Morning Reverie

Morning Reverie

(“Light rises even in darkness for the one who is right. He is kind and has loving-pity and does what is right.” Psalm 112:4)

It was a calico morning when the
sun,
banana yellow,
squeaked through the window treatments
in the old cabin on the hill.
A feral cat or two
hunted and pounced while
the coffee brewed in the aluminum urn
on the stove.
The gingham was replaced with forest
green
curtains,
the floorboards creaked like the elder’s
bones as he got out of bed.
There were memories in every crevice of
the oily paneling, there were creations that
refused to be put aside. Chili was cooked in
an iron pot
suspended over the eternal flame in the
corner fireplace. The poker rested on the
stonework mantle, the bellows exhausted from
last night’s work.

The doves were waiting for the graying clouds
to arrive and
huddled in a branch of the
pear tree
that snuck up under the eaves.

The children were gone for years now,
the generations were finding their way home.
But he poured a cup of the black elixir
and laughed

As the doves seemed to kiss midflight, then
rose with the breeze and landed,
wing-in-wing,
a breath-long distance from his morning reverie.

Watching From a Distance

 

Watching From a Distance

If you have been watching from a distance,
you would notice little difference from these days
after the
before.
But if you have walked tandem, I hope you suppose,
for the roundabout of years,
that my vistas have changed. That I have found hills
I frequent more often than the barren evaporation of all
that is human. You would hear the frequencies have changed,
the soundwaves are variegated between semi-tones of
pine needles on the forest floor. I soar now without
thinking.

And where I left off yesterday is woven through the
loom of dreams. I don’t expect a savior anymore, a godlike
motion
from the stratosphere.
Instead I breathe, I walk, I pain, I paint, I play melodies
in my mind
to harmonize with the wheat waving like the ocean.
I know so little

And embrace so much.

The world is more with me,
the sounds that wriggle past my pain into
the air of friends who left too early. And I learn lessons
from the final few words of those who loved me before they
knew who I was.

Somewhere in the Distance

 Somewhere in the Distance

(“Therefore say, ‘Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace.’” Numbers 25:12)

The more I know, the more I do not understand;
the more the certainties, the more the canyons of smoke.
And though the air is filled with ash
and the oceans with reflections of the sun
my world is motionless, save for the unspoken
poetry that lies at my feet.
One day silence is peace,
the next day it is centripetal force
and the quiet bears the weight of the universe.

The more I look, the more I think the world has been
fixed with chewing gum. The more flavors, the better,
I think,
but the chilly air sneaks in through the corners,
the rabbits sneak in through the breaks in the fences.
Some days are paradise,
some days lead to hell,
some days run in circles,
some days lead nowhere at all.

I would stall if I could,
put off the daily pain for another day.
I would procrastinate these whirligig stories
that augur more deeply by their telling. I would
embrace the silence if
the silence was not all I knew.

But somewhere in the distant there are eyes I have never seen;
their arrival is unknown, but days may turn into hope
and dreams into visits from those I wish were closer
and had not departed so soon…
…somewhere in the distance.

Between Connections

Between Connections

(“Therefore let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” 1 Corinthians 10:12)

It is in the connections our synapses fire,
the gaps between place and space, between
arrival and departure. And life is filled with
gaps,
filled with tears without reason,
smiles without memory,
and cause without effect.

We are lost in the distances,
circling the block hoping a new neighbor
will come into view our fourth turn
after so many mornings with the same
faces we have never spoken to.

All the energy we possess erupts, sparks
traversing
the zero between integers,
the minus between pluses,
the forever between creations

From eternity past until a new millennium.

The snow hill behind our house in North Dakota
is as close today in Spring and facing the Pacific Ocean,
as when my college daughter scooted across the ice preschool
to climb another slide down the frozen slope; our tiny white
Maltese Poodle, skipping atop the crusted snow.

The love is in the space between that memory and today’s moment.

The first girl’s smile, the Christmas with the Lionel train circling the tree,
the first view of the fair-haired maiden who chose to marry me;
each is alive, unfaded and exerting more power than the instant
they occurred,
merged in time and mixed with longing for their present tense now.

Between connections I live in the cracks where cement disguises
the solids made mostly of nothing, and thoughts seem concrete
as touch and smell.

We do well to continue, this day to the next, refusing to fear
lost connections on our journey toward perpetuity. 

A Thin Prism

A Thin Prism

You false distance that deceives friends and others,
Oh darkness that envelops mind and affection,
Oh words used to force graciousness beyond gravity’s pull.

The debates created to win a side have consigned
the lower lights of the spectrum to shine no more.

Oh light, rainbow full of hues, we abuse your beauty
and demand, not simple understanding,
but a full confession of indigo
and complete rejection of red.

I told you I would no longer address
arguments begun by lies. I clarified what
I did not say,
and the lies took hold anyway. And the stiff-arm
leaves me further away.

Please leave your anger in the parlor
before you enter your office to write
another letter that leaves little left to say.
We are all prism and light, some distance
is needed to see the artwork; great distance
is quackery masquerading as truth.

I reaffirm my stanza fourth,
you will find what you came looking for
no matter my words, my photos, my broken pieces
some see as clues to a crime,
some sing as blues and the times
(genuine), evidence of honest attempts
to be the red or green expected by the
green or the red. You will find either, both,
or none

Depending on what you predicted.