In this spring season it is rare to see upon the budding ground snow, what winter forgot to give and just now thought to bring. Bended branches, unbroken, slowly lose the weight of snow. They rise, shake themselves off, wonder about all the fuss. Broken branches litter the yard, lie in the street, crumble in the drive. They have done their giving part - birthed sweet leaves of green. In any season we may be broken by the coming of unexpected snow. Yet we have given birth to sweetness that in all seasons never dies. ____________________________________________________________ Portland, Oregon - April 11, 2022 Written following the first recorded snowfall in April, in Portland. It also seems fitting for this Holy Week when some consider the meaning of death and resurrection.
Lent
Prayer
Often, mornings I sit with wild birds
who poke about among fallen leaves
gathering what our bit of earth provides.
To them I offer a human greeting: “Hello!
How do you fare this day, going about?”
Older now, forgetting my youthful doubts
I have expectant hope of twittered replies
as they’ve come grudgingly to know me
as one who sits under our cedar tree
a tweet, perhaps, from a nearby chickadee.
No less do I hope that when I pray
for you, thinking mercy, grace, and love –
healing in your moments of human need –
that mercy, grace, and love will find you.
Just so, because we share a part in life,
becomes fixed between us an anchored cord
pegged to sacred ground, pinned fast
to a round and boundless eternal realm.
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Portland, Oregon – March 3, 2021
Ashes Eve
Tonight, ashes eve.
Tomorrow, ashes drawn
feeling them there
where I cannot see them.
Not this year. This isolation.
No one will spread oily ashes
in the sacred sanctuary.
I will remember them –
ashes of yesteryears –
gritty scrape and black
and find myself, again,
looking to the saving season.
Lent. Remembrance, remorse
for the sick and the dying.
Salvation out of suffering –
born of darkness, like life
escaping the jaws of death.
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Portland, Oregon – February 16, 2021. Eve of Ash Wednesday in the Catholic liturgical year.
Ashes, Ashes
“Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.”
We begin with the end –
how our bodies will be
when we let go
of our last breath
when the blood in us slows,
stops, and our hearts
drum no more inside.
Ashes as warning
signs on our foreheads
soon washed away
leading us darkly
as, with solemn steps,
we cross winter’s desert
for the oasis of spring.
Portland, Oregon – February 26, 2020. Ash Wednesday
Atman – The Wild
Known spaces, familiar, old, understood.
Others talk of the wild, I pass them
on streets, have worked with them, schooled
with ones who did things, thought things I
could not and feared to step into their chaos.
I did not know, kept forgetting the silent
unassailed wild, the forgotten formless
danger, fear, uncharted space
nearby. Close, like a whisper.
The Atman* – my self, unknown, eternal.
Wild human forms have played
in the world, carved their images
in our thoughts, sacred pages, field notes
with names as if they were human
beings who strode the earth as I do.
They were the Buddhas, Christs
foraging in wild places, lying on straw
walking from place to place
from time into our time –
becoming immortal living beings.
Here am I. Out there is wilderness.
Not far, not out there at all.
In the morning I take my coffee
to sit in the season’s weathers
feel the air on which birds fly
through branches or where they perch
singing of their lives and loves.
Who is this being living in me
tugging at my coat and hat
hiding within my heart
crouching behind my own familiar face?
Portland, Oregon – April 8, 2019
*”Atman is the immortal aspect of our mortal existence, the individual Self, which is hidden in every object of creation including humans. It is the microcosm which represents the macrocosm in each of us, imparting to us divine qualities and possibilities and providing us with consciousness and the reason to exist and experience the pains and pleasures of earthly life.” (https://www.hinduwebsite.com/atman.asp).
In Cascadia 