03 Thursday Feb 2022
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, Aging, Beauty, Belief, Children, Death, Dying, Eternity, Family, Gratitude, Hope, Life, Loss, Love, Memory, Mothers, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Spirits
In the end, we don’t know
How the end will come,
Peaceful, as we sleep,
Or, under the thumb
Of morphine. Memories,
Like flotsam, from the depths
Of our once bright existence,
Form a tunnel toward our exit,
Each day, one step closer,
Almost touching what was lost:
mother, child, father.
02 Sunday Jan 2022
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Aging, Belief, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Eternity, Fear of Death, Infinite, Life, Loss, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Survival, Winter poem
A fog over the snow-covered hills
Of the Palouse, loosed delineation
Of hill and road and sky,
It seemed an infinity of cloud,
A shroud, over our eyes,
As we returned from a ‘last visit,’
The one where we said ‘goodbye.’
A great chain is about to snap,
The ties that bind crackle,
Grow weak, tremble, cry:
This too shall pass, everything must die,
But at last, we don’t believe it’s true,
Do we? Life is all we’ve known,
And its roads extend for our ever,
And ‘our ever,’ doesn’t come to a tidy end,
But it does begin to blur at the edges.
29 Wednesday Dec 2021
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Aging, Death, Family, Fathers, Forgiveness, Happiness, Hope, Life, Love, Memory, My Dad, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Souls, Survival, Winter
“Weep for what little things could make them glad. Then for the house that is no more a house. (Directive, Robert Frost)
1.
The frosty backs of horses at the bale,
The red fence, framing the snow,
This is the beauty I found
In the extreme cold
of December.
And I remember
Wishing for it.
2.
Do you want to save this bird,
It was a falcon,
And it ran, with broken wing,
At the edge
Of a barbed wire fence.
He asked me, as he knew
I was a lover of wild things,
And a nurturer of broken wings.
I do, I said, I do.
Then, he was out of the car,
Walking among snow
And wounded bird.
I watched him from the backseat,
The car, I would someday wreck.
But that day, it was whole,
And we were whole,
And he returned, victorious,
Gloved hands,
Cradling broken bird.
3.
I don’t know why he gave it to her,
But she was in possession
Of his cowboy hat,
And she knew
I was the one who wanted it.
I was in possession of money,
And funny prankster that she was,
My sister knocked on my bedroom door.
She was having a yard sale in her room,
And I was invited to shop.
I can’t remember how much I spent,
But the hat became mine,
and I was wearing it.
He laughed when he saw me,
His big hat on my small head,
And heard the story of its quick journey
From her to me–
He’d given it to her for free–
But I didn’t care,
I wore that damn hat everywhere.
4.
Before I wrecked his car,
I slid his truck off an icy road
At two am, in a snowstorm.
I remember hiking to the first house,
And a man answered the door
In his underwear, staring dumbly
At me. I was desperate for a phone
To call my dad, praying he’d pick up,
Otherwise, I’d be stuck
With the undressed stranger.
He did, and soon my dad was sliding
down the dangerous hill,
In the car I’d soon wreck.
Next, he held his metal two-ton jack,
And ratcheted the truck up, and off,
And up and off, back
Onto the road, where the ice melted,
And the snow turned to rain,
And the sky filled with lightning,
But we survived, and now,
We can laugh at this story.
21 Tuesday Jan 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Aging, Courage, Death, Dying, Hope, Life, Loneliness, Loss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Snow, Soul, Soul Poetry, Souls, Strength, Survival, Winter, Winter poem
Imagine
if someone covered you
in ice;
how would you feel
in a chill
blanket of snow?
What darkness have
you
known, the kind
that can kill you,
your voice
silenced
in wind-drifts,
the hissing whisper
of winter’s kiss?
28 Thursday Mar 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Aging, Death, Death Poems, Life, Memory, ocean, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Self, Soul, Soul Poetry, Spirit, Truth
Another day, I’ve collected
over eighteen thousand
now, but none like this:
the birds have returned,
and the clouds hang low,
like the mist of what is
unknown, and I don’t care
to know, because I gave up
predicting the future
when I realized
I was always wrong.
The only thing, now,
is this poem, and how
it pulls me toward confession.
You see, a life recedes;
place a bottle in the ocean
and watch it slowly
carried away by the waves;
that is me and you,
this moment,
and this poem.
11 Monday Mar 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Aging, Cancer, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Fear of Death, Foal, Hope, Horses, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry
My father is eighty,
has cancer,
lives two hours away,
and I worry—
could I get there
soon enough to say
I love him,
should his last moments
come quick, unexpected—
like a foal born in the night
while I’m sleeping,
even though I’d been there
to catch him all day.
07 Thursday Mar 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, Aging, Alone, Courage, Death, Happiness, Hope, Life, Loneliness, Love Poems, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Survival, Tulip, Yearning
Like the yellow tulip,
who blooms every year
in the pit behind our house,
who was dumped, long ago,
after her blossoms were spent—
yet, she screams, I’m still alive!—
every spring, among garbage
and weeds; like that tulip,
you don’t belong here.
09 Saturday Feb 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Aging, Azaleas, Children, Death, Flowers, hydrangeas, Life, Lilies, Love, Memory, Mothers, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Winter, Winter poem
Winter returned, unbroken,
and I bought azaleas, hydrangeas
and stems of lilies
to stand against white windows.
How like memories,
these flowers in winter:
smiles, laughter, love,
eyes, cheeks, toes, and fingers.
Mama, mama, mama,
I hear them calling,
as I cut their stems.
09 Friday Mar 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
1
There are people we meet
Who are old;
They get older.
Her green house,
our gray house,
separated by a few feet
And a porous shrub.
The black and white manx
Meandered between her yard,
with its ancient birch,
glorious hydrangeas,
And ours,
with its withering grass.
20 Tuesday Feb 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
I said the aspen was naked,
But maybe it’s me that’s naked.
The older I get,
The more naked I feel,
Like the aspen stripped by winter.
Its bare limbs standing still
In the fog, are they my limbs?
How terrifying!
How vulnerable!
How lonely!
Will it wake in spring?
Will I wake in spring?
28 Tuesday Jul 2015
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
Aging, Breast Cancer, Cancer, Death, Death Poems, Dirge Without Music, Edna St Vincent Millay, Gardens, Poem, Poems, Poetry, prostate cancer, Shadow of Death
(Dirge Without Music, Edna St. Vincent Millay)
The Fall came in shadows,
The poetry,
Cancers of breast and prostate,
The tumor in the child’s lung,
By December it emerged
Another way, unpredicted,
Because who can predict death?
Fierce and final,
I would say it ravished,
But that would imply he may have lived.
And he didn’t.
What’s the word for being all gone,
The home you built, inhabited by strangers,
Growing cucumbers and tomatoes
In the garden you put away?
Did you think you’d see April,
The planting of the seeds?
Or July, with its harvest?
New hands take up old work,
And so, it goes on without us.
After a short time, even memory,
Struggles to keep us alive.
06 Monday Oct 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
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.
Bits of Poetry 