Sunday, July 1, 2007

Weathering

I hide from hot wind...

I'm far from the rivers, the lakes, the sea...

Still,

Erosion...

of respect

Of laughing

motivation

ideas...

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Springtime

It used to mean jack in the pulpits

Daisies
Tulips
And the Rosebush

And none of them east of the river understand...

That red rock high wind and aspen...

Pine, broken or straight...

Do just fine.

A garden that doesn't need my tending....

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Gone too long

They say, to speak your name....

Gone too long...to remember your fight against pain.

Gone too long to dwell in memory

Of amusement in the rain...

You've been gone too long.

How can she still miss him, they think...as if he and she were branches

From the same bent tree,

I'd have moved on by now, they note, and stopped going back...

They aren't comfortable
...that I can see your face so well,
hear the the bearded Viking laughing... smile up at those baby greenish blues.

Almost tweak that narrow nose, or listen for your heavy shoes.

Your clean welcome embrace

Summer and aftershave.

They're also uneven about how can "great love" coexist with many....

He wasn't your only, so how can you still be driven, broken, crying out so from his absence?

Because "Other Half" "Soul Mate"... those words are true.

Not as sappy as romance, or clean as Pleasantville...but the one who still pulls at you, after the passing, the ceremony, the dust...

Yes, he is gone too long, and you won't stop looking backward...

Until your dust, and his

Settle in together,

At last.

Monday, January 1, 2007

Building Blocks of my (ideal) religion

Why, when I pray...and see the very human anguish of Gethsemenae...

Can't I look further back and sit on the midwife's stoop...the herb garden....

Or dump them all, every faith I've seen.

For the one I've wished for...where Deity connects and sees and cares...As my one voice sings in some small stone chapel, heard further, further up, to intermingle with the stars at night.

That that same Deity leaves a cold list of expectations home with the housework...expecting and assuming that we know right from wrong...

And instead is a guide, a tracker, a map reader....just ahead along the road of life, and that like the edges on onions, old ideas peel away....and leave understanding behind.

Where is *that* sense of God...? That sense I sing to in the night.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Echoes from the stones

When I could travel I would grasp the walls...the halls of home,
or Roman stone, still standing beneath my fingers, the reasonance of centuries around.

When I could get out:

I sang to 42nd street
Tie and tails and sharp black shoes.

Or ancient melodies in naves or sanctuaries.

Hymms or choruses, new and old.

Painfully common or deep and old and true.

Those melodies are restless still, looking for an exit...

And so I hum at home when no one hears...
Or wonder if they've heard it true, and think me mad.
Outside in the hall, as they wonder what the poor woman's doing there.
Held inside, denied connection with the people or communion with the other singers, past and gone or present near....
It must subsist as working noise, or vocal prayer alone.

It is not time for requiem, or worse yet stillness...
The voice still sings.