I Did Not Die, The Plea

I am a spiritual man, live a serious life. I was taught that I, as a recovering alcoholic man, do not have a choice. Sometimes my poetry will reflect this.

I Did Not Die

Why do you chase me?
All I did, not important.

Walk among the groves
As I do, catch the bronze sun
Rays dancing through God's green leaves.

Do not feed me. I am past,
Solemn, ancient, an antique.
See my long gray beard.

****************************************

How many of us have asked God to show Himself? I know that many alcoholics on the edge of getting sober will demand that God do something. The stories of what happens next are various. God either does or does not show Himself and yet how that happens leads these people to get sober long enough to tell their stories.

Sometimes I am sure that I don't really write these poems but instead transcribe them, channel them. I am not sure why it used to take me at least several hours to write poems and now often only fifteen minutes, even less, like they already have been written and only need be remembered.

The Plea

Oh God! Show Yourself!
But who am I to ask this?
I stand isolate.

Beneath the crest of this hill
I kneel and raise gnarly arms
As if a stripped tree,
As if a long cloudy sky,
As if no longer.

Reading, Spoken For

Tarot cards...I have cycled near and far for decades and have mostly settled down in the distance. When I engage in spiritual matters, I usually find my practice is a daily thing, at least for some length of time. It was my experience with Tarot that the space of the cards got spooky in daily practice. I do not mean that they would get spooky for you or some other person, but that they did for me was a strong signal that Tarot is not my metaphysical system. It is basically closed to me. Yet Tarot would not have touched me like that without power coming from somewhere.

Reading

I lay the cards down
Cruciform and quadriform
And pray my question
Will pass the gate of tempests
And demons commanding, "Halt."

This way is razor's
Edge. It calls for purity
And the jazzman's grace.

*******************************

I do love a good fantasy. I love worlds formed with different rules. Indeed. What is the matter with a bird who can land in your brain, a bird who was once the brocade on a magic robe? This poem was the first in this current poetry cycle (begun last August) to really break from my current haiku form into something else, though the lines are all 5 and 7 syllables long still.

Spoken For

The bird who landed
In my brain was an omen.

Bright clad, noisy, smug,
Outspoken, big beaked, smelly,
A notably sacred bird.

That bird was brocade
On the robe of a master
Before he found me,
Ate through my skull, and nested.

His voice changed my soul.

He flew away to proclaim
My presence. I train.
Smelly bird indeed. The hole
Was drafty inside.
Be careful of a master's
Power robe. I am.

The Grail, Accepting Grace

I grew up a couple blocks from Glen Seaborg in his early years, long before he became the federal government scientist in charge of the nuclear facilities, head I think of the Atomic Energy Commission. He was a scientist and professor at Cal Berkeley and I was a wee bit older than his son. So we played, I guess. My Mom was a speech teacher at Cal also, knew Glen in that way. I don't remember all that much, but I do remember Dr. Seaborg.

I was also (third grade) already reading science fiction that my dad had around the house, and that same year there was a comic book classic that came out teaching about atomic energy so I learned about that in third grade too - mid fifties this was. In school I did well in math and science too. So with all that, I am not only trained in engineering (applied science) but in the theoretical as well - except I utterly failed to get past basic calculus, the math of inexactitude. That fried my brain. So I don't have the math for quantum physics, even though I can "talk" it.

On the other side of my brain, I am this hopeless poet, beieve in magic, love fantasy worlds, actually secretly believe I come from one when the moon is right...and seriously follow theology, as well as I am committed to live a spiritual life.

The Grail

There is a secret to be found,
The first truest principle,
Born in the first instant
Along with the whole,
All the possibilities
Of all the worlds.

Unfortunately,
This principle is so
Perfectly
General
That no particular application
Of it is possible.

...poeticism after George Polya

*********************************

Accepting Grace

Grace showed me herself
A day ago? I forget when.

Hard remembering
The silken flow, her ghost light,
The whole caress of her breath
On my tired frame.

I was not ready for her.
But I never am.

Practice, Aeons

My maternal grandfather, Hartog Phillipus Noordwal (HP), was a mining engineer who participated in the Alaska gold rush, an ink drafter, a calligrapher, a one time cadet of the Dutch Military Academy, an alcoholic, a difficult husband to his alcoholic wife, a man fond of the classics, a Mason who hated Catholics. He named his children Phillipus, Hypatia, Penelope. He married an English lady, one Millicent Dunton. For a time they were on the road in Vaudeville, Millie had a voice. He lost his hearing in a swimming accident and subsequent infection. That is why he was never an officer in the Dutch military. When I knew him I was fascinated with his calligraphy. He would walk around the house saying under his breath "Oh brother brother brother brother" which would come out due to his Dutch accent, "Oh Budda budda budda budda".

Practice

A quiet old man
At his desk picks a quill pen
And makes a bold stroke.

Using his vermilion ink,
He writes a single true word.
He scatters sand, sighs.
Patiently, he waits, listens.

Birdsong through windows.

***********************************

As I have mentioned in earlier posts, I am sensitive to the Chinese influences that have been in my life, a student of I Ching. Practice takes a little of that flavor (or if you like of the Japanese). So does the next poem.

Aeons

I came from one stone,
Egg of holy mother earth.
I rose mountainous.

I lived in the misty clouds
Above pandas and bamboo.

I left long ago,
Changed countries, shrank and split open,
Two stones, side by side.

Ch'i, Memory

The Chinese speak of Ch'i. Hindus have a variety of names. A very large portion of the planet, including the Celtic peoples considered lines of force in the body, in the world. Kirlian photography is cited as a way to see auras, which are in some sense visible manifestations of these lines of force. I don't really care if it is true or not. Mainstream science doesn't seem to care either, mainly I think because no one can figure out what to do with it even if it is true in a scientific sense. Yet in what Jung called archetypes, in that place, there is no doubt that lines of force are embedded in the archetypal experience, and that it is universal in human inner space.

And of course the fields of electromagnetism are physical analogues of this inner experience. I read somewhere in the philosophy of science that all the basic scientific theories are based on visions and experiences that arise out of intimate human experience - that we will never have the capacity to break out beyond that.

This includes in a deep sense even quantum mechanics. There is no way that we really have an objective view. We have methodologically and mathematically controlled intersubjective self consistent views. There really is a big difference.

There is a first principle behind all this, that we can actually trust our sensory experience, when it is controlled by logic, rationality, and mathematics to be an adequately correctible map of objective territory. The feedback of our procedures has been tremendous continual success. It is almost certainly so that we can trust this process, but an ever smaller jury is by the nature of the process still out and will probably continue to be.

Ch'i is inner experience of inner space, and not a proper scientific subject because of that.

Ch'i

I nest within you
Never outside you, never
Beyond your sweet glow.

I feel the rising rhythm
Of your song all around me.

This is like fish in
Warm blue alpine lakes, birds in
Green summer breezes.

*******************************

The next poem is a true story, a moment in my life that changed my life. My parents never knew. They were aiming for behavior modification and they got it. I guess they felt a certain success. I never burdened them with the truth.

The truth was that they taught me to hate. I had never had occasion to hate before that. My behavior modified not because of their techniques but because I had to withold my true emotion at great risk if I did not. Even in fourth grade I knew enough to know that hatred of Mom and Dad was very private experience, not to be shared. There was a kind of "uh-oh", a kind of being on the edge of a cliff. I have never had fear of heights but I have always respected them.

In my teen years of course, that hatred started hormonally slipping out sideways and my parents paid the price. I too paid the price. My separation was not pretty, full of rebellion and deliberate refusal to grow up. Then drugs. I am an alcoholic man. At nearly 26 years sober I know the first turning point was fourth grade.


Memory

I remember me
Then, standing in lonely doors
Staring at my Mom
Who was hoping my Dad knew
Who was hoping my Mom knew
And me hoping too.

In fourth grade I learned to hate.
It broke my young heart.

Attracting Trolls, Planetary Dream

I just received a very kind comment on my last post saying that I am improving. I am not sure that Julie meant it quite like that, but since these poems are being posted chronologically, each new poem appearing is a result of daily writing, and also the interaction that I have with the other sites I visit. There are some terrific poets out there. This proves the situation with poets is similar to that with musicians. Truly fine musicians and poets are not necessarily well known.

Attracting Trolls

Maybe in deep cover -
Undercover quiet trolls,
Special agent trolls,

Trolls as spies, as sneaks, as mean
Underhanded rotten jerks.

Oh no, I'm not one,
Not like that, not me, no no!
I try to be nice.
*****************************

I don't know how many others have had the experience of suffering someone sure he or she knows what is best. There always seems to be someone lurking who is willing to have a strong opinion about that. One can only pray that person has also learned that most people resent being told what to do. If that person is often right, well, then only if I am unusually mature in that encounter do I escape getting even more angry about it. I know I not the only one. In AA, filled as it is with a high concentration of people allergic to receiving good advice, especially unsolicited, there is constant training offered in "mind your own business", though it is said, "take your own inventory." That is because it is remarkably common that those allergic to receiving are quite often happy to be giving great advice.

Planetary Dream

I am not lost, no.
How dare you say so?
I choose aimlessness!

To wander in large circles
Is a special joy for me.

I like this so much,
This elfin spin of time, earth,
I'll do it again.

Textual Intercourse, Force

The snow has fallen lightly but steadily all day. I had stuff to do here, didn't go anywhere today. Untangled the computer. Learned more about my novice digital camera. Did this and that. Let my cat stay house warm (instead of open garage warm). Learned a little more about Blogger.

I believe in words, even perhaps spells. I would be careful with that, though. I make my living as an engineer, am trained in science and mathematics. If I say I am a shaman, I might mean something a little different than someone without that training might mean.

Textual Intercourse

I roll in the hay
Of your mind and my words spread
Fragrance far and wide.

Gracious words reach deep, transform
The waste into starry hope.

Then we come awake,
Shining starlit eyes display
Love, strength, deeper truth.
********************************

I am not an idealist either, though I prefer dreams and visions and fantasy. I don't follow Plato. But I love stories. Then I turn to the people in my life and they save me, bring me back.

Force

I wield a strong sword
With all the force of my dreams.
It cuts my own heart.

You appear, see the fresh wound
And sew it closed with new thread.

This is how you save
An odd old man from acting
As an odd old troll.

Holding Still, Crooked House

Looking hard at really cold weather for this neck of the woods. Was just out in it and can feel it coming. I think it's going to be colder than any time last year. This first poem goes back to the marigolds still in bloom this year. I have wild marigolds. They reseed every year and come up across my front yard. I am happy with that, even with the tiny wild pansies that still survive from years ago when I had several nursery pansies planted. They seeded too. What comes up looks nothing like the nursery pansies.

Holding Still

I hold still for you,
So still that flowers speed by,
Marigolds racing.

I hold so still that my cat
Forgets me and goes her way.

Even more still, I
Forget me and leave my mind
To find your true heart.

*********************************

I saw a crooked birdhouse and thought what it would be like to live there.

Crooked House

I am at a loss.
Why is our house so crooked?
I've tried to be nice.

Stepping outside is awkward
With so long a drop right there.

I pick at itches
Under my feathers and pray
You will come back home.
***

Perhaps I am wrong, but it is my experience that women don't put up with just anything...

Nine Bee Lines, Centrist

I have completed the layout of the Ritz packaging line. This is a complicated process which takes a semi regular scattering of crackers and gathers them into the wrapped columns that are found in each box, and then the boxes are gathered into cases and wrapped for shipping. This process takes several machines and quite a bit of floor space used carefully to allow for the interactions of humans with machines that are required at certain critical points. I didn't really have the long and skinny space that works best, and so I had to shoehorn stuff in. I think it is a credible layout. I am a worker bee.

Nine Bee Lines

It's hexagonal,
A six sided agony
Of plan and effort.

Life in the flight path
Makes my wing muscles sting, ache
With the heat of work.

I am not suited
For the apian disguise.
I am too heavy.

********************************

Back in 1966 the guy who got me high on acid the first time strongly suggested to me that Taoism was important to the likes of me. He was right, but what was more right was one of the ancient Chinese classics, I Ching. I actually parlayed my intensive study of I Ching into part of my college degree. I established that this Chinese classic presented a metaphysical system as well as a psychological one and as such was a legitimate college level study. This worked and contributed to my getting the degree. The next poem works with a Taoist image.

Centrist

I'm wound up, spiral
Incarnate, stripped of foggy
Central illusions.

The old master said
The wheel's main utility
Is the axle hole.

I look within me
Past the swoop of spiral shape -
Holy Nobody,

Or Everyone,
All wondrous life appearing.
All are shining holes.

****************************
So you see how Haiku can be played with and turned into another poetic form. I am using Haiku structure, but these poems are not Haiku.

Crayon Love, The Carved Block

Wow. What a day. At work I am trying to lay out a whole new Ritz packaging line and I really don't have enough room but maybe with enough clever twisting and innovative thinking I can get close enough to a working layout that my boss will see a way. Our first try didn't work. This one is much harder...

And a new internet friend was worried that she didn't understand what I had been trying to say. Then after I explained she said, "Oh I get it, you're a pacifist. That's totally okay with me." Well it's okay with me that people might think that because I really am close to that, but I am really not a pacifist, not with all the implications of that political stance.

Hmmm. What am I? Well perhaps that is what these poems are about. I choose to post two at a time because I write two or more of them a day. This started in August and I am riding this horse until it quits. I am about 200 poems ahead of myself, and I am posting oldest first. This way my internet friends who have seen them before may not remember them very well. I am writing from the cracks and edges of me, looking for an out. Or maybe I am writing from the core of me, looking for a way in. Maybe there is no difference in these assertions.

Crayon Love

If the door opens
Into sketches in crayon
Colors, who comes out?

Or shall I walk in never
To be seen by you again?

I nearly lost me
In rainy chaos coming
To these odd questions.

**********************************

The truth of that particular day was I really did nearly wreck on the road because of a hard rain.

**********************************

So on this same day I felt pinched by my own realities. I don't think I'm the only one. My life has turned out entirely different from what it looked like it would.

I was once married over twenty years, had every expectation that we would have retired as a couple in just a couple years from now, having lived a "dink" life, and having a "dink" retirement.

Instead my wife fell into a complex of illnesses and trumped my alcoholism in spades when she started to drink to die. She wiped out all of the retirement, and while I kept the house, on the way there were two refinancings to master the debt that kept overwhelming our budget. And so when we finally divorced, there was nothing left for my future, and she lived on the retirement money until it ran out, then died in her fifties back in 2001.

She died alone in an apartment in Columbus Ohio that she was no longer going to be able to pay for, was not found by her sister for a couple days, was found in the fetal position on the far side of the bed from the bedroom door, not easy to see. The autopsy called it kidney failure. It was actually depression and alcoholism perhaps the most lethal of addictions, and a sloooow way to go. Well, actually eight years of dying is rather quick as alcoholism goes.

Her sister tells me that she loved me to her dying day. Me her too.

So my life is unrecognizable by me.


The Carved Block

I am carved beyond
All reason, all hope, return
To you impossible.
Once this was all right with me.

Today autumn rain told me
To reconsider.

I shall take my leave, admit
To eyes slightly damp.

Decapitation, Trap Door

I was just asked to clarify myself in matters of crime, punishment, justice. This is so very difficult. Mostly I stay with mercy and love. My experience is that justice is seldom achieved on the planet, at least not as meted out by men. Not on fields of honor, not in the courts, certainly not on the battlefield.

I saw an internet video of a snake head, bodiless, a viper, who was still trying to defend itself as it died not so quickly. It broke something inside me.

Decapitation

If I was a snake
With just my head left because
Evil took the rest,

I would snap and snap, fading,
Hating, calling on my God.

I would possibly
Ask for vengeance, possibly
For peace, forgiveness.

****************************

We are all condemned. Life is a sentence of death. Yet it is not only that.

Trap Door

In the last long time
Before, condemned, I drop through
The final trap door,

I recall all the answers
I've ever given, lies, truth.

But I ask you now
In gentle light, in true love,
And asking saves me.

I am sometimes as old as the hills, older. Not wiser. The first time I understood the "long body" concept, it was through Maurice Nicoll in his book Living Time. If you gather all time and observe the solar system from beginning to end it looks very different from the pictures we see in books. It looks different even from the way it looks with the addition of the third dimension to the picture. This is because the planets move in time as well as space. The sun itself moves in a path. The lines of this travel through time and space describe the long body. You could say the same thing of every life, that there is a long body from birth to death.

The Long Body

In my long body
Twining through stony old time
I gain a vision.

I hear the songs of mountains
As they rise in harmony.

They witness and grieve
The slow grinding sliding slope-
Steep crags to low hills.

************************************

Sometimes I am scattered. Even so things tend to work out.

Heart Moon

Like rooms in a house,
I walk through gray tender thoughts
Of my long chased dreams.

Under the porch lie the strays
That rattle like angry snakes.

In my daylight hills
God moves, and coyotes move too.
My heart moon rises.

Climbing The Mountain, Dragon Dreams

In the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of I Ching at one point Richard Wilhelm points out that there is something joyless and ponderous about the self taught, one of the risks of not learning in public or at least in tandem. I have some experience with this challenge and tend to agree.

Climbing The Mountain

I was self taught, then
Found the good friends who changed me.
I am much lighter.

As I have climbed the mountain,
I too have earned a small grace

Which I wear close cropped
As the beard on my face, as
The joy in my heart.

*****************************

I do play well with others. I know it so. Still I need much time to myself, more I am sure than most. I was an only child and learned solitary pursuits at quite a young age. So I tend to be a loner. I have finally in the last couple years lived alone, well not quite since I have a cat, and my backyard studio is rented by a friend of twenty years. I am not lonely, even in the nooks and crannies of my secret soul. This is okay.

It has crossed my mind that dragons are mostly loners too.

Dragon Dreams

If my backbone rose
Into thin air, was snowy
And stiff with such age,
I would have smoky breath too.

Instead I am mild mannered,
With secret desires.

I wish a set of long claws,
And green glowing scales.
***

Free Tunes, Harsh Times

What - nine lines? Oh... three linked haikus. They can stand alone. They don't, but it is a strange story. By the way, is the Recluse actually a spider?

Free Tunes

I have a coupon.
It was stashed in my old boot
Next to the Recluse.

I shook my boot out.
The Recluse scuttled away
To my other boot.

The coupon says, “Free
Tunes are yours for the asking!”
So now I’m asking.
******************************

This one is a true story, a rude event, a sad heart. There are many squirrels in our neighborhood and generally they are way too clever to have any trouble even though there are many cats in the neighborhood as well. I am happy to have squirrels who are not vermin in my world, since I have nothing that they bother. Even the birdfood I put out. They can't get there.

Harsh Times

At the garage door
Displayed full length, headless squirrel
Bathed in autumn sun.

Not my cat, she's way too old.
A gift from some visitor.

My heart breaks at times -
Thinking from the squirrel's view
Of fangs sinking in.

Bewildered By Fate, In The Meantime

Poetry is not always serious, in fact you might make the case it seldom is, no matter how serious it sounds. I grew up in fantasy and science fiction, and while I am not really a reader now, have not read it since I can't remember, I still have the mind for it. I am just as happy in the world Ursula LeGuin created in Left Hand of Darkness and Frank Herbert created in Dune. So sometimes I let my poetry fly to places other than here...

Bewildered By Fate

Bewildered, I gaze
All about, consider fate,
Worry that I might fall.

I am yellow, no really,
And somewhat weird, fuzzy too.

I am shaken, stirred,
And stranded atop granite.
Sometimes worlds are hard.
***
What if I were a rubber duckie fuzzed up and yellow, sitting on a boulder somewhere in the wilderness? The thing is, it is not original but from a photo the Starfish of Motel Zero posted. So who is weirder, the guy who writes a poem like this or the guy who takes the photo...
**************************

Here's another thing can happen. I'm a nice guy. I believe I am honest and straight up. I go to work and my boss is a guy I have known since 1983, working in the same company together or for him in his own company for most of that time. We hold key cards that admits us into corporate America as symbiotes, small fleas on the belly of the beast. We give engineering, design and construction service to the industrial bakery that employs us. But I wasn't always straight up, though I was always kind of nice, and honest in my way. I do however possess a criminal mind. It is very good that I get to express it sometimes.

In The Meantime We do Mean Time

Ho! so quick, so frayed,
I sneak behind you and steal
Your holy beads of time.
I have a small withered heart.

And no empathy, no care.
I race off to stash
Your precious time in holes
Then I forget where.
***
There was a squirrel in my dogwood tree with a mouthful of unshelled walnut. He knew I was outside, close by, watching, but he really had no choice. There is something about a mouthful of walnut that forces things. It is really awkward. So I watched him climb down the tree and stop right beneath it. He dug a hole and stashed that nut right in front of me. Then he took off across the sidewalk, paused, then dashed across the street, up the pole and off down the telephone wire highway. Me, I knew he was going to forget he did that. Maybe she. There was too much going on at the time. No walnut seedling has appeared, so maybe the squirrel did remember. Anyway, the image of stashing my loot in holes is courtesy of that squirrel.

Primordial Soup, Only The Driver Hears

There is a back story, no? There is truth even where there are not facts. If I can turn into pig iron it is certainly no difficult feat to remember the

Primordial Soup

Primordial soup,
Essential goo, slippery
Fluid smearing me.

I've been squeezed hard. I recall.
I've been whacked. I gasp, I breathe.

I give such a squall.
It breaks bonds of memory
And I lose my home.
***
But as I wrote, the memories from before the soup are another matter entirely.
************************************

In Zen there are these conundrums called koans. So I thought one up and realized something.

Only The Driver Hears

The horse is not me.
The cart is also not me.
Driver in thin air.

Or the horse is really me.
And the cart is really me.

Unknown, forgotten -
I am the smaller third lost
In dreams of wholeness.
***

If I recall correctly this image came from reading about Gurdjieff on the day I wrote the poem, and the horse and driver are his images.

Perspective, Pig Iron

This day was a happy day for me. It was the day I realized I could play with the outer form and keep the inner structure, the 5 and 7 syllable lines. I am fascinated with the way word choices lengthen and shorten lines. I can do all this because I am not after all really writing haiku, just using the form for my own devices.

I need to write of Lynn Redgrave Cat, who has lived with me most of her life. She is a part Siamese who once had a longhaired sister, also part of our family until she passed years ago. Lynn is 17 now. She had a house brother, Philip Berrigan Cat (Berr) who passed at 18 a year ago. Their elder house brother Raggedy Blue died a bit earlier at 23. When an old cat appears in my poetry, it is the youngster Lynn I refer to.

I still had mycology in mind when I wrote Perspective. Pig Iron speaks for itself.

Perspective

The soles of my feet
Warm where the many white threads
Of God attach me
To the Holy ground of Life.

I wear the crown He gave me.
The old cat who lives
With me is indifferent
To my ancient ties.

********************************

Pig Iron

Staring between bars,
My knothead keeps getting stuck.
Wanting to be free,
Over and over I try.

Then he comes, tells me, "Become
The cage, little friend."
Turning into pig iron,
I begin rusting.

Calling Crow, Obedience

The next two poems are interspecies. What if I were a crow? What if I were of all things a mushroom? Not like "I must be a mushroom 'cause they keep me in the dark and feed me bullshit". Not like that. Crows have inner lives. That's obvious. This particular mushroom I wrote about/turned into does too. There is a mushroom in the midwest and one in Oregon also. Each are huge, but not much shows. They both are nearly all underground. There are estimates of age too. These guys are ancient. How long does it take for mushrooms to achieve depth of soul? Never? I don't believe that.

Calling Crow

In the black and white
Of my world, remember red
And yellow and blue.

I am a crow on sand alone,
Pinched and hunched, and raggedy.

I have called before.
My soul returns to me my
Lemon memories.

***************************

Obedience

Oh Lord, I am here.
Palest flesh, big intentions,
Uncounted children.

I really am so hidden.
Nearly nothing of me shows.

In the dim damp light
I have blossomed just for You.
I'm at Your service.

Illusion, The Bottom fell Out

Sometimes, I get all caught up. I don't think I'm the only one. Sometimes it feels like a forest fire or something, the way I simply have to react. Sometimes if I look around, there will be some sign that it might be me that's on fire. This time it was the crows.

Illusion

Leave this world behind!
Get away, it's burning up!
Too hot to think, scream.

Must run as fast as the wind.
The burning chases me on.

My escape is all,
But look! The crows will not flee.
They sit motionless.

**********************************

It is possible that disasters are not so bad. Just this evening, I listened to a man cry for the joy of getting his family back because he reached out after finding out he had terminal cancer. It was not only that. The story is complicated and not really mine to tell, but this part is real. I witnessed him be wide open about it. His daughter came to him after twenty years apart. He met his granddaughter for the first time. She is fourteen. Maybe later the fact of his cancer will crush him but right now he is overwhelmed with joy.

The Bottom Fell Out

Now I speak the truth,
Now that the bottom fell out.
The flame comes swiftly.

I glow more than ever now
And sprout egret's snowy wings.

Filled with holy heat
And lifting off this old earth
I will fly and fly.

I wrote this poem a couple months back, and it came up in normal rotation for posting today. A serendipity.

Sad Light, Archery Lesson

Do you remember that special love? Can you be at peace within the memory?

Sad Light

The hole in my heart
She left me sometimes erupts
In spears of sad light.

Beauty’s grief rises, a gift-
A gentle burst of warm rain.

Within God’s Vision,
Within Love’s sweet pain I rise-
God calls. I walk on.

I think of Eros (Cupid). I cross that with the Zen master.

Archery Lesson

An arrow, fletched with soul
In true flight, like the bird flies
To her winter home.

Place it on my bow of love.
Pull the string to my left ear.

Hear my song within
The still archer's holding stance.
Let this dart fly free.

I have had more than one opportunity to love large. Oddly these were not the ones I married. I would have. There is something in me that propels me toward unattainable partners, even though I succeed for a time. Four times I chased the impossible ones, three as a young man, the fourth after a 20 year marriage ended. When I chose to marry there was something very practical about it. 23 years together and the last 20 married. I loved solid. I did not love large with wide open heart. I hope there will be another, but I don't chase.