke;
the drowned land, the melting ice,
animals set adrift in unknown seas.
Fare-thee-well and so sorry
to have forgotten and lost you.
What has become the solace of green gardens
freshets of bubbling life from cold streams
swirling down from glaciered mountains?
Where the sweet murmur of silent prayer –
faith, hope, love, sacred forgiveness –
becoming light within a child’s dream?
What world will the people choose
having so much lost and still to lose?
And I – what will I choose
within the light of knowledge I possess
of what I’ve done and failed to do?
Portland, Oregon – August 19, 2019
Weather and Climate Change
The weather changed today.
In the morning a marine layer, crisp,
lowered over the Pacific northwest –
gray and calm, cool as a silent prayer.
In the afternoon the sun drifted
overhead through wispy clouds;
warmth spread over our splendid fields
as spring became summer.
As a young boy a day such as this
was all I knew of weather.
As for climate, as with all science,
I was blissfully unaware
content to wish upon stars.
I’ve only wanted daily weather –
seasonal changes from warm to cold,
rain to wind to snow.
It was enough for me to know
that climate changes because
the axial tilt of the earth,
at 23.5 degrees, makes it so,
while the orbiting moon flails
endlessly at the foaming seas.
How little I knew of weather,
of climate and their ways.
The blame is mine.
As a boy I lay in the summer grass
watching the clouds drift by.
It was all I ever wanted to know
of weather, climate change
and the passing of our limited time.
Portland, Oregon – Summer solstice, June 21, 2019.
In Cascadia 