13 Tuesday Jan 2015
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03 Saturday Jan 2015
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1.
Death is winter,
But winter’s not death.
21 Sunday Dec 2014
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Cardinals, Death, Monsieur du Miroir, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Omaha, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Spring, Winter
A few words might satisfy
The feverish yearning of my soul
for some master-thought,
That should guide me
Through this labyrinth of life,
Teaching wherefore I was born,
And how to do my task on earth,
And what is death.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, from Monsieur du Miroir
When the shadow is lifted,
There’s the only the boy,
And the first thing he does
Is become a man,
(Maybe sensing himself for the first time)
The buffer is gone; it’s him alone,
And a great wonder swells in his mind,
What can I do?
His eyes focus
On the yellow of the weeping willow against snow,
The sun caught and frozen there,
And he hears and turns his head
toward the cardinal whose red coat flashes
In front of him, like blood against snow.
He thinks of his dad standing amazed
at that same blood-red plumage,
And the man before him,
and before him, and so on.
There is nothing he can do now, at this time,
Except reflect and build energy
toward his own springtime,
And picture himself budding there,
His roots laid deep in the soil of his ancestry,
Their many failings,
(He still feels it)
Their many successes,
All of it now merging.
He knows, this will be his own final push,
Man, alone, stripped,
Stretching his whole being toward a sun
That is so often obscured,
So often, radiant and warm.
11 Thursday Dec 2014
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Afterlife, Creator, Dad, Death, Death Poems, End of Life, Faith, Father, God, Heaven, Hope, Losing Parents, Love, Oxygen, Parents, Poem, Poems, Poetry, pulmonary fibrosis
You’re not gone yet,
Or, are you,
Floating somewhere,
Possibly beside me here
as I write this poem, play this song.
Do you hear the music I hear—
Know my thoughts—
Feel what it is to be emptied?
The lungs close in on themselves
And all around us is less than we need—
Want—wish for—desperately fight to breathe.
Tell me there’s an afterlife,
A place where you’ll wait,
All things separated, rejoined,
The things we can feel,
And the things we believe are here,
Even when we cannot see.
19 Sunday Oct 2014
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The world is most beautiful
On the edge of death:
Mid-October geraniums,
Profuse with crimson petals,
Dense green leaves,
Gather in tight families
Around the Aspen’s knee.
The roses,
Who struggled in heat,
Explode in bunches of white
Their outstretched arms
Wind loosely over the tattered fence.
The Aspen’s petioles fade to yellow,
Its leaves are framed with yellow,
The birds flittering among its branches
Tipping in gentle wind.
There is no snow, no stinging cold,
No blister of heat, or ankle-deep mud,
Only knowing it will all end soon,
The landscape will dull,
The skies will drop with silence,
As we’ll wait, and wait,
For what has already been.
08 Wednesday Oct 2014
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Autumn, Cowboy, Fall, Hawthorn, Horse Poem, Horse Poems, Horses, Paint, Palisades Park, Pinto, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Ponderosa Pine, Serviceberry, Spokane, Trail Ride
You should have wished for rain,
But you relished the sun, instead,
And the sweet smell of orchard grass,
In the pinto’s October sweat.
Before you left,
You stood under the bow,
And plucked an apple,
Ripe with the full bloom
Of a long summer.
You held it outstretched
Until all that was left
Was the juice, and the salt
From the palm of your open hand.
You should have wished for rain,
But you relished the sun, instead,
And his slow steps down steep trails,
Adrift of dirt and loose chunks of basalt.
The robin and wren, tree swallows and chickadees,
Flitted among branches of Ponderosa, Serviceberry,
and the Hawthorn with its dangerous nails,
While you thought of nothing but that,
And how your horse’s mane felt in your hands.
06 Monday Oct 2014
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Abandoned Nests, Aging, Alfalfa, Autumn, Autumn Poems, Barns, Bird Nests, Bird Poems, Horses, Mud Nests, Old Men, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Quail, Quail Poems
Morning comes late,
And the autumn sun trembles
through Aspen arms.
Didn’t you say,
If the sun didn’t rise,
Or set, there’d be no time?
Yesterday, the eggs were cold,
In a nest of mud, and hay,
And strands from the pinto’s mane;
Such that, even the barn
Closes in on silence.
The family of cats, hunkered down
Behind fresh stacks of alfalfa,
Grow fat on a sudden flush of quail,
And the sun sets sooner now.
At last night’s fire,
You were shocked
At what the old man wasn’t afraid to say.
Later, you laughed at what he’d said,
Talked of the freedom of age,
And the benign closing of our souls.
First try:
The Autumn sun rises late,
Through the arms of Aspen,
Trembling in slow, cool wind.
Second Try:
The late-rising, Autumn sun,
Trembles through the Aspen’s arms,
In a slow, cool wind.
30 Tuesday Sep 2014
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Authenticity, Belief, Courage, Death, Fear, God, Infinite, Life, Nature, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Rain
there is a reason
being in nature
makes us healthy
we find the infinite
under trees and clouds and sun
the rain wetting our skin
in that moment we don’t worry
about getting wet
belief is found
courage is found
30 Tuesday Sep 2014
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Death, Dying, Finite, Horses, Infinite, Irish Wolfhound, Stars, Why Death Scares Us
What’s the worst thing, she asked,
About dying?
The stars, I said, As I leave the barn,
My horses, buried nose-deep in Timothy.
The pounding dirt, I said,
The Irish Wolfhound’s lope,
And the dust of her joy.
My children, I said, Their hate of me,
Then, their love of me.
I will miss all of that.
What’s the scariest thing, she asked,
About dying?
It ends in dust, I said,
That upon my death,
I really die.
That I am finite, and not
Like the stars,
That all I am, all I know,
All I feel, is less than the dust
Of the stars, I said.
25 Thursday Sep 2014
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Code Blue, Death, Emergency Room, Fear of Death, Hospitals, Miracles, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Surgery
Immediate resuscitation required.
Sorrow begins in the pharynx,
Descends to the heart and lungs,
Or so you think, because it hurts,
Then, you’re bawling.
You’re sure they announced,
Room nineteen, Code Blue,
Watched enough ER to know
He must be dead or dying.
But then you think,
Because you can’t believe,
Really, such tragedies happen to yours,
Maybe Code Blue means something else,
Like, Get here fast and help,
And, as you start to console yourself,
Convince yourself you were wrong,
The nurse returns to where you sit,
Tells you it was a different Room 19,
A different person in Code Blue,
And you’re relieved,
Utterly relieved, and free.
Until today,
When you begin to wonder
If someday, someone will be relieved
You’re the one in Room 19, Code Blue,
Rather than their own,
Precious, little boy.
23 Tuesday Sep 2014
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21 Sunday Sep 2014
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15 Monday Sep 2014
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Death, Horse, Horses, Klaus Hempfling, Life, Path of the Horse, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Stormy May
These
Are the things you’ll remember,
Not the big things.
****
Small, small things:
One leaf touched by the sun,
One small smell.
When we are dying,
I promise you,
The memories you will have,
In your last seconds,
Are about these small things
Touching our skin:
One leaf,
One moment with your child.
Not the big things.
We will remember the small things.
These small things are added
To a fulfilled life,
Or not.
Not the big things.
From “The Path of the Horse” Documentary
Klaus Hempfling
11 Thursday Sep 2014
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Calves, Cows, Horse Poems, Horses, Idaho, Lewiston, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Tammany Creek, Tammany Creek Road, Women's Poems
One sorrel horse. Gelding.
Twenty-two years old. Grade.
Twelve hundred fifty dollars.
Tammany Creek Road, it winds
Through hills as soft as breasts,
Dotted with cows and calves–
Spring days, you see them born,
Dropped to the ground in glistening sacks,
Mama’s licking too calmly, you think,
As their eyes try to focus on a new world.
She pulled a rusty 2-horse straight load
Along the road that winds through hills
As soft as breasts, pulled onto the gravel drive,
As steady, and slow, as resolve.
Resolve:
I’ve never seen a woman cry so unashamed,
Over a horse, in front of strangers.
I’ve never seen a horse look so long
Up a road, for a woman to return.
09 Tuesday Sep 2014
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Four Quartets, Mind, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Souls, T.S. Eliot, The Universe, Time
Only through time is time conquered,
The continual drip and tick,
Of the universe, our souls, our minds,
It ends, like this–
04 Thursday Sep 2014
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Air Force Brats, Aroostook County, John Steinbeck, Limestone Maine, Loring Air Force Base, Maine, Maine Potato Harvest, Maine Traditions, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Potato Harvest, Potato Picking Maine, Travels with Charley
“I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.”
John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley
Assignments, Orders,
New places and bases
Every two or three years.
Our birth certificates read like travelogues:
Washington, Alaska, California, Idaho
and Maine.
We were from everywhere,
For a little while.
Place.
Loring Air Force Base.
Nineteen eighty one.
Fall Break.
Potato Harvest.
Aroostook County.
Rickety re-purposed buses
Arrive in five am fog,
Loading groggy kids in flannel shirts,
Blue jeans, stiff leather boots,
Mismatched hats and gloves,
Too large for our hands.
Tradition.
Squat farms in provincial towns:
Caribou, Limestone, New Sweden,
The landscape of Northern Maine,
Ripe with French Canadians,
Large Catholic families,
Working hard to keep their homes.
This is what I remember:
Scrambled eggs in bacon grease.
Legend:
A man
Picked over two hundred barrels,
In one day.
Wicker baskets
Placed between our legs,
We were faceless kids
Picking and tossing
Newly flushed-out spuds,
Some tight and ripe,
Others half gone with rot.
Instructions:
Dump them into barrels,
Tag them with your number,
Wait for the tractor
To plough another row.
Twelve: my number.
Thirty: the number of barrels I filled.
Fifty cents: the pay per barrel.
Legend:
A kid, a picker, fell asleep in a dirt row.
He was run over by a tractor.
He died.
Maybe that wasn’t legend.
Memory.
Without lies,
There’s no poetry.
Without lies,
There’s no hope.
03 Wednesday Sep 2014
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Courage, Dry Salvages, Four Quartets, God, Horses, Lonliness, Osprey, Poem, Poems, Poetry, River, Rivers, Spokane, Spokane River, T.S. Eliot
I do not know much about gods;
but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god –
sullen, untamed and intractable.
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets: Dry Salvages
Nothing makes you feel more alone–
Yesterday’s twenty miles of river
Calculated today, a lifetime.
The hunting bird, you said eagle,
Then, you said Osprey,
It was an Osprey.
Great beautiful white-winged thing
Hunting the Spokane River
For the one that jumps too high,
Makes itself too known,
Dares to release itself
From the swelling under-swell.
Listen to T.S. Eliot read Four Quartets.
26 Tuesday Aug 2014
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I remember what it was like
To be unstricken,
To think my life would go on,
To think I was owed a spot here,
And that spot was permanent.
Once your body lets the thing
Grow, you understand something else,
That mercy comes in miracles:
The Canada Geese overhead are miracle,
The smell of your son’s hair is miracle,
The arms of your friend wrapped ’round you,
Saying, it will be okay, is miracle.
Love is a miracle.
That we can be loved is a miracle.
I asked only that I’d see my son graduate,
And I did. That is a miracle.
I am a stricken one.
I was stricken long ago.
I’m part of the great finite,
And I’m part of the great forever,
So in need of mercy,
So thankful for miracles.
25 Monday Aug 2014
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Think of yourself motherless
In this false, frail world.
This world where you don’t touch blood,
Or suffering, or death, but hope
Someone will be there to touch yours.
She pulled my hand to her bare breast,
Cupped it underneath,
Rested the heft of it,
In my palm:
Do you feel it, she asked.
I feel it, I said.
I feel it.
21 Thursday Aug 2014
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The geese migrate.
Hear their many wings
Su-swish, su-swish,
Like heartbeats,
Ripping the sky.
Bits of Poetry 