Thursday, October 30, 2014

Thoughts on the last days of a good man and close friend whose life ended in suffering because of a degenerative disease

As I stepped on the downward stair
I reached for a railing that wasn't there.
Precarious, precarious!
But that was not the scariest.
As I got to the bottom floor
I opened what was not a door
into a space of dark and gloom
that wasn't anything like a room.
Disorient, disorient!
I wonder where my prayers went.
It's dark and silent, this I know;
but silent dark may be friend or foe.
 
 
I regretted I regretted
But that did not change my featherness.
If I'm blowed and blown away
I may end up in such as this.
The breath I'm on has brought me here
To lose perhaps what I hold dear.
No turning back from doom or glory;
mine only to live out the story.
Gone my faith. I'm left with trust
until I give back spirit and dust.

If I could love more than could God
I would myself become a god.
No goddess I, I know that's true.
I trust to someday meet with You.
 
 Death is a clap.
Are there echoes?
I have heard in the night
how the sound goes
into the dark unknown
fading but on it goes
into the blur unseen
as if it has always been
as if I will meet it again
and know it an old good friend.
 
I don't want to join the world
I want to keep apart
So I stay under my blanket listening to my beating heart
Wishing I could sleep
Until the day ends
But my brain starts to think so I get up in self defence
There's no hiding from
And there is no escape
Whatever will get dished out that is what you have to take
So I will face the day
That is confronting me
Because it is, and I am, though I don't know how to be

 
 

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Highbush Cranberry in the woods

I ate a berry that no hand had touched.
No one had planted here this shrub to grow,
None watered; and its place no one could know
But I myself. (So red, so tasting much.)
The only harvest needed was, reach up,
Bring near the branch as though unto a kiss
(What sweeter lips can there be than this)
And strip from stem to mouth the holy cup
Then with the trees come willingly, partake,
In company of leaves and birds, who also fly
As my soul will and does unto the sky,
Of this most holy time. Your spirit wake
To see the world your sister, brother, friend,
Whose heart you break and help again to mend.

Wednesday, October 8, 2014


I like the sky when dark with glowering cloud
For how it makes the autumn trees shine loud.
Perhaps some inner glow through veins bestowed
By days of summer sun in-poured, restored;
Perhaps the wisdom of the trees turned gold,
Distilled the patience, the wealth of age untold;
Perhaps some artist wandered here along
These fields I love and painted visual song,
Bold strokes of blaze and glow and flashing note,
A many-chorded harmony from nature's throat.

I hold the leaf up which upholds the light
Though dark surrounds, and bless me, oh this sight.
However came this magic alchemy,
In sun or cloud, may something shine through me.





And another...
 
If leaves have souls
when they die
how many bright and fragile spirits fly
in autumn when the cold hard breeze
takes the living off the trees
The air must surely fill with wraith-
like filmy figures dancing high
on their way in sweet release
to come to grow on other,
bright eternal tree.