Winter

Shadowlands

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

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

‘Twas the Night

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

Before it came to be, in a twinkling
long away, there was but lorn darkness
without light, form, or play.
Nothing spinning, nothing bright
just a hum, a still murmur
on a cold, empty night.

Who can imagine, who wonders aloud
what caused it to be, our heavenly shroud?
So long ago, so far away
came a great light, with a bang so they say
but nay, rather with a shudder then a click,
the lighting, bright flaring, of a wick
in a vast, silent, and dark night
with none, so we think, to see its light;
propelling stars, engendering moons,
birthing water and stone, morning and noon.

The cold lowering winter sun
breathes with frosted breath,
gleams on snowy fields and frozen streams.
Far away we are from where we once began
standing on creation’s slender lip
where was night, nothing, all, and then…

Portland, Oregon – December 20, 2018, eve of the winter solstice.

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Deciduous Lives

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Autumn Leaves

When in spring green leaves grow
under the sweet canopy of a swelling sky
so grow our spirits within us, larger and lovelier,
expanding into the radiant fissures of life
bursting their seams revealing a broad firmament
to touch with fingers of life the hand of infinity.

Summer comes, its lush garment wraps about our lives
and we play with an ancient and unmerited inheritance –
gifts of intellect and desire, urgent love and sorrowful loss.
Our branches and leaves broaden, tangle, and cross
knitted through with warm air flowing through senses unfolding –
flower sweet, bird note, blue sky, rough bark, bitter cherry –
the sensuous warp and weft of the seamless garment of life.

It does not last, the canopy of spring, the garment of summer.
It falls down around us in russet patches torn and worn.
We look then to see our bare arms waving leafless
naked against the cold reach of approaching death
yet it is not death after all but sleep and dream
under the blanket of winter, its wind and rain and snow.

Portland, Oregon – December 11, 2018

Photo is my own of our front yard maple.

Star

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In an early morning I saw a star hung from a tree.
She seemed to be held there, dropped
out of a galaxy fleeing fast away
suspended as if from a gossamer line
from the tip of a nodding needled branch.

I sat in stillness watching darkness
pass before me or, closing my eyes,
wandering in my thoughts.
What is, what was, what will be?
A clinging sense of loss
the quickening passage of time
slow motions of aging and remembrance.
Oft I came back to that star
to watch her slow descent –
a soft fall onto a branch below.

A clear and cold December morning
without cloud or fog, rain or snow
revealed the star on her way.
She was finding her way through the heavens
in a long arc – ascent and descent –
carrying fire along the way.

Portland, Oregon – December 23, 2017

November

/ Korin Thomas / 1 Comment

Autumn Leaves

Late November pushes against each branch and shadow
hustling along the clinging leaves and broken spider webs,
sweeping with a broad broom of chill and stinging wind
the last memories of autumn’s crisp intoxication.

Ah.  The fertile land exhales slowly, quieting itself
as if, injured, it seeks a healing and drowsy sleep.
I must go with it into darkness, for all my soul,
as autumn takes it’s leave and winter’s night draws near.

Portland, Oregon – November 26, 2017

Epiphany

/ Korin Thomas / 2 Comments

pail-of-water

Bending arc of the sun in southerly decline
beyond the frozen garden
over the slender curve of the earth
while I hold my winter breath –
still upon still in the morning sunlight.

Birds and squirrels come to the fountain
looking for water in deep ice.
I’ll put out a pail of warm water,
change it before it freezes hard –
soon the sun will spring bring again.

Portland, Oregon – January 6, 2017 – Feast of the Epiphany

Two Trees

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img_20161226_161109765_hdr

Along the banks of the McKenzie
two trees stand over a cold Christmas flow
of rippled waters in thrilling rush.
One day the McKenzie will take them with her
but for now they remain, leafless in afternoon light,
stripped of but branch and bud by winter.

I came to see the river
yet what do I miss when I see
what I come to look upon?
This – beauty bare branches in a wind flown sky
flailing long arms in the breeze and water surges –
like young girls racing along a summer beach.

Portland, Oregon – January 4, 2017

Photo is my own, taken on December 27, 2016 above the McKenzie river, Oregon.

Here is the river:

mckenzie-river-afternoon-12-28-16

First Snow

/ Korin Thomas / 2 Comments

Today, the first snow
in blown flakes and ice;
cold evergreens, tall pacific
giants bending before the will
of winter come at last.
Freeze the year past gone
now the spring green psalms
the warm summer balm
verdant calm of leaves falling
into the now winter twilight.
Come, night long lasting
until the crackling morning
sun illumines sharp shards
of ice encrusted snow.

Portland, Oregon – December 8, 2016

The Light, the Wall, and the Spider

/ Korin Thomas / 3 Comments

Writing in the cold night-wrapped garage under a single light
clamped precarious to rough lumber hung on pegboard
over table meant for working wood, mind working instead.
Hard surfaces, bare and cracked concrete, cold cheap tools,
dust and blown in leaves, dead insects,
black widow spiders stealthy hidden in dark places.

The cold is close, biting at ungloved finger tips,
scratching to get further in, through thin walls
to reach some organic and pliant space, of flesh and doubt,
where it may infuse to a depth physical – imminent –
to grasp and pull back out through the wall
a flailing homebody, miserable excuse for an adventurer,
into spaces liminal and transcendent.
One light to hold back the claw and tooth of the dark
black against the window, empty even of stars.

Writing on an island in the sea of infinite mystery –
a light, a wall, and a spider –
protection from the encroaching sea-filled blackness
flimsy barriers against the chill waves of the cosmos and the divine
where exist no sharp edges, curved surfaces, or idyllic scenes.
No theology, religion, creed, or dogma tonight –
just what was, is, and forever shall be.

Portland, Oregon – February 29, 2016

Inspired by Karl Rahner in Foundations of Christian Faith (1978, p. 22):

“In the ultimate depths of his being man knows nothing more surely than that his knowledge, that is, what is called knowledge in everyday parlance, is only a small island in a vast sea that has not been traveled.  It is a floating island, and it might be more familiar to us than the sea, but ultimately it is borne by the sea and only because it is can we be borne by it….Hence the existential question for the knower is this: Which does he love more, the small island of his so-called knowledge or the sea of infinite mystery?”

Ice Storm

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1798141_487808021330387_1494130555_nIce covers every green leaf,
blue berry, bare branch –
clear, heavy, bending, breaking.
The weight of water, freezing flow
as if time were captured
the glistening moment caught
in a watery transparent shroud –
cessation, ceaseless, sensate time at last!

Frozen form, fractured,
snapping in the wind,
breaking in sharp shards
into the bright air,
crackling onto the brittle snow below
time, once again, set free.

Portland, Oregon – February 2014