Why is it that when pine trees bleed
their fragrant scent and pine cone seed
in showers round me in the fall
I miss you most of all?
Perhaps because the summer’s gone,
and slowly winter’s coming on.
Its lowering gloom appears to feed
my ever piercing need.
While waving arms of needles fly
against the paling autumn sky,
your arms my heart keeps longing for
and won’t know ever more.
It is not enough to lay the palette down.
I cannot bleach away the lines
and measures painted here.
This canvas of my soul leans against the easel,
swimming in pigmented oils’ burning colors.
Brushes, dripping with a language of sorrow,
draw the stinging stains of mourning across perception.
Silently they direct a light across the likeness
portraying this sloping trail of loss.
It is not enough to lay the palette down.
I only stumble on tubes of pain; scald my eyes
with tears as pools of turpentine.
So raise again the tongue which holds sufficient flame
to illuminate the heart’s knowledge of grief;
where fails the spoken word.
I cannot bleach away the lines
and measures painted here.
Remember, Sarah, when we
held hands tight at the ocean-side
as I tried to explain why your dainty little feet
were being pulled out to sea with sucking sand,
at the same time as water was rushing
us in toward the shore?
Remember your
wonder?
And Sarah, remember
when we talked in the night in
our sleeping bags about the night, stars
and moon, and where had the sun gone, and how
could the world be that huge, and God’s
power and love for us so great!
Remember your
fascination?
Oh, Sarah Joy, remember
your saving of shells and seaweed,
kelp, rocks and grasses; everything
was so beautiful to you! Oh,
mommy, keep this for me
until we get home! The
dash was always
stuffed with
piquantly
scented
treasures
* * *
We
were blessed
with six priceless
years
* * *
Remember
how you told me you
wished we had time to live time
over again, so we could have
all our fun again here?
Ah, sweetheart, I too
could have had
no greater
wish.
* * *
Now,
my precious
daughter, it seems to me a
very long time until Heaven. But we’ll
be there together. We’ll sit at the feet of Jesus,
and He’ll tell us all about everything. It will be all perfect joy;
better than any Thanksgiving or Christmas here. And
your sweetness, earnestness, your giggles
and kisses, and our love for each
other will be there for us
to keep
forever.
A tactile basin sunken deep
beneath the mountain’s ridge caress
left space like naked wilderness;
a place for memories to keep.
~ ~ ~
Though the brilliant sunlight beamed,
no splendid greening grass would grow.
No crocus swelled beneath the snow,
although the moonlight’s sheen yet gleamed.
~ ~ ~
And sorrow’s grey lies down to weep,
for night has crawled across the field.
No comfort will this evening yield,
no gentleness to help me sleep.
Where the Statue Bends
I went today
where the statue bends
to touch the nose of a fawn;
and the child sculptured is one someone made
in honor of all who’ve gone.
The field is aflutter with bright balloons,
and wind chimes tinkling so sweet;
but these hundreds of stones bear witness alone
of parent’s hopes incomplete.
Toys, dolls and trucks, and an angel form;
a quilt with a wish to keep a babe warm -
the gift of a parent whose darling lay
beneath the steel gray December clay.
Some gravestones receive a Christmas tree
after forty or fifty years;
decorated in love with an old mother’s care,
and placed there through clouded tears.
If only all parents could know their babe
is safe in God’s loving care;
and if they love Him, they too will find
their child in Heaven so fair.
For a parent never forgets their child.
It says “Baby Land” under the fawn;
for all the young ones who left too soon;
for all cherished babies who’ve gone.
Hasn't everyone seen him -
the nameless ragged man on the waterfront -
neither old nor young, completely disguised by bushy beard,
smudged face, frayed clothes; by poverty and withdrawal;
perhaps ingenious, living the life he needs to live; a
modern-day nomad, could be a real-life hermit,
with sunburned face, and careful hands
setting sunglasses on the long noses
of his two dogs. Sun glinting
off salt water, sea gulls
screaming round
their heads.
The sign says one dollar
to take your picture with us! They sit so
patiently, glasses on, perched on boxes, waiting
for someone to stand beside them, and then the flash;
knowing with absolute trust that their loving
faithful master will be giving them dinner
when they have done with this game.
For him it is no game.
His life's possesions lie unprotected
under the freeway bridge; a small hump beneath
an old blue tarp; waiting for them to come home, and
sleep one night at a time snuggled warm
together in the sleeping bag with full
stomachs because of those
sunglasses, and tourists
who enjoy ...
The city was empty
on Sunday afternoons when I was twelve,
riding the bus to press my nose against plate glass windows,
memorizing the bright unreachable wonders in closed
stores I wouldn’t have dared enter when open;
planted along the quiet streets like healthy
redwoods rising high and stately;
strong & grand, impossible
to ascend.
~
Over three decades later,
the city swarms on Sunday afternoons,
as I try to find a place to park. But instead of gazing
into closed, silent stores, I walk past their open
doors, with people flowing in and out.
~
And, instead of envisioning the stores
as great trees growing, I perceive, instead, the now
massive city shrunken and made small with mercilessness.
Mounds, and countless heaps of human beings huddle against
the November chill, some with bottles of comfort still clutched
against chests in their sleep; homeless; defenseless
against the mocking, derisive world, uprooted
along the restless streets like crumpled,
broken plants, gone to seed,
frostbitten, and withering
away.
~
I walk quietly around them.
I wish to buy acreage, pay for porta-potties
and garbage collectors, and give it to them all for a
safe place where they could still be who they
need to be, with no rules, and no police
to overthrow them, wreck their
meek and miserable camps
under the freeways; to
throw their sleeping
bags in the river
while it snows,
and chase
them off.
~
The paper speaks of a
group of a hundred or more,
some with families, sane, and afraid
to live on the street, fearing the robberies
and malicious murders; searching even now for a
simple and plain piece of land; and all they
want is a place to set up a tent, and
live simply, in privacy and
peaceful safety.
~
The tax-payers won’t hear of it. But
those powerful might be next on
the street. For who can know
what brought the poor
here... or what made
them poor. And
I can't help
but care.
~
All I can do is meet the eyes
of the ones still on their
feet, unless they are
too afraid, or they
frighten me with
obvious insanity.
I see human beings
no different than myself.
I hand out a bit of change. But
far more vital, I give them smiles.
I know a man who also hands out food
and messages of God’s love. I am not so brave.
~
But it could so easily have been me there.
~
I’m old enough now to get away with it.
No one thinks I’m brazen. No one thinks I’m
a likely candidate for thievery or rape. And the tired,
red-rimmed wrinkled eyes that drink in the
warmth of my smiles, always look
a bit awed, as the slurred
mouths thank me,
and they lurch
away.
~
Sometimes they look back.
Sometimes I do. I hope my care
can somehow warm their hearts while they
shiver into the night. I consider how the city has changed.
I wonder what has brought them here like this.
~
What has disintegrated, in our society, to bring
the lonely and friendless curled in the
doorsteps, and out in the freezing
rain with newspapers for shelter.
Sometimes they wake up.
Sometimes they don’t.
~
I have.
2007 1/2
Through years of scintillating mirage;
we thought our future melted captive
in our own warm fingers as we
made love in the cabin with
half an address at the
end of a wooded dirt road, to
slow jazz, in warm candlelight, surrounded
by hanging tapestries, while our lives stood side by
side, safe in a glass globe, and bewitching glittering shivers
drifted over us each time we shook it. Sixty dollars a month it was
our private heaven, our own enchanted loving haven. I knew sweet
perfection as you held me utterly spellbound, spinning me
in breathless circles with comets streaking and stars
swirling with your sapphire eyes holding me
through our surging kaleidescope.
We had sunshine and babies;
life was full and rich.
We had the next
eighty years
to love in.
We couldn’t have
known in our ignorance that life was
a shooting star dying in the cosmos of our youth.
We couldn’t have heard the raging thundering
sun that would rise on a brittle day when
the knock came at the door, and
reality cracked like
ice.
