22 Memories of Fall and Winter passing.

I.
Evening finds sunlight lingering, crisscrossed with the long shadows of naked oak limbs; fingers of ice crystals stretching out across the surfaces of brown opaque puddles; last year’s dead grass flattened against the face of the fresh exposed earth, like a newborn’s hair; birdsong.

II.
The road is long. The road is straight. The road is narrow.
The plains I travel over are broad, flat, and unchanging.
The sky overhead is laden with a sheet of silken cloud.
Miles, miles and miles I drive thoughtless in darkness
behind the headlights’ monotonous beams.
Suddenly
a flash of motion, frantic, a fawn darts in front of me
startled I can’t avoid it.
God spares it.
Long afterward I’m haunted by “what if…”

III.
My mind was as white and inert as fields and fields of cold white snow
until after much passing of time, lost in contemplation, I at last did see the snow.
I began to understand that it is through the random senseless falling of so many snowflakes and the relentlessness of mindless endless winds that such intricate exquisite patterns arise upon the surfaces of drifts.

IV.
The Sun shone so brilliantly that the sky burned blue and the fields blazed white. That it was a frigid three degrees was to hard to grasp until you turned into the winds. With the crisp air came clarity, a keen realization that life possesses an undeniable veracity. In the stillness of the moment all was beautiful.

V.
Snowflakes fall in the stillness of night silently blanketing the land. Each one a masterpiece unique, not just each snowflake falling here and now, but each one fallen anywhere ever since the first one ever fell, snowflakes that lose themselves in the mass of the whole, each one a poem undiscovered until one at last lands before your eyes and tells you everything.

VI.
A yellow house seen through the falling snow
I remember the forts and angels we used to make.
The blue sky seen through the naked branches of winter’s oaks
I remember a snowmobile ride in a forest where I first saw my sister smoke.
A doorway illuminated by a lone bulb in the darkness of night says “Come in from the cold”.

VII.
We can choose to change or not
we can either be intentional about what we will be
or believe that change is unnecessary and unwanted.
Be that as it may, change occurs regardless
imperceptibly or in an instant
towards growth or decay.
You decide.

VIII.
It rose brilliantly illuminating winter’s longest night
ascending to its zenith where a darkness came upon it
extinguishing in shadow black its lofty light.
Ocher as blood it turned as if it were dead
and the world grew dim.
In the quiet I pondered Christmas and the Cross
then the shadow ebbed ever so gradually away
until at dawn it entirely vanished.
The Moon had set, the Sun had come
utterly vanquishing the night.

IX.
Mighty is the Oak
Great is the towering Pine
Both slumber undisturbed
roots nestled beneath a deep blanket of snow
The little brook acquiescing to every stone still meanders on its way.

X.
Morning finds us waiting with Ben for his bus
catching snowflakes on our tongues
looking east into a blue sky, up at a soft white cloud
the Sun not yet cresting the tree tops, painting the edge of the cloud yellow
December's chill upon our cheeks waking us to the wonder of a brand new day.

XI.
The gale casts before it an endless snow, falling steadily, obliquely, from a great mass of clouds occupying the gulf above the bay, a space once inhabited by Summer’s lazy breezes, by the setting Sun’s soft glow, a space now darkened by the blackness of Winter’s long night, by the oppressive weight of clouds pressing down upon a weary shore buried beneath the pristine whiteness of a new fallen snow.

XII.
The tree I used climb
the tallest tree sitting on the highest hill
bent and formed by November’s gales
against whose trunk in summer I used to nap
from its topmost branches I’d survey both great lake and small village
years ago branches lopped off
dead trunk towering against the sky
a monument, a testament to childhood
fell
finding it laying there on the hillside
I sat in its heights one last time
remembering.

XIII.
Traveling across the stillness of forested roads beneath old oaks and their canopies of naked dark branches. Arriving, waiting for arrivals, the opening of doors, welcomed and welcoming. Inside, the soft glow of a fire. Outside, chill winds casting before them snow. Spaces filled with long familiar voices, aromas of nutmeg, cloves, garlic.The stillness of night gently parted by the quiet grace of a piano.
Thankful.

XIV.
There was, wasn't there?
Entwined in twisted roots of an old oak.
Between that star and the little red one.
Buried in the limestone heart of Stonetown, down a labyrinthine side street.
Scrawled in illegible handwriting on a yellowing page written as the red sun died one evening on a train out of Mwanza.
In the gentle coo of a mourning dove in evening's soft sunlight.
Hidden in the voice of the wind.
There.

XV.
At the end of the last street, a light pole rises into the darkness. From the worn crooked pole an incandescent bulb casts out a feeble circle of yellow. Beyond lays a barren field. Winds howl. Autumn acquiesces to winter. There’s nowhere to go from here, yet look, beyond the road, pole, and field, into the night. A crescent moon hangs low, smiling down on me.

XVI.
I look out the window and see the Moon sitting atop a black mass of cloud, like a immense cyclops with a glowing white eye and a gray head of hair. The winds howl, the lakes roar, the trees rattle. I can't wait to fall asleep and dream.

XVII.
Across the field in the early evening when the low-lying-Sun casts its light upon the forest's Fall raiment I see an entrance beneath the trees, a dark passage into the heart of the wood, a way revealed, never before seen, beckoning me, bidding me come, drawing me away from the world of man.

XVIII.
Outside at this late hour a soft white moon, nestled in a faint gray blanket of cloud, is cradled in the dark arms of a great oak, its leaves swaying in October's capricious gusts. Inside in the fireplace only embers remain, waxing and waning in the darkness of the room, all that remains of the blazing fire we sat around.

XIX.
The Sun had set. Long horizontal bands of wispy clouds remained, peach-colored and pastel orange, glowing in the still-yet-azure sky. Thrust up between it and I, jabbed the dark silhouettes of narrow dead pines cutting me off from the light. I lingered and watched it ebb away until the first few stars appeared.

XX.
If all were maples, and it always October, would I notice? Would I stop dead in my tracks, awestruck? I know soon the time will come when yellow leaves lay plastered against the black asphalt by a driving rain, but that in its own moment is also beautiful.

XXI.
As I rode home this evening in the shadows, at the feet of the mighty white pines towering above me, I looked up to see their outstretched limbs reaching into the heights. They were aflame with the remnants of the sun's tangential rays, still glowing golden full of light. Thus began the day's descent into the ever-waiting hand's of night.

XXII.
Ah you Sun, regaling yourself with royal cerulean, claiming this cool Fall afternoon! Colors riddle the hills, violent reds, yellows, oranges bursting forth as if explosions, caught in full flower, arrested in time, juxtaposed against Summer's fading green slowly swept away before the dread Boreas. I ask of thee only a moment in your light to rest and warm my face, a few more ripe tomatoes, and a honey-crisp to savor.

Epitaph of an Astronaut

Please don’t bury me in lifeless dust beneath the Sea of Tranquility
my life was anything but that.

When I rode atop the ball of flame
that thrust me high above everything I knew and loved
I yearned to ride another, and another
until at last those flames engulfed me.

Bury me beneath the crater Tycho where long ago a mighty rock impacted
its shards strewn across the face of the moon, etching it with scars.

Let me rest there in the light and darkness.
For though I loved the brilliance of the burning sunlight
I have also made my peace with the unforgiving cold
of the dark side of the Moon.

Chapter from an old Hyperlinked Story

You turn your back on the egg, and investigate the table. On the table you see a message written in the dust, "DON'T EAT THE EGG." Smugly content that you have found some kind of hint, you realize that there is something odd about the room. It has no doors, or windows. There are just four brown walls, a ceiling, and a floor. The floor is covered with black and white linoleum tiles. A single incandescent light bulb dangles from a frayed cord running from the ceiling. As you are so studiously taking note of everything, you turn your attention back to the stove, hoping to notice something that you had overlooked. You stumble back against the table, shocked at the size of the egg. It had been growing all the while you were investigating the table. It is now the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. As you watch, you can see it growing. Its rate of growth is accelerating. As it falls off the stove into the center of the room, you wonder how you could eat it if you wanted to. Suddenly realizing that there is no way out of the room, you are more concerned with being crushed by the egg...

Nameless

Earlier than 7/25/2001

Walking in the rain on the glossy pavement listening to the raindrops pattering, draining into dark sewer drains. The dead leaves well up around grates, the waters back up. The gray sky overhead is continual, endless, calling out to no one. On and on I walk. Overhead the straight line of a telephone pole rises out of a chaotic random jumble of tree limbs and branches that are leafless in early December. Cars in the distance flash by with a hiss in a streak of light. They are far away and nothing comes near, nor approaches, nor fades away. There is just the night and the glow of the nearby city reflecting in an ugly brown color on the clouds that are hundreds of feet thick. Nothing comes in or out of them. My footsteps fade in silence, the constant trickle of water flowing. Damp moist dark lawns of people who I used to greet on the sunny summer afternoons are empty. Where are they now? Not even a trace of light comes from within their houses, their homes as quiet and empty as the night. Was it really so late? I did not notice. I walked on, wondering how far I could walk without thinking. The puddles along the curbs glittered with the stray light of the streetlights reflecting recursively off of every wet surface, so many mirror-like surfaces. The light eventually dispersed into the opaqueness of the air thick with moisture. Do you know that air which contains moisture, water, is less dense than dry air? What that means is that moisture laden air rises and rises until it cools, then the water condenses and falls back upon the wetness. I had walked long enough to begin to feel the wetness of my hair. My coat grew heavy. I did not care. I turned up the alley. Wires ran in soggy arcs from pole to lifeless pole. The asphalt below me lay black and hard, shadows mingled with themselves there. I walked along a wall, a straight wall that I would never see beyond, never cared to see beyond, I wasn’t even aware of anything but the wall leading me on like a passage in a maze. I did not follow it rather it ran alongside me isolating me in the silence. My shadow grew long in front of me, then, as I approached a street light, my shadow began to diminish. It went that way for blocks, I noticed only my shadow waxing and waning beneath my feet. I did not want to count the number of times, but at least I knew that time was passing that way. I was in the midst of monotony, swimming in the deadness of not-thinking. Stimuli were gentle, undemanding; the rain, the stillness, the soft glow. I could feel my breath condensing upon each exhalation. Beyond me, far away, people were living their lives, but I was walking the streets, the alleys, trying to outpace myself. Could I walk away from myself? No, but I could distance myself from thought, as if it was smoke rolling out of the exhaust stack of a hundred year old steam locomotive pushing through the weight of the blackness of night in the still virgin and majestic forests it was helping to destroy. The alley was devoid of trees. The odors of trash lingered. Then it came, the memory of conversation.

”…It’s a dysfunctional community.“

“I’ve never known a community that wasn’t”

“I know one, The Nez Perce in Washington State had a functional community, at least until the US Calvary came and gunned them down, and beat their children’s heads in with the butts of rifles.”

“what?…”, She did not know that I was still angry about something I’d read.

I walked on. There is a peace in the Bleakness, in the nothingness. Nothing is required of you, you are not good, you are not evil, wise nor foolish, right nor wrong. You are nameless, and unspoken of.

On the Tip of My Tongue

The words have gone, bled away like blood spilling from a fatal wound. A dark pool that only serves to remind me of the futility of anything I’d hoped to do; a dream that was never dreamt; a civilization that was lost and buried by a jungle, and never discovered. I am here with something on the tip of my tongue that seems invisible and impenetrable all at once. If I try to dwell on it, it flits away like a hummingbird, if I try to grasp it, it tumbles into a bottomless sea like a rare diamond. There is no hand upon my shoulder, no quiet voice against my ear. The future is as far away as the past and I am stuck in the here and now. My head is as heavy as my heart, my thoughts as heavy as my feet. I sit and rest in the middle of the desert, and one direction is indistinguishable from another. If there is a path it has been rubbed out, I cannot see it.

The Sound of a Snowflake Falling

Outside in the night's darkness beneath the weight of an endless mass of cloud, the late winter storm has laid down its bitter cold veil, an eerie white cast upon all that was sunny and green. A gathering silence grows, an oppressive peace, a stillness. Inside, beneath thick blankets, I hear my own heart beat, I feel the moist warmth of my breathing. I lay there hoping to dream. I'm almost certain I can hear every snowflake as it lands.

*originally posted on my MySpace Blog Apr 6, 2007

The Other Side of Polebridge

Driving across the fire-eaten earth, brown earth with the black stakes of burnt pine trunks stabbing the orange dusty sky. I felt silent and still as if all motion was arrested by the aftermath. Nothing stirred except the shadows of the dead pines that grew longer in the reddening sky. The hazy ethereal globe of the dying Sun wavered massive and fierce behind the barren stakes, black stakes stabbing the orange dusty sky. They were like iron spikes arranged by some random force, spikes driven here and there in the sandy lifeless earth, marking the graves of souls that no one remembered. Dry earth, dusty earth, sterile and empty, quiet and so utterly lonely. The Shadows, chained to the spikes, reached out towards me. They sought to cut me through and divide me with their dark sharp edges.

*Originally posted on my MySpace Blog Feb 27,2008

Freezing and Thawing

It has come. The gray time, the black and white land, the sunless twilight on either side of day, the wet fecund mud. Before anything grows what was frozen in months of ice must thaw and begin to decompose. The winds blow damp during the day and frigid during the night (in the black of night when all that was beginning to thaw re-freezes). What is there? What hope? The fireplace is old and there are no logs. Many men have died alone on nights like these of hopelessness, dying on the verge of Spring, after a too long Winter that had refused to let go its interminable grip, dying on the verge of Spring, laying dead on the hard frozen earth, outstretched hands with fingers only inches away from a dab of purple, a crocus bud that appeared the following day. It is hard to say if it would have signified hope had it come a day earlier and thus saved a life, or if it signified man’s spirit in the corporeal form of a new flower just beginning a new life. Perhaps it was both, or neither, only indicating the horrible inhuman character of nature in that nature cares not that men live or die or suffer loss. Flowers grow where they will, requiring the decomposition of organic matter, mindless of what was before, and are we men any less dumb? Do we know the sufferings of those who came before us? Or of those that are so far removed from us that this very minute are suffering and dying while we sit complacent and unaware? Pause for a moment, wait, be still and seek awareness. Now, before the wonder and fury of life arises once again to flourish upon yesterday’s frozen earth.

*Originally posted on my MySpace Blog March 17, 2008

Memory of a Cabin

There is a thing that seems too long ago to feel. There is a feeling that is so long ago you don't remember. There is a memory… of something …its there… just under the surface, the surface of everything that is and was. Then there is tomorrow, what is tomorrow? Well, really its everything, because all that was is just a memory of a feeling so long ago that there is nothing left. I speak in circles, in circles of circles. I sit by a pool of still water, and cast pebbles into the pool and ripples radiate in rings, and they intersect until I am lost in them all rising and falling. In a moment the leaves that were greening the maples on the hillside are now yellow and red. They litter the footpaths that used to be roads. My father used to speak of an old log cabin way back in the woods that used to be cabbage fields when he was a boy. As we walked in the woods and he used to remember where he led the cattle into town, we would sometimes look for the remnants of that old cabin, but we never found them. Even as I grew older and wandered the woods alone, I'd follow old overgrown drainage ditches, often through dark mucky swamps. I'd climb tall trees to look down into the swamps, always looking, always hoping to find any evidence of that old cabin. Time and the constancy of decomposition in nature have won out over my determination. I have even begun to feel the time hang on me. Its been many years since I have even thought of the cabin that was probably gone before I was even born, but I can still see it clearly, as it was the first day it was built. I wonder how long ago I stopped seeing things as they are, and started seeing them as I remembered them. There are many places that are full of ghosts that I'm not even sure I even notice. There are places that I'll never return to because they are gone, because, though they are still there, they are so different that they are lost, and returning, I'd see that they are lost, and the only place I can find them any more is in some rare dream where they are more fantastic than they really were, and I choose to remember them as they once were. I can close my eyes and still see them, more and more places, and people the way they used to be, and the danger is that in closing my eyes I may never choose to open them again, or worse, believe that they are open when they are really closed. Sometimes the thread that anchors me to the here-and-now seems so thin, so frail. Sometimes things seem to get so bad that all I want to do is close my eyes and pinch off that thread between my fingernails, but always there is tomorrow and tomorrow is a new day, and with a new day comes new opportunities, new hopes. As long as the Sun shall shine there is hope. And I know without a doubt that I know nothing, especially of what will be.

*originally posted on my myspace blog Nov 1,2008

Stories of Eternity

In the stillness of the night, in the quiet of the shadows, your thoughts draw you off to once familiar places. You hear forgotten voices speaking in wonder or joy or awe. How in the darkness you can see sunlight, and taste the winds of summers past, and gaze into the billowing clouds white on the horizon drifting along like old three masted schooners heading for some unexplored shore is but the faintest taste of grace. No matter the worries of the moment there is the vision of concord, of reaching another shore, of crossing over to a new land in a newness of being. Loneliness seems sometimes a constant companion that will not leave you be. God is the God who grants solitude, and the hope of perfect union. Joy is seeing Joy in another's eyes, or on their face, or hearing it in their voice, or in their laughter. When the oppressed are set free, when like God we are able to extend a bit of grace, something unalterable occurs, and nothing can take it away. In the stillness of the night, in the quiet of the shadows, sometimes you see everything as it really is. God is whispering in your ear telling you stories of eternity.

Sailing - Part 2

Ghosts, ghosts ,ghosts, for me there is no affirmation, only ghosts. I have only the wind and nothing else to cling to. Mine are the dark waters deep and still. The roads all lead to places that were, and are no more. The songs are lost in the winds and hopes are submerged and hidden beneath the waters. I have fallen asleep in the shadows and all the the world recedes, diminishes. Solemn is my song, forlorn and echoing. I am lost, pursued by ghosts, wandering through an alien and malevolent wilderness.

Sailing - Part 1

One windy day I made for me a little boat to sail across the sea. Half a walnut shell and a bright red maple leaf for sail. I had not string to rig it, nor any other thing. So in I climbed and raised my bright red leaf, and off I went, blown by the wind and tossed by the waves. I knew not where. I had no rudder and really did not care. I held fast against the wind though my knuckles ached, though my fingers felt that they'd soon give way. If I let go I'd lose my leaf. So the sea battered me, the wind grew frigid, and the boat heaved to and fro. I knew not where I was going only that I should go. Daylight faded, the winds and waves they did not cease. Off I went determined, headlong into the thickening darkness without even a star to guide me, no moon for dreaming, only the winds whispering and moaning, and the waves tossing me to and fro. I'd ceased to feel my hands, and it now it was my arms and back that ached, and still I did not let go. The whispering winds condemned me, and the waves they beat me relentlessly. I dared not sleep, and fought to stay awake. Then came the Ghosts to ride beside me and tell me all their sleepy stories. As I'd start to nod they'd try to pull me over into the deep dark sea beneath me. I'd brace myself against them holding fast to my leaf. I saw at last my face before me in the gathering light, reflecting in the sea. I realized then despite all my resolve that sleep had taken me without my knowing it. My hands were empty, I'd been betrayed by the weakness of my own arms. The sea, as still as glass, surrounded me. The winds went on without me, the ghosts had sunk into the darkness, lost in the depths of the sea. The slate gray sky, a diffuse light, gave no sign of time nor direction as i drifted in what seemed like circles in the sea. I'd touch the water and watch the ripples and wonder what shores they would wash away. I laid down my head but for a moment. When I lifted it the sea was reddish and lined with ridges and had turned to dust. I stood up, looked down and saw my dry white bleached-out bones, half buried in the sand. A steady breeze blew me up and away from my bones. I guess they'd become unnecessary. Castles of clouds grew along the horizon. I've always wanted to dance in the clouds, but I went right through them and kept going up and up and up until the Earth was but a shiny blue marble, and then a point of light, and then there where so many fading points of light that I lost it.

A Day on the Road

I realized something today. I know what chasing after the wind is. I can see how we all seek after the things that we feel we need, and want, and how they destroy us because we can never have them as we think we should. I have come to find that seeking them has a season, and when that is over we need instead to seek to eschew them, realizing that they are not really the things that we need most. Drugs, travel, good times, sex, food, relationships, order, disorder are just distractions. They are attempts to find meaning outside of ourselves, even seeking spirituality is a distraction, when in the end we must realize that we are just imperfect and needy and can never truly know the elation that we seek, that is we can never reach a state of continual elation, at least on this side of Heaven. If Heaven is our home then we will never be content here, but we cannot know Heaven until the days allotted for us here are spent, and we don't know that number...I am not a gifted writer who knows the words to write. The ideas that come to me are not sweet things that I relish or savor stewing them in my mind until they come out. They are burdensome things that gnaw at me, that burn in my hands, but ideas I can't let go of. My writing like my life is a struggle, I am conflicted, wounded, I am not one of the perfect and beautiful. I am not sure that I have any of the answers, except that the questioning becomes a form of knowing, and answering... I drove and drove, through the mountain passes, through the beating rain, fog, periods of sunshine, blinding light, deep darknesses, unable at times to see anything but vague shapes, crazy wrecks of spinning cars, not seen but indicated by skid marks. torn up sod, messed up road signs, uprooted trees. A friend read to me, in the sunlight as I drove, a book by Anne Lamott (titled Grace eventually), who fascinated me by her honest vulnerability,finding joy and life through pain, and emptiness, and loss. All the while I took in the scenery constantly sliding by, remembering and imagining, happy above all to be driving miles and miles of road. Time was meaningless except for the shifting weather and the westward creeping of the light. In the end in the darkness I spoke of the duality of nothingness, the duality of up and down, light and dark, + and -, this and that, past and future until my friend rebelled in laughter at the absurdity of trying to understand the fundamental nature of the universe. I am left alone in the darkness each night to contemplate these things, and I get lost in the infinitude of the infinitesimal, the fractal nature of the universe, attempting to connect a loop, settling at last, in the end,into a state of prayer, a reaching out. I am taken up and led out into it, traveling on and on and on.

"Woman, Why are you crying?"

They have taken my Lord away and I do not know where they have taken Him. I do not even know Him. Truth? What is truth? Father, Father why have you forsaken me? Struck in the face, flesh torn from His back, briers beat onto His head, this is my body that was broken for you, eat of my flesh, this is the blood, poured out for you, torn from me for you, they looked upon Him whom they had pierced, woman here is your son. They meant to break his legs to kill him on the cross, but they didn’t, they pierced Him instead and he bled water and blood, He died alone, they all abandoned Him. Write “He said He was the King of the Jews”, I have written what I have written. I wash my hands of this. For which of these words did you strike me for? What lie? They have taken my Lord away and I do not know where they have taken him, taken him. They led Him through the streets, horribly disfigured, bearing the means of His death. They spat on Him. They drove iron spikes into the hands of grace, the hands that healed the sick. They hated Me, they will hate you. His feet they pinned to a stake, the feet that walked across the sea. They you say? They? You. Me. My hands are stained with the blood of the water of life. Where have they taken my Lord? Where? Where? WHERE? IF only you would have come when we called you then he would still be alive. My brother is dead, yes I know I will see him on the other side, I know, what? Today? Surely there is a stench. Oh, oh, oh but how? HOW? How is it that He who saved others could not save Himself? Write “He said He was the King of the Jews” he said, he said…I have written what I have written, what I’ve said what I’ve written, written, written. Hands that healed, feet that walked on water, the water of life, life and not death. How is it that He could not save Himself? Father, Father why have you forsaken Me? They looked upon Him whom they had pierced, woman behold your son, hail the King of the Jews, by His stripes we are healed, His stripes, torn into perfect flesh, disfiguring the lamb. Where the Lion? the conquering King? laying there moaning in a pool of blood, torn to shreds. This, This is our King? Our King? Ours? Not mine, no not mine mine, the Lion of Jerusalem, the Cornerstone, how could I have let myself be so deceived? I tell you I do not even know this man! I am not His disciple. I was not with Him. A rooster crowed that morning that they crucified my Lord, the day I drove the spikes into the hands that would heal me, the day I lifted Him up, a spectacle of humiliation, and placed the sour wine to His lips. Do you love Me? Do you love Me more than these? Do you even love Me? Then feed My lambs, feed my lambs. They have taken my Lord away and I do not know where they have taken Him. He said to her “Mary.”

As They Let Go Their Leaves

Now the mornings bring condensation along the edges of windowsills. Although the sun is hot on my face at the height of afternoon, I notice cool breezes. Evenings come sooner, and my longings return. I look for some indication among the maple trees. The ones that have suffered distress have already started. Their leaves are turning yellow and red. Some have fallen. They have fallen and started to curl, their edges are brown. I say to myself, "That tree is ill, that's why." I look to other maples still green, but I lie to myself, "It is the height of Summer, the skies are blue, It's sunny and warm." I try not to notice the traces of yellow found in even the healthy trees. The ones that have lost their leaves litter the ground. Winds arise and whisk their leaves away to who knows where, off to some corner with other debris, perhaps remembered by the trees, but forgotten by the world. There the leaves might dance a final dizzy waltz before they crumble utterly away. Inside me it's Summer still where nothing can touch it, perhaps a Summer not yet realized, that maples dream of as they lose their leaves and anticipate conceiving next year's buds at the tips of their branches, a Summer which one must once again surrender, and replace with hope for another time. When Winter comes naked branches, still alive, rattle in fierce gales. The branches wait out the cold dark days, the long bitter nights, because they understand that time will pass. They are accustomed to Winter, and have learned to endure it. Do maples hope? They know in their way that though there is a season when life is hard, when merely to exist at all is a struggle, another season will come. I look to the maples as they let go their leaves.

Forgotten

It rent everything asunder, and the waves of the endless sea beat against that which was in ruin and after a time of what seemed like many years it washed it all away, until like in the beginning there was nothing, and in the nothingness there was stillness and the stillness brought with it peace, and so I sat in the peace and in the stillness and lost all concept of time, because after all there is an eternity of time, and beginning and end know not one of the other, and so the measure of time is meaningless. I sat in the peace of that meaninglessness, listening in silence to the stillness broken only by the slow cadence of the waves beating and receding back into the endless fathomless sea. If a tear fell into that sea, none would know save the maker of that sea, and none would care except again He who had created me, but He is slow moving, He who knows the depths of eternity, and if he who shed the tear should doze by that sea for a time, what is that to Him? And what is that to me? Odd it seems, for now I have forgotten.

Grasping Butterflies

One fine sunny day I saw a butterfly flitting amongst the daisies of a field. I held out my hand and it came to light upon my finger. I watched it there, the most beautiful of God’s creations, and as it slowly batted its wings I thought that I might capture it and have that beauty for my own. So I grasped it in my grip, and there it struggled. I was so taken by its beauty that I did not see that I was killing it. At last it almost died, but God gives wisdom to butterflies as well as men. In a flurry of struggle it slipped from my grasp and flew into my face. I felt its wings tickling my cheek. Even then I could have grasped it, but I knew that if I did then it would destroy everything, and all the beauty that I loved would fade away. So I let it go because after all that which is beautiful can never be held. God makes life so delicate so that we may have it for a second and no more. I want the things that I can’t have, yet sometimes God gives them to me in dreams. Dreams that make me weep, alone and silently, so that no one sees I do, sometimes in sadness but more often with joy.

Hey You

There are about a hundred thousand billion things I want to tell you. Always meaning to start right here but starting there and there and there instead, stories I've wanted to tell others who never seemed to really care, stories like the time I saved a pheasant's life, or how I almost fell from a log I was crossing 30 ft in the air, stories that come one after the other, like waves that beat upon the shore, thundering as they break, shattering into a million pieces, that wash back into the sea which after all is endless. I want to tell you three at once, or six, or nine. Starting, wanting to tell you something that always seems to slip from grasp, trying to tell a hundred times the same story and never once telling it, not because it is difficult but because I want to tell you everything at once.

Old Poems

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Visit Egypt.

Go see the tomato vender.

There’s a highway there, a black tarmac across the blonde desert.

The Bedouins come there to beg, the children with the angry eyes.

"You sir, Englishman, you American, you are rich and I am poor. Come give to me what I deserve, I deserve your wealth"

(Our wealth has corrupted us, given us more power than a man should bear, our wealth has killed us.)

And the women in the background, they dance, they wreathe, they form figures slender and eerie.

They are alluring, they draw you away, they pull you across vats of snakes, they wrap you around…

 

--

 

The tin roofs, the rain in the afternoon, the woman carrying water on the top of her head, her shoeless feet, the log she balances on, the birds, the winds that blow out of the sea, the rain clouds that dance in such perplexing rotations.

An Indian woman sets down her brass decanter of tea. 

Her little finger cymbals clang, they clang as her belly button undulates before your nose.

The spices -the clove oil, the nutmeg tea, the red berries smeared on her lips, the odor of coconut milk, the jingle of her belt of gold coins, her amulets, her necklaces, her sharp teeth, her razor edged words spoken in another language that you do not know but understand, her sisters, her brood, the wax of the candle that burns the flesh of your naked back, the wax that coats, the wax that forms layers that cake, they sell your soul.

 

--

 

The bus rolls across the dust of a thousand miles of desert.

Tires whir on the hot pavement, pavement thick with potholes. 

The ferns, the fronds of palm branches, from days ago are still on your mind. They were where you were and are where you will be, and soon you will be there to bathe in the cinnamon waters, to rub your skin with the oils scented with cardomman, to drink the tea masala, found  

within the whitewashed walls of heaven in the desert.

 

--

 

The trumpets call out in the evening, in the purple light of the orange dying sun.

The floor carpeted with geometric designs - the reds, yellows, and greens; the flowers of Islam, the feet without shoes, the hearts given to the mind; the song, the knees of the man from Mali thick with calluses from praying always towards Mecca on sea or land.

The minarets rising into the TV antennas, the boxes and rectangles of cement walled buildings, the crumbling architecture.

The men in black suits, the silk suits, with the white shirts and red ties drink gin beneath the slow moving teakwood fans, the Aussie’s hat on the knob atop the back of the chair, they look out at the time of afternoon prayer into a nearby mosque.

 

--

 

By the slow trickling waters that wash the pebbles, a dark haired woman sings of her lover, a dark haired woman sings of her man, the man who left long ago, who took her heart with him, the man who was killed in a war, who was surprised by an enemy, who was abandoned on the edge of the desert, whose hat, blowing before a wall of dust, blew all the way back to her, to rest against her legs.

She picked it up and wept.

 

--

 

A dream, a coming to my senses.

 Here I am in a small village, an old shriveled woman squeezing water and lemon juice from a rag into my mouth. 

The corners of my mouth, my eyes, caked with crusted sand.

I spit up, coughing out dust, the dust of centuries.

I remember being alone in the ruins of a lost city with strange writing on the walls,

images of people orgiastic, in some feast, at a table laden with fruits and birds and deer.

 Not even a bone was left, not a tear, no sign of suffering. 

They were gone. 

And I was thrown out. I couldn’t even die there.

I was cast away by the winds.

My notes, my memory, my purpose, eroded away by the blowing, howling, haunting sands.

The woman holds me in her arms.

She hugs me.

 

--

 

So I lament, I weep, I moan, my face in the seat of an old chair, my naked knees upon the cool stone floor.

My heart in my hands, and I can’t hide it from the ravens, the shadows, the darknesses, that circle around me.

I in my white tunic, an American in a foreign land, a man in a burning fire, touched by the cool moist lips of a woman wrapped in cotton, a woman who hid, a woman who touched me, who stole my kingdom.

It toppled, into a tumble of stones.

What had I done? 

Lost.

The winds blew, the dust stirred. 

I could not raise my head. 

She stood behind me watching, coming at last to lay her fingers lightly on my cheek.

 

The Dark Ocean

There is a star outside that burns brighter than any other star and its screaming a name, your name, her name, the names of people you forgot you ever knew.

The sea beneath that star is dark and vast, and endless, and it holds all that was and is and will ever be.

You are naked beneath the star floating on that ocean, and you are all alone. Your eyes are wide, full of the heavens above. A cool breeze blows across the wetness of your skin and you shiver.

Is there an answer? An answer to the question that you haven’t even asked? It’s there, the answer, deeper still. The answer waits. It will come up suddenly out the dark waters and pull you down slowly, swallowing all that you are.

Deeper, deeper, the waters grow colder, darker, and you feel the pressure building. The seaweed, unseen, brushes against your arms and legs as you descend, in the belly of the whale.

Is it time to talk? Is it time to listen to me yet Jonah? Jonah? JONAH! Yes its me, you knew it was going to be me. It had to be me, and it took this didn’t it? There was no way that you would come, and I couldn’t bring you anywhere else. Anywhere else you would have found some way to slip away. Instead I’ve made everything else slip away. Yes I have you, and I have you where I want you, and now you will listen, listen because you have to, because there is nothing else for you to cling to except for my word, the sound of my voice pressing in on your ears, my voice, the voice that makes mountains crumble, waters rumble, and winds roar across the desert places. All the stars I hold in my hands, and hidden amongst them is a stone, a white stone with your name, the only name you ever had, the name I gave you in the beginning that you have always known, but have not heard, the name that you will have at the end, and it will be yours because I, and only I have given it to you. You have not escaped me. How could you? Where could you run to? For how long does a man have to run? A year? 10 years? 50? Even if you had 500 where could you run? So close your eyes, rest, and listen to what I have to tell you. Yes that’s right, You know that we need to talk about it. Afraid you say? Afraid to talk about it? Don’t you trust me even with that? Denial? Yes I know. Betrayal? Yes that too. I know you are angry, I know that you are tired. I know what you want, I’ve always known what you wanted, but the world is bigger than one man. Yes, I see why you are angry, but it’s me that you are talking to, Me, so don’t be angry. I’ve heard every word you’ve ever spoken, and every word that you have yet to speak. Do not believe that you understand all things, do not claim to be righteous when not one is righteous, not one. You have your plans in your heart, but it is I who directs your steps. Do you not know even that? I have even been there and now I have the keys not him. All the locks have been opened. What’s that? Some things are not for you to know, and even the apple could not tell you that. Yes, everyone will be alone, they will have to cross alone one by one just as they came. Yes, go to sleep now, rest, do not be alarmed, you will awaken, surrounded by the light of day, laying on the warm blonde sands, listening to the sound of waves lapping on the shore. Remember this day, and you will do alright. Remember it and do not ever forget.