Wednesday, February 08, 2012
The First of November
In the dim sunlight of Fall some red, yellow, brown leaves cling to the nearly barren branches of the Oaks. The sky is gray, but still in the height of afternoon, between the chill gusts of wind, a meager warmth lingers. I close my eyes and face the sunlight and feel its gentle touch upon my cheeks. On opening my eyes I am welcomed with color. All is quiet and in the stillness comes a peace. The simplicity and wholeness of this gift fills me with awe. It is good, and right, and holy.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
A prisoner to words
they cage me in
confine my thoughts
they dictate who I am
and what I can do.
What is it that they want?
Why am I enslaved to them?
They are my master
and yet I cannot find them
they do not comfort me.
A thousand bear no weight
and yet they are so heavy some of them.
I cannot pass time without them
and when I cannot find the ones I need
I must sift through them
as if they are tens of thousands
of pails of sand.
When I seek solace or peace
and try to put them away
they barrage me like hailstones.
they cage me in
confine my thoughts
they dictate who I am
and what I can do.
What is it that they want?
Why am I enslaved to them?
They are my master
and yet I cannot find them
they do not comfort me.
A thousand bear no weight
and yet they are so heavy some of them.
I cannot pass time without them
and when I cannot find the ones I need
I must sift through them
as if they are tens of thousands
of pails of sand.
When I seek solace or peace
and try to put them away
they barrage me like hailstones.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Waters Arrested
Behind a pane of glass on the cluttered bookshelf sits an old black and white photo yellowed with age of a river lined with trees clothed in all their summer foliage, her waters arrested, the forest still and silent. The waters have long since flowed away, the leaves of the trees fallen long ago, now dirt. The summer breezes gone utterly away. The river still flows, the winds still blow, the trees yet grow. The fading image on yellowing paper will one day be no more, it is dead and decomposing, but the waters will flow forever, birdsong borne on the wind fills the forest perennially and long after I myself am gone, others will come to photograph the river's waters.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Most of All
But it was the sky most of all...
The sky was dark
the sky was dark and burning with stars
The sky was vast, it went on and on
and on.
The sky bled
the sky bled away color
the sky drained into darkness
the sky drained away into darkness and spoke of infinity
The sky of infinity
was silent
The sky, silent
spoke
The sky told of things
that were and are
the sky told of things yet to be
The sky was free
but it cost everything to know
The sky sang me to sleep
the sky called to me in my sleep
it woke me up
The sky said...
what was it that the sky said?
the sky, it said...
what?
The sky it said and said and said.
The sky
the sky
Why?
The sky I lost
The sky incoherent
The sky went far beyond me
above me
the sky ran beneath me
The sky ran like a river
washing it all away
The sky like sand ran though my fingers
The sky blew away in the wind
The sky was the Earth
but it was the sky most of all
that saved me.
The sky was dark
the sky was dark and burning with stars
The sky was vast, it went on and on
and on.
The sky bled
the sky bled away color
the sky drained into darkness
the sky drained away into darkness and spoke of infinity
The sky of infinity
was silent
The sky, silent
spoke
The sky told of things
that were and are
the sky told of things yet to be
The sky was free
but it cost everything to know
The sky sang me to sleep
the sky called to me in my sleep
it woke me up
The sky said...
what was it that the sky said?
the sky, it said...
what?
The sky it said and said and said.
The sky
the sky
Why?
The sky I lost
The sky incoherent
The sky went far beyond me
above me
the sky ran beneath me
The sky ran like a river
washing it all away
The sky like sand ran though my fingers
The sky blew away in the wind
The sky was the Earth
but it was the sky most of all
that saved me.
Monday, November 14, 2011
November Nights
The howling winds, they all call out to me. The Big Lake roars, the weather turns, it is always turning, turning, turning, bitter cold. The trees bereft of leaves a spiny mass of gray, here and there interwoven with veins of birch virgin white, rattling on the ridges as other colors fade. A lone yellow leaf clings to a branch. I seek the solitude that comes with these November nights that sang me to sleep when I was newly born.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Sometimes
Sometimes
I only want to hear the voice I have forgotten,
I only want to sit in the stillness of a meadow
with the late morning Sun upon my back.
Sometimes
in the evening I linger to watch the stars come out one by one.
Sometimes
I awaken far away from everywhere in the middle of the night mouth open in awe
beneath the myriad stars riddling the Universe.
Sometimes
I fall asleep oblivious to all.
I only want to hear the voice I have forgotten,
I only want to sit in the stillness of a meadow
with the late morning Sun upon my back.
Sometimes
in the evening I linger to watch the stars come out one by one.
Sometimes
I awaken far away from everywhere in the middle of the night mouth open in awe
beneath the myriad stars riddling the Universe.
Sometimes
I fall asleep oblivious to all.
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Vision
The clouds drift by, the sun rises and sets, the moon follows in dizzying circles. Seasons wax and then wane and it means naught to me. I have been rent into a million shards scattered here and there across time; the past, present, future. In my soul I have endued all of nature with a voice now silent. It is as if the world has turned to glass, it is frozen and inert, and I a vapor that passes through it invisible and unable to affect it. I am full of words that I can no longer free. Light is now refracted, separated into its component pieces, and incoherent. Winds moan, rattling the glass branches of trees that ring out as they shatter and rain down. I stand beneath hoping that the fragments of glass might pierce me, so that I could remember what it is like to feel, but I am a vapor and the winds carry me away. In the broken light I see the reflections of dreams of what was and what might have been; fractured, mingling, kaleidoscopic. And that is all there seems to be.
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
The Front
At the last hour of day
I lie awake in my departed father's old bed.
The night is cold, and Summer's end approaches.
I close my eyes and remember
how afternoon's warmth slipped away—
We were clearing dead branches felled by last Spring's storm,
breaking them up and burning them in a small fire.
Why do clouds look like cotton?, asked my son.
I attempted to answer but he was already lost in the sky.
It was one of those Summer afternoons
when you could sit with your face in the Sun
and convince yourself that things would never end.
The kids had lost their fascination with the fire.
They ran off to pester their grandmother for the grape popsicles.
Alone, I turned my attention to the sky
at the severe white of the billowing clouds.
I spotted at a vast height ten barely perceptible silhouettes
they were birds of prey gliding, not in formation,
but in a rough arc of uneven points.
Independently, each had found and claimed its own place.
I stared, not yet understanding, bewildered.
Then I saw a great mass of shadowy clouds behind them.
The birds were gliding on a fast advancing front.
I stood there lost in the spectacle,
caught up in so singular a vision.
In the evening my sister told me how as her and her family were out boating the weather surprised them.
It had appeared out of nowhere.
I told her how I saw the front
presaged by the shadows of birds of prey.
Over dinner mom, now 83, stated,
Just because it's Labor Day doesn't mean that Summer has ended.
Fall doesn't start until September 23rd.
I thought to myself that she must be tacking on a day or two.
She obviously hadn't noticed the change in temperature.
I spoke of the dark clouds rising over towering pines
and recalled how quickly they came in from the north.
The clouds had rolled in at the exact moment I thought to myself
how it might be a good night to sleep beneath the stars
and share with my children
the wonder of waking in the middle of the night
to find the myriad stars hanging overhead.
Before going to bed I went outside
to make sure the fire had died down.
The clouds hung low,
the sky was starless,
the children had gone off to their cousins' to sleep.
Alone, I crouched over the embers of a dying fire
and attempted to warm myself.
The winds howled through trees.
In the distance, over the hills, the Big Lake roared,
its violent waves, coming early, beating on the shores.
And I there in the darkness
left with one echoing word
Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye.
I lie awake in my departed father's old bed.
The night is cold, and Summer's end approaches.
I close my eyes and remember
how afternoon's warmth slipped away—
We were clearing dead branches felled by last Spring's storm,
breaking them up and burning them in a small fire.
Why do clouds look like cotton?, asked my son.
I attempted to answer but he was already lost in the sky.
It was one of those Summer afternoons
when you could sit with your face in the Sun
and convince yourself that things would never end.
The kids had lost their fascination with the fire.
They ran off to pester their grandmother for the grape popsicles.
Alone, I turned my attention to the sky
at the severe white of the billowing clouds.
I spotted at a vast height ten barely perceptible silhouettes
they were birds of prey gliding, not in formation,
but in a rough arc of uneven points.
Independently, each had found and claimed its own place.
I stared, not yet understanding, bewildered.
Then I saw a great mass of shadowy clouds behind them.
The birds were gliding on a fast advancing front.
I stood there lost in the spectacle,
caught up in so singular a vision.
In the evening my sister told me how as her and her family were out boating the weather surprised them.
It had appeared out of nowhere.
I told her how I saw the front
presaged by the shadows of birds of prey.
Over dinner mom, now 83, stated,
Just because it's Labor Day doesn't mean that Summer has ended.
Fall doesn't start until September 23rd.
I thought to myself that she must be tacking on a day or two.
She obviously hadn't noticed the change in temperature.
I spoke of the dark clouds rising over towering pines
and recalled how quickly they came in from the north.
The clouds had rolled in at the exact moment I thought to myself
how it might be a good night to sleep beneath the stars
and share with my children
the wonder of waking in the middle of the night
to find the myriad stars hanging overhead.
Before going to bed I went outside
to make sure the fire had died down.
The clouds hung low,
the sky was starless,
the children had gone off to their cousins' to sleep.
Alone, I crouched over the embers of a dying fire
and attempted to warm myself.
The winds howled through trees.
In the distance, over the hills, the Big Lake roared,
its violent waves, coming early, beating on the shores.
And I there in the darkness
left with one echoing word
Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Words I Used to Use
I have forgotten the words I used to use
words scrawled across pages in journals gathering dust
layers of pages bound within journals crammed into bookshelves
layers of writing like the rings that you can count in the trunk of a cut-down tree
layers of sediment compressed into rock which you can crack open to reveal words now unfamiliar
words as indecipherable as the dreams that you may half-remember when you awaken
words like dreams that try to speak of things you can no longer quite recall.
words scrawled across pages in journals gathering dust
layers of pages bound within journals crammed into bookshelves
layers of writing like the rings that you can count in the trunk of a cut-down tree
layers of sediment compressed into rock which you can crack open to reveal words now unfamiliar
words as indecipherable as the dreams that you may half-remember when you awaken
words like dreams that try to speak of things you can no longer quite recall.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Afternoon, half a world away
Forevermore whenever I ride my bicycle down any road lined on either side with a colonnade of old and stately trees, I will always be riding somewhere else. I will be riding in Zanzibar half a world away, between Stonetown and the east beaches, in the middle of nowhere, sheltered from the fierce light of the equatorial Sun beneath the shade of ancient mango trees, pedaling in the still silence of a torpid afternoon.
Woman finds giant sinkhole under her bed
As the old woman lays sleeping, there comes a sound from beneath her four post bed, a sound coming from beneath the blue and white tiled floor that looks like a checkerboard. Beneath the rusty bed, beneath the tiles that are perfectly square, the sound of the earth falling away as she sleeps, a sinkhole grows; a perfectly round hole in the great sphere of the Earth. The scraping sound of a few of the tiles falling away as they are swallowed by the widening hole awakens her. She listens to the echoes of banging rise from the depths in the darkness as the tiles collide with the walls of earth.
She does not yet know that what was once firm and solid is now gone; a deep chasm in its place. She lights the lantern on her nightstand, puts her pale bare feet upon the smooth cool floor. she kneels and crawls on hands and feet to look under her bed. Bewildered, terrified, she discovers the hole and in the cool damp air the taste of dirt that smells of decay. Timidly she lifts the lantern over the hole and peers into the depths. She sees only darkness.
"Helloooooo?" she calls down.
Her call is swallowed up. Suddenly she is horrified. The lantern slips from her fingers. Paralyzed she watches the lantern's light travel down, down, down.
Fading, fading, fading.
Becoming
a single
point
.
diminishing in luminosity until like a dying ember
it is gone.
Her arms and legs give out.
She topples in, somersaulting slowing through the cool damp air. It whistles in her ears.
Falling.
Accelerating into the darkness, she is too bewildered to mind.
She loses consciousness.
She gains consciousness.
She sees the light of her lantern, and struggles towards it. The air is hot and humid. The walls are fleshy, they contract around her thrusting her toward the light.
Slowly.
Painfully.
She is born.
She does not yet know that what was once firm and solid is now gone; a deep chasm in its place. She lights the lantern on her nightstand, puts her pale bare feet upon the smooth cool floor. she kneels and crawls on hands and feet to look under her bed. Bewildered, terrified, she discovers the hole and in the cool damp air the taste of dirt that smells of decay. Timidly she lifts the lantern over the hole and peers into the depths. She sees only darkness.
"Helloooooo?" she calls down.
Her call is swallowed up. Suddenly she is horrified. The lantern slips from her fingers. Paralyzed she watches the lantern's light travel down, down, down.
Fading, fading, fading.
Becoming
a single
point
.
diminishing in luminosity until like a dying ember
it is gone.
Her arms and legs give out.
She topples in, somersaulting slowing through the cool damp air. It whistles in her ears.
Falling.
Accelerating into the darkness, she is too bewildered to mind.
She loses consciousness.
She gains consciousness.
She sees the light of her lantern, and struggles towards it. The air is hot and humid. The walls are fleshy, they contract around her thrusting her toward the light.
Slowly.
Painfully.
She is born.
Friday, July 01, 2011
poured out
I am poured out, all my waters I have poured out. I have poured them out on a parched and barren land with an insatiable thirst. I have poured them out and not one seed did grow. Not one seed. I am an empty vessel, and the land has drunk me up without effect, but my waters flow on, through the sands and are purified. They've leached out the salts, and the toxins, and have left them behind. The fierce sun in the burning heat of afternoon has evaporated the waters, and have made them vapors, and the vapors rise, and unbound by the limits of shape, are free. They dance in the heat and dissipate into the heights, high into the rarefied air, and coalesce into the great white clouds which are pure and untouched. They merge into one with all the other waters, and like tears rain down in other places. And the vessel? either someone will find it and fill it once again with waters or they will not and it will eventually over the eons become one with the barren land and so affect it.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
I am borg
Technology has finally overcome me. It has won. I can no longer experience a moment that does not have to be photographed or videoed or tweeted or blogged. I have become subservient to the gadgets. I am always charging or rebooting, or cycling power. I am always updating, always upgrading. I need the flat screen, I need the newest app that provides augmented reality, the information that my tired old brain can no longer hold. Speed dial keeps me going, and now the phone is ringing, and there are messages in my inbox, and there are so many things that i need to buy, and i'm too fat, and need to sue someone. So many beautiful young woman are eager to meet me, and need my bank account number so that they can wire me millions... I need to feed my puffles, and farmville needs my attention. My ear buds cannot bear to to sit silent, I need my podcasts, my mp3's, my flv's. I must fill my time with video games on my LCD. I do not own the technology, it owns me. It has stolen everything that I used to have. I have had to become my own documenter, I must feed my facebook page. I have been reduced to a profile, to a QR code. The fucking TV blares its chatter deep into the very center of my being. There is no peace no stillness, all is in motion, and is being continually monetized. Upgrade, pay online, enter your credit card, join the cloud, make your life easier, you deserve it. Surrender. Resistance is futile.
unraveled
An unraveled thread from the center of a gutted baseball in a tangle blown by a June wind that seemed too damned cold, It was once the heart of something that can never again be re-made, that can never be as it once was intended to be. The Universe unfurls that way, into chaos from some kind of order that never established itself. To find meaning in something that makes no sense, that is unintelligible, is senseless; but we busy ourselves with so many unintelligible things that we ourselves are incomprehensible. The writing of words into the nothing-void of the million blogs is but foolishness, but foolishness is at least something, and something must (anything can) fill the greater void that consumes all the light in my life. It is more an endurance than a life, a grasping at grains of sand that slip thorough fingers and are blown back into the infinite sea of the desert. Grains of sand are something, and though I grasp them I cannot claim them. Claiming anything is senseless. All things encumber, all things however small weigh you down. Thoughts possessing no mass whatsoever are the heaviest of encumbrances. Words are just a pouring out of thoughts, words take with them the thoughts they are composed of. Let me not claim these words but rather throw them out so that the thoughts they bear will be cast out with them. I seek a state of no-words, non-thought, stillness, a desert of thought, where words are the grains of sand, and one or the other of them is just as meaningless as the other. I have lost something and I don't know what it is, I can't remember it, perhaps it is my way. One thing is certain - I am absolutely alone. None can know where I am, none have ever been here, and none ever will. Hoping someone could is the cruelest, most wicked of all self-deceptions. Every moment is another moment that I speed away from the whole of the world faster and faster with a gathering acceleration. I am thrust right into the center of the infinite void. Any direction that I turn is as meaningless as any other. I have arrived at alone-ness. Who will have even attempted to follow me this far? It is a road none should travel, and yet I must for it is my road; if it leads to nowhere so be it. God has given it to me to travel. I must learn to be at peace with it. I must walk on. I will walk on through the gathering darkness, and growing cold; through the echoing silence, and widening emptiness. The Desert has claimed me, the Night has put its hand upon me. I have no tears to shed, no hope to sustain me. I will go on without hope, with only my determination to guide me through a land that I am an alien in; Wearily pushing onward until I collapse, and am again roused, to rise again and travel on and on.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
oh oh how I dream
oh how I do dream things long passed
oh how I do dream long
oh how I long
oh how long passed
oh long passed things
oh long passed things scattered
long passed things scattered here and there
oh how I do dream long
oh how I long
oh how long passed
oh long passed things
oh long passed things scattered
long passed things scattered here and there
Thursday, April 07, 2011
A Mother’s Day Orchid
The purple orchid I bought you in May
has long since dried up and died.
The peas you planted in its yellow ceramic pot
fared no better.
Here I sit considering the lost orchid
feeling the coolness of the smooth wooden floor.
Let’s throw out the stale gray soil from the pot
wash it out, dry it off.
We’ll set it upon the mantel
above the fireplace that we no longer use
Then fill the yellow pot full of pennies
that will clatter through our fingers with the sound of prosperity
Pennies we can cast out for our children
across the back porch
Although the cement is cracked
And uneven.
Let them think
that they are the richest children in the world.
Let’s do it
just to hear them laugh and giggle.
I swear you won’t regret it
fifty years from now
When you’ll still find that laughter
ringing in your ears
Ringing like the raining of rain
that waters a purple orchid deep in the forest.
has long since dried up and died.
The peas you planted in its yellow ceramic pot
fared no better.
Here I sit considering the lost orchid
feeling the coolness of the smooth wooden floor.
Let’s throw out the stale gray soil from the pot
wash it out, dry it off.
We’ll set it upon the mantel
above the fireplace that we no longer use
Then fill the yellow pot full of pennies
that will clatter through our fingers with the sound of prosperity
Pennies we can cast out for our children
across the back porch
Although the cement is cracked
And uneven.
Let them think
that they are the richest children in the world.
Let’s do it
just to hear them laugh and giggle.
I swear you won’t regret it
fifty years from now
When you’ll still find that laughter
ringing in your ears
Ringing like the raining of rain
that waters a purple orchid deep in the forest.
Monday, April 04, 2011
Settling
Distance and darkness
dust covered words.
The continual advancing of time
brings these about.
What once was new
becomes broken and worn
whether teacups or vertebrae
or thoughts that I think.
A wedding ring lost
slipping off of my finger
in the bay where i swim
a simple band of gold
disappearing into the darkening depths
settling into the mud
returning to that from which it was forged.
dust covered words.
The continual advancing of time
brings these about.
What once was new
becomes broken and worn
whether teacups or vertebrae
or thoughts that I think.
A wedding ring lost
slipping off of my finger
in the bay where i swim
a simple band of gold
disappearing into the darkening depths
settling into the mud
returning to that from which it was forged.
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, February 21, 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
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...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)