A song hums before the flooded womb, beyond the darkling grave thrumming through our every dream's night and in each shining shadowed day. Moments, when the cool breeze of autumn floats through the open window, I think that I can make out a melody from far away leading me on until my sad restlessness comes and I find there are things I could do that needn't be done but I do and the sound I thought I heard dissolves into loss. Then the moon, almost forgotten, rising on the face of evening's tender blush, takes up the song and I hear it again, faint, from beyond the edge of night, or, it sings within the soft lights of dawn or dusk, in shadows or the still of silence. Perpetual and persistent though it is, I stop to listen only by chance and surprise. What would my life be if I were to sit longer with that patient melody - let it enter me as much as the air, as much as my own beating heart? Might I know of eternity and heaven, of grace transfiguring all and all that is? Such thoughts in the night - follies of imagination! Except, others have intimated as much and more and who am I to say that their engagement with the sublimity of surrendered souls are only the ravings of lunatics gone mad from too frequent forays into darkness? The night is getting on and I am ready to sleep drowsing in the soft cool darkness that is this September eve. The birds have retired to their nests, the squirrels to theirs and the melodies of the night are reserved to a distant rumble on roads and rails out beyond the silver streetlights. Still, I will sit quiet for a while and listen that I might hear that faint murmur telling of what was before I was born and what will be when I have passed away. _________________________________________________________________________________________ Portland, Oregon - September 26, 2021 The poetic phrase, "...mystic chords of memory" was used at the end of Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address. He, indeed, was a poet, using words as artfully as any politician, or anyone for that matter. Thus, I steal the phrase from him but at least here give him proper attribution. My use of the phrase is not in any way intended to mimic the context or philosophy that prompted his original use.
Memory
Impermanence
Big lake. Small town. Deep forest. Sinuous river. The phenomena of young life passed into memory - fragmented and culled. Swimming in fresh water fishing from Mac's dock. I lay on warm sand beaches beneath summer cumulus clouds floating by and with them going to another place in time. We ran the thin strand past the lighthouse and foghorn over the dunes to see the town, across open water in low horizon, lit by the lights of home. There lived those who knew me - a child, a boy, a young man. We went to school, played ball, rode our bikes and tossed our papers. I worked in a main street store after school and into the night. All of this and these were as once I lived by a lake and in a town near a forest and a solemn river. As I live now they are gone. ____________________________________________________________________________ Portland, Oregon - August 22, 2021
Pulling a Cart
I know it is behind me
pulling as I pull,
desiring to go back
in time and to places
that memory recreates
to be what they were not,
to write another story
than the one I’ve already
written about my own life.
A cart filled, tied down
bearing what I would let go –
deeds done and failed to do
words said and failed to say –
forgetting and leaving
them behind in the wake
of the road I’ve travelled.
Yet. These live side by side
with all that was and that
I can never wish to leave behind.
I feel their presence – faces
places I knew, thought I knew,
did not know – the burden
of grief and loss when I left
parents, dear friends, sacred
spaces I still long for when
my heart sinks into my soul
bearing the friendship of remembrance.
I pull it all along behind me
moving more slowly with age.
None of it may be lost or left
behind, not the entwining love
or the wrenching loss.
Each of my days now flowers drenched
in bright sun and falling rain.
Most I cannot remember, lost them
over the wide fields of lush life
become now a bouquet picked
from all the sweet days I can recall
and from the ones I’ve long forgotten.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Portland, Oregon – April 12, 2021
Stories of Our Lives
We tell stories of our lives
as we remember they were
and believe they are:
clear and distinct memories,
what we learned in school,
works of our hands,
beauty we have seen and touched,
who we loved and lost;
all our senses ablaze for a time.
We do not know well our own stories
they, as wildflowers, growing
in fields abloom, bending in every breeze
sleeping at night among the stars –
winter comes and they are gone.
So we in our fields bloom,
bend, sleep, then go our way.
I watch as indistinct shadows move
behind a thin and trembling veil
telling me about my life –
things strange and unfinished,
without beginning or end.
I see flickering phantasms
playing on creation’s silvery screen
that seem to be about me
but, as in a dream, make no sense
as if I am in and out of my own life
becoming things I do not remember,
as if I were a tree or,
on its branches, a tiny bird.
If only we knew our whole story
told by one who knows,
can tell its whole arc
however long, its shape and texture,
and where it bends into the night.
I wonder if poetry can follow
the thin thread thrown from the heavens
down onto the green fields of life
and tell where it has come from
and where it goes?
Intimations of immortality
may follow that twisting line
to describe the contours of being
formed from cosmic nothing –
hidden, revealed, washed away again
as endless breakers on sunlit shores.
Portland, Oregon – November 16, 2019
Gratitude to William Wordsworth for his sublime, “Ode on Intimations of Immortality.” (https://www.bartleby.com/101/536.html) I highly recommend reading this masterpiece. In my own poem, I use “intimations of immortality” as a way of saying how poetry may be able to describe what other artistic forms may not. But, of course, all art forms, even to include the sciences, try to speak to the mysteries of life.
In Cascadia 