The Lava Field, Freedom

Here is one exploration of anger. I don't know. It's just a poem. Back in the fourth grade I was hot like this. My parents had forced me into a situation that made me look ridiculous and then they laughed. They were trying to bust me out of a behavior they were tired of. That worked. But I was so angry and so unable to express it that things changed inside. It took a long time for me to understand what had happened. In the meantime, when I was teenaged, I made life really tough for them and a little later for me. For many years now, I have known that what they had done to me was teach me to hate. I didn't even know what hate was before that and didn't know what it was that changed when it did. But hate is what it was. I have never been fond of object lesson manipulations ever for any reason ever since I have understood that price. It is certainly not what my parents wanted. There is always a wildcard. I am sure they would not have done it had they known the price I would pay, and then pay back.

But hey. This is just a poem, not really about that, probably.

The Lava Field

I was angry once,
So hot that my hope melted
And flowed down my sides.

I am deformed, bent like that.

I have held still for so long
That dreams have begun
To form on my ruined hope,
On you in my life.

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

I'm going to reflect on writing poetry from time to time. I have to. I am trying to figure out what the effing hell I am doing here. It hasn't stopped, this push to get the poems out. I thought I was going to break training today, but nope, at the end of it I had my two poems. I have promised myself as a spiritual discipline, or so I say, that I will emulate Hafiz (who wrote longer ones generally, at least one a day) and since they are short, I will write two. But why? All of a sudden last August this happened to me...I said this is the form and it's variations. I should be able to knock these things out in a few minutes, let's go! There have been poems that take longer. I also edit at post time when I decide that the words or the rhythms tweak me. Doesn't usually take too much longer. I'm a flipping poetry cartoonist. God made me do it:) So now I've caught his heel and I'm not letting go until he hollers. The only answer so far is I'm running out of time. But I don't think I really believe that, not in any special singled out way.

Freedom

Writing poems is
Taking on the other skin,
The other odd life
Where I am you or you or
A bug-eyed field of long corn
Or stranger than that.

It is being free to roam
All the roads I find.

Time's Too Short, The Hollow Man

High and low. Why not, I ask, make poetry out of the lowbrow stuff too? My emotional life is all over the map, from resentment to the highest forms of love. I discovered long ago that many paradoxical things live in me. You would think the one precludes the other, but not so. Time separates them and in that way emotions coexist in me. I often can't do more than one thing at a time, but then this is not always true.

I have noticed every time someone dies, the critters in my life, and the people, I often have many emotions at the same time as the grief. It was really amazing, and I would hope for all of you that you get the chance to experience heart breaking grief and fierce joy at the same time as I once did, back in 1983. What a remarkable few minutes that was. It didn't last long, but it was certainly God given.

So if I am this complex, why should my poetry only be lofty??

Time's Too Short

Damn. Gone too quickly.
I've tripped, stumbled against you.
I tries too hard, Sir.

I gets ahead of myself.
I'm in the hurrier mood.

Won't promise better.
I'm too late, don't really care.
I've run out of time.

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

And of course, as a believer in fantasy, I also can write stories, as I have posted before - truths that are not facts, or perhaps truths that are more than facts. I don't feel like a hollow man these days. Believe me, I have been places.

The Hollow Man

I am hollow rock,
Emptiness in density
And afraid of blows.
I fear shattering my shell
And leaking into thin air.
If I walk near cliffs
I will fall, I know this, yes.
Please just fill me in.

Eating Ideas - Eating Ideas, The Sequel

Here's a pair of poems for philosophers and poets who know you can feed the mind and heart with words. I liked the way the first one went so much that the second one had to follow. A little while back I posted a similar poem, Eating Prayers.

Eating Ideas

The idea hunter
Builds a good fire just so
And roasts the latest.

Such a wild notion
Found wordsmithing on the trail,
This latest idea is fat,
Spicy and alert.
Drips sparkle in the heart's fire,
Just might be a book.

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

Eating Ideas, The Sequel

Good ideas, tasty
When young, still better when old.
They chase me home.
Sooner I get there,
Sooner start the deep fryer.

Hear them hiss, crackle
As they fry up. I can't wait,
Chow them down right now.

Let Me Be, By The Tarn

This first poem is whimsy, but not quite...It is a true story about a real t-shirt and dead straight honest all the way up to the bus. But even that is true enough in its way. I joke sometimes that I was let off here on this planet by mistake, have been waiting a really long time for the bus back home to arrive.

Let Me Be

My best black T-shirt
Got too many holes to wear.
I threw it away.

This shirt said, small print,
“Just visiting this planet”
Oh yes, that be me!

Now I wear the holes instead.

Waiting for the bus to come
I wonder why you stare
As if I was bug-eyed, green.

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

A tarn (or corrie loch) is a mountain lake or pool, formed in a cirque excavated by a glacier. A moraine may form a natural dam below a tarn. [1] A corrie may be called a cirque. The word is derived from the Old Norse word tjörn meaning pond.

I know this word from playing Scrabble a long long time ago.

A few years back I had a lover named Frances who loved the outdoors, so we went on a vacation into the Canadian Rockies, Lake Louise, Banf, Jasper, Maligne Lake, and up in the mountains all over the place there. I saw more than one tarn, but one in particular was just way cool and the glacier above looked for all the world like the back of an angel spread out face down on the rocks above. This was Mt. Edith Cavell and the glacier is called the Angel Glacier. You approach through a devastated landscape left behind by the retreating glacier. Just amazing.

By The Tarn

Do not drink water
From milky powder blue skies.
Don't fall in either.

Walk along the cold blue bank
And marvel at what ice does.

And think glacially,
Think slow and steady, like ice
Making long valleys.

Summer Rain, The Full Cup

In Oregon's Willamette Valley, in the Portland Metro area, the end of summer gets dry and hot, but occasionally the marine air will succeed at driving over the coast range, not much more than hills. When it gets across, a surprise rain is quite welcome. When this happens on a weekend as it did here, I am usually happy to watch the celebration. I am sure that the foliage in Oregon, used to frequent moisture as it is, is capable of dancing in the rain that breaks a dry summer spell.

Summer Rain

The sea takes summer,
Puts it to bed for a nap.
Rain comes from the south.

And my garden gets up then
In rainy green gratitude.

My old cat comes in
To lie next to me,
Waiting for the rain to cease.
********************************

Tea is a holy drink, or should be. This is the source of the Japanese tea ceremonies, that tea is a holy drink. I try to remember this when I brew tea.

So much has happened in my life. I notice the aging process removes things. One that happened to me, I was a many cup a day coffee drinker, even past the time that the diuretic quality of coffee was obviously a bad thing for me. A health issue pushed me to a homeopath who practices classical homeopathy within the framework of a naturopathic license as well. He did a classical intake and determined that my mate was Agaricus Muscaria. He told me I had to quit coffee for homeopathic remedies to work, also no peppermint. The essential oils. I followed instructions. It worked really well. So did quitting coffee. Now I drink mostly water, some sparkling water, and sometimes tea (I hope with reverence).

The Full Cup

On bent knee I bow
Old soul to the holy tea
That slows me, warms me.

I want a full cup of light.
I want to drink the whole draught.

Then I lay me down
And tumble on God's own mat
Placed here for us all.

Bowing Down, Sojourner

Going to the high places is an ancient gesture of reverence, of separation, of coming close to the holy.

Bowing Down

If I could leap past
The asphalt of my life
I would climb your hill.

I would ascend grassy slopes,
Take in the scents as I pass.

On reaching the height
I would lay a round rock down,
Then I'd bow down too.

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

Leavetaking, dying, knowing when to stop. Years ago I learned two things, that I am on what I hope is my last time around this planet...that I am to live as if this is my last day every day. I have noticed now that I am over sixty something has changed. I am relaxed about all that. Far from this attitude being some kind of bluster, it is actually my truth. My only issue now is I hope I avoid a really difficult death.

I have to hand it to my mother, who managed to die of a stroke. That took three days and most of it in coma. While she was in coma, she still communicated her needs. She started to pass on that last afternoon but my sister was in flight and wouldn't arrive for a few hours. Mother started to struggle and it was clear that she was not ready, so we gave her morphine and she quieted down. Not even an hour after my sister got to the hospital my mother passed, having let my sister say goodbye. A nearly perfect death.

Sojourner

Truth: I am happy
And also willing to go
Even if I go now.

Perched on my shoulder, my guide
Ever shining, lit by bright beams.

Coyote travels
Before me. I trail his heat
And his holy scent.

Stolen Gold, Mage

The moon is traditionally feminine because it is shining with reflected light.

In the geocentric astrological universe, it is also closest, the most intimate light. It is the most immediately influential source of daily change, a tidal force not only on water outside but inside. Scientists are quick to point out that only sun and moon, the one because of its overwhelming energy and gravity, the other because of its closeness, can be considered influential in human affairs.

Astrologers agree that these are chief, along with the geocentric spatial orientation of the moment chosen. But astrologers believe that the solar system is unitary and that all its main components, the lights and planets, color its inner space. That coloring is geometric and harmonic. Astrology in this way is closer to the arts than to the sciences.

Only fools think this astrological influence is direct, some kind of ray or unknown force. The sciences would have found signs long ago and have not. Believe me, scientists have looked, still look in ever more subtle ways. As well, only fools think that the arts inherent in the solar system, indeed in the cosmos are of no account. These arts must be witnessed very differently from the measurements taken of scientific data.

IMHO :)


Stolen Gold

Lady moon shining
On the country of my soul,
You feed me with dreams.

I shall quest beyond these woods
To the dragon's darker lair.

I shall bring you gold
Stolen from the writhing snake.
I'll stun him with smoke.
************************************

As for magic, it is first and foremost a relationship with and an artistic arrangement of spiritual powers. To expect any success without a profound respect and understanding of one's place within all these powers is to court madness.

Make no mistake despite all the popular renderings of black magic, it is neither easy nor advised in any way. Black magic requires an iron discipline far beyond the capacity of most of us. Otherwise it eats you, and the remnant is usually a creature less than human of psychopathic or sociopathic nature, why this magic is called black. The best depiction, the one ring of power and Gollum in Lord of the Rings.

However, what is often called white magic, is relatively harmless, but it too requires profound respect and understanding of one's place within all the powers. Otherwise it becomes foolish superstition.

Most often, paths toward magic require guides, either mages, witches, or spirits.

IMHO :)


Mage

Stand on a high point
After traversing deserts
And open your heart.
As the sun rises
Sending daggers of young light
Into you deeply
Invoke the power
As it grows and rise with it.
From your new height, live.

Clean Up, True Words

I was asked at another blog if I make these things up on the fly and mostly yes, I do. I know I'm not the only one. The longer they get, the more I have to edit, though. I have no problem with that part either. I have made my living as a drafter and wordsmith and long ago learned that I do not own the words, that the words do not own the meaning. There are hundreds of ways and dozens of styles to say the same thing. If it doesn't work, then to the scrap heap with it. More than a few have gone there. I mostly don't even know what I am going to say when I start.

In AA's Twelve Steps And Twelve Traditions Bill wrote the story of Rule 62 which is the suggestion that I might do better if I don't take myself too seriously. Here's one of those poems

Clean Up

Man, I dread blown minds.
There's too much clean up after
My old head explodes.

But then I have to admit
That when it goes, my head grins
And more, it tickles.

So I guess I'll let my cat
Clean up the scatter.
*********************************

Old Hippies never die...they keep thinking big. They want peace and love to overcome war and conflict and they want true vision to change the world. Here's a poem in that spirit.

True Words

I have appeared here
Toting poems in a sack
Slung across my back
As if I had a way through
Buried somewhere in the words.

Yes that's true, I hope.
Please sift the words, discard all
But the truest ones.

Kind Eyes, Life Force

Here are two more visions of love. Hindus say Namaste, I believe in South India, Namaskar. Both mean roughly, "I salute the Divine within you". (In Sanskrit namah is "salute" in this way, as you might God. We on the other side of the Indo-European divide have names, that would seem to be in the original, divine salutes.)That's a whole 'nother post - that when I am named, something in me is acknowledged as divine.

When I truly fall in love, there are always two of you, the earth woman and the goddess. Just as the earth woman has many complexities, so does the goddess. Jung called out four primary goddesses(archetypes), Priestess/Prostitute, Virgin, Crone, Mother, but there are more, as the Greeks knew, and all are present, but rarely all at once.

The danger arises when a man such as I am confuses the divine and the human. The danger can arise, that I love the goddess but not really the woman. It may be that I hunger for the goddess so much that I accept the woman, try not to see the parts I don't really want. Or I may impose too much, call her out too soon, perhaps call something I see that she can never see, much less be. There is so much more. And if reciprocated in just this way, oh my! Heaven and hell can arive in the space of minutes. Every day. Because earth marries earth and gods marry goddesses.

When I married, I stayed away from all that. I married a woman I could and did love who did not call to me from the divine. I am sure that was true for her too. This lasted over twenty years, but the truth is it should not have lasted over five.

Kind Eyes

I feel solar wind
Blasting past my earthen soul
With bright songs fading.

I journey beyond my life
To search every corner
As long as it takes.

I seek the kind eyes
Of the one who left me here.
***
This reminds me...my poem is not an original vision but comes from a song I used to sing, before it was made famous. Chet Powers wrote it in 1963 and I was singing it, got it from a coffee house performer named Paul Zeigler in 1964...the second verse:

Some will come and some will go,
We will surely pass,
Til the One who left us here
Returns for us at last.
We are but a moment's sunlight
Fadin on the grass.

This is one of the truer descriptions of our living situation as I see it. Why would not my lover in her goddess aspect be the One? And here I am. She is gone. I am bright but I fade.
**********************************************

And this poem shows something of what it is when she is here in my life.

Life Force

The girl ensouls me
With her eyes, her heart awake
Within my own heart,
The moon of tides within me
Rising with my heat, my breath.

I accept her bright stars.
I love the rich fragrant hues
Of her shining ways.
***

Ohhh, this is going to hurt! Hell yes, it's going to hurt. Probably won't last. So what. I do not dare miss it...

Ouch, Signs Of You

I don't take suggestions well. Some suggestions are like this....well, son, we are here in this airplane, the door is open, you got the gear on. I suggest when you go through that door that on the way down you pull the rip cord...like that. It really doesn't matter where I go, there I am. I have the same trouble. Here's one version.

Ouch

I bumped my noggin.
I was among the wee folk
On my last project.

We were building with bluestone
Aligning earth with heaven.

They told me to wear
Mercury's gold winged helmet
But I was too proud.
************************************

I really am a sap. Don't really care. I fall in love across the room routinely, just have learned not to do anything. But I love the idea of being in love, and I also like writing from that place, from reaching into the places in me that come to the surface when the goddess is in my life. I can smell her there, just behind that door. I can hear the song she sings under her breath while she gets ready for what comes next.

Signs Of You

Being short sighted
I don't see you as you come
From the far corner
In the mirror of my mind.

I am blind sided by love
When you caress me,
Fondle my dreams with such care,
Leave me signs of you.

Singularity, Eating Prayers

I have no idea where these poems came from. The outer form was a photo of a tree standing alone, and one of a seashore.

There are doorways to somewhere in the dark down deep places of me. For years now, probably sixteen years, many of the doors have been open. When I write, for example, when I improvise on the keyboard for another, it's my job to get the session started, then stuff happens and it becomes my job to keep up with it. It seems more like riding a skateboard, more a matter of balance than of creating.

In my poetry, I have a chance, because it holds still, to go back and edit. That means usually either a complete delete - no good - or the change of a word or two, sometimes a line. I am forced to delete or skip posting no more than one in ten. I have no idea how the form comes, but I do know that I don't decide before I start. I write quickly, as if the poem is another kind of music I play.

When I improvise on keyboard, I am held back by my level of competence, but within that I have no idea where I'll go or how I'll come back, just that I have the confidence to usually accept the "wrong" notes and the changes they force, and that when it's time or I need to I can find the way home. A couple posts back I wrote that I don't get lost too easily. That's true in the music too.

Now I should come clean that these prose spots are heavily edited and added and subtracted, not at all the same experience as the poetry.

These poems speak entirely for themselves.

Singularity

This tree grows right here,
Nowhere else, but others grow
All around the world.

If I were to tell you this,
Try to make you say so too,
I would start to fade
Despite my true driving
Dream of unity.
*****************************

Eating Prayers

Embodied knowledge-
Never less than two wide views,
Colored vistas, skew.

I swim very well
Among the rocks, wade the bars
Seeking shells of life.

Then I return home,
Brush away the gritty sand
And eat my prayers.

Present, Love's Long Lake

As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, when I was posting the most finished of my older poetry, I had a lover/muse once. That was over in 2001. I have over a hundred poems from that time, all love poems and it is still easy for me to write them when I have the right inner space. Now I write to the lover in my heart since I do not have one and haven't for a few years. The two I post here are those kind of poems, and they arose I suppose out of nostalgia.

I think of myself as a married man. I married one time, was married over twenty years, would still be married were that possible. The thing about living single, I wish for the companionship of one woman but know that all my women have had the same complaint at one point or another, that they don't know why I love them. I am too singular and self contained, and they are confused, not understanding where they fit in. So I refuse to rush in. I have found no one that seems possible and I have begun to think I probably won't.

But my power is lessened in some way.

Present

You bestow on me
This moment, this chance to love,
This pure white blossom
Of heart and song, tone and rhyme.

I also bestow on you
My few gifts, too few
For my liking and too poor,
Yet I'm here, my love.
*******************************

Love's Long Lake

I wish I knew you
Like I know the stones I pick,
The sidearm skimmers
That dance across the water
In the play of light and waves,
Then happy to sink
At last into the deeper
Heart of love's long lake.
***

I believe I was gazing at a photo of a flower, a white rose probably, in relation to that first poem. The second arose out of a wilderness photo of a lakeshore.

Corkscrew, In Between

This first poem really is three poems that relate to each other but come from different places. First, the Man of the Northern Wall is a mage and power behind the throne of a queen, much as Merlin was behind Arthur. That is the sense of the Magic. There are limits even at the best of times because the age of true magic is in the Golden Age of archetype, or the Dream Time of the Australian aborigines, or the before times of any cultures. In other words, full power magic was in the world prior to the world of history. Even the most powerful mage is limited in historical time.

Then there is Coyote, one of my favorite gods, almost not a god, he is such a screw up. Often he is hilarious, sometimes stupid, sometimes brilliant. He has a kind but self centered heart and can be cruel, even mean it. In short he is as tangled up as we are.

The last verse goes from a touchy task to the fact that we can all fall from high enough to hurt, and this at any time.

And I mean it. There is something in me that is so arrogant that I think I can save the world.

Corkscrew

If I were Magic
And Magic was as I dream
Then so much would change.

Coyote is the teacher,
Shows the corkscrew way of things.

To thread the needle
Takes courage, wit, hollow bones,
Or else you fall, break.

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

Yesterday over at mole Dale posted a prose poem about being stretched between the dock of desire and heaven's boat, how that might cause you to fall into the water. I replied that in AA we often say, "if you have one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow, you're pissing all over today". Here's another in between.

In Between

Between the stony
Walls, so close, I find the tree,
Twisted ancient tree.
It lives as if all is sane.

It lives as if I love you.

I too live between
My stony heart, my rock hard
Mind, in this long day.

Bird Dog Like Cunning, Effective Prayer

This next poem is a true story of my early years, not even first grade. I have never been lost on the planet even though men can screw the directions up in cities. But Berkeley, California around the university was in the nineteen-forties laid out in a logical grid.

One day I wandered off following my favorite neighbor dog, an Irish setter as I recall, who led me on a day long wander through the city before outpacing me somehow. I was in a part of town south of the university I had never been before and pretty far from home for a five year old, but I could say to myself, "hills, university, town" and I knew where those were. I knew I lived partway up the hills.

So I just walked home looking for something familiar. I never found anything familiar, and I finally came to rest in the hills. I sat on one of the concrete benches placed for pedestrians to rest on. It was already full dark. I was now really close to lost but don't remember panicking. My mom came up the sidewalk steps looking for me, just out of her mind. I had been gone perhaps eight hours by then. When she appeared through the hedge I said, "Momma, I've found you!"

It turned out I was two blocks from home but up the hill. I had nearly found my way back just using my sense of direction.

Bird Dog Like Cunning

Bird dog like cunning
My Momma said of me then,
So small wandering

Anywhere, free in the hills
Of Berkeley, on the campus,
Down Strawberry Creek.

I never get lost, not in
University.

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

Back in the late sixties, when I was a Hippie, I was convinced that if a certain number of us experienced an Awakening, the world would change. I was sure that the saving of the world was going to be an inside job, a change in spirit, and that we human critters were in over our heads in a tangle of our own devising. I was rooting for that change to take place.

To me, the impulse toward Awakening seemed to be under all the political protests and the psychedelic ones too. It was about saving the world in a spiritual way. A revival... How American can you get? We hold revivals regularly. I believe the sixties were a kind of revival movement too, but a "pagan" one. However it should be remembered about this revival, that the kids who were Hippies came from Christian families, lived in a Christian culture, and our instincts were Christian instincts, even if we toyed with alternative forms of spiritual living. Hedonism is a spiritual trip too and had formal expression in ancient Greek culture. The educated Greek culture is the other heritage along with the Hebrew informing the spirit of Christendom.

Effective Prayer

The music draws me
Into the dance where you are
And gifts me with form.

So we twine, complicated
Shapes. We draw others to us.

Dozens, hundreds, more
Until we reach that moment.
Then God moves the world.

Alone, Life In The Fast Lane

We are rapidly melting now, but the ridges of shoved aside snow at the intersections are killer. Because I dug the driveway out, the piles alongside are three feet deep still, after two days of melt. I hope that I will be able to drive okay tomorrow. I am tired of depending on the good will of others, though I know that allowing people the chance to do something for me may be a gift to them. So I was taught in AA, by experience on both sides of that issue.

So imagine a summer landscape, a cross country hike, reaching a hill with a solitary tree. Imagine how it must be to be so alone, year after year.

Alone

Singular fierce tree
Once one seedling, a small grove,
Only this one left
In the thirsty land atop
This windswept dry yellow hill.

Long ago old grief
For lost sisters is now deep
Roots in older rocks.

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

Here is another journey in the imagination. This is the man I could have been had Ann not stared me down one day and said I had to change. Well, not this guy but just as empty, just as lost and broken, with ashes in my mouth, the taste of an empty life realized.

Ann was trying to save her life too. This confrontation point was her latest move at that time, January, 1983, in trying to get me to be the man she needed. I responded every time she pushed but couldn't seem to ever really change toward her way. That's a whole other story.

Life In The Fast Lane

I was born to run
Away, away from myself,
From you, forever
Running on knotted sore feet,
Bleeding, using broke down knees.
I'm ever looking
For an easy soft green land
Where I can stop, rest.
I'm ever looking
For someone to really trust,
For the real me, you.
Not much left of me.
Running on empty, no breath
To pray for true peace.

Merry Christmas

I have no poems directly relating to Christmas. What I can say is this. In the last several days the Portland Metro has been dumped on with record amounts of snow and ice. Becuause we are so temperate, the cities and counties cannot justify the fleets of heavy equipment, the manpower and supplies that dealing with this emergency requires. In other parts of our nation, much worse happens routinely, and so it is a given that civic responsibility demands the investments in the essentials to keep the city and county commerce flowing. Here the story is otherwise. It has forced the gathering of communities. I belong to AA, and the presence of that fellowship in my life has proved a God sent blessing at this time. The few times I have needed to get out and about, there has been someone with a better suited vehicle to provide my transport.

I am so well supplied by my good habits of keeping a home that all the essentials are currently at hand. It is primarily my connections with others in my life that I might lack without the transportation. And so even though the ice ruts are so high that my car couldn't pass even if I had chains at certain locations, I still get to connect with people that I love. All is well.

Tomorrow we will gather in feasting and fellowship in the fellowship hall next to the room where my home group AA meeting is held. The church will not be using the space, but AA meets every day of the year and especially on these days, which pose special difficulty in lives devastated by alcohol and dope. We huddle for warmth and love. The church that we use has allowed AA to be there for over a decade now, 365 days a year. On our part, we are self supporting, and pay an honest rent. When we do these special things, we pay extra rent, and we police ourselves as well, cleaning as we go. This might not seem like much but organizing alcoholics is very much like herding cats.

Even though I am an orphan due to the natural consequence of aging, my life is full and good. I hope that my new found friends here in the blog universe will find themselves as blessed as I have found myself.

May you all experience the peace and love that is the promise of the season.

Musician, Shaman

As a musician, I am undisciplined in some of the critical ways. I know how to read all the musical symbols, can even use a program called PrintMusic to write or transcribe a musical score. I cannot to save my life actually read music, what they call "sight read". It's a bit of an embarrassment because I function musically at what I call a professional level both on guitar and on keyboard, but with severe shortcomings in so many areas.

But when I set at the keyboard and let go, accepting the limitations and using discipline to stay within them, then the music I make is just as good as anyone's. I know this, but I am so freaking weird about my limitations and fearful of your judgments. Those attitudes are in themselves a serious lack of discipline.

Musician

When I sit at my keys
And let these hands go as if
They belonged to her

I feel her breath. It soothes me.
I choose a voice to reach her.

I know she listens.
I feel the catch in her breath.
My music shines, shines.

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

There is always a price to pay. The path to power is especially sacrificial. The Native American Sun Dance does not surprise me in its harshness and lies far beyond my capacity. I have known one man personally who has taken the piercings and hung in the sun.

The modern scientific world puts strong positive energy into denying the possiblity of shamanic power, much to the diminishment of mankind. It forces some of us into byways, cracks, crevices, onto the edges of things. We must do this even though we may have talent, and even calling for shamanic roles. The shamanic roles are traditional ones, protectors of the tribe and healers of its members, but not from mundane trouble. There is a spirit realm too. It is this realm that counts.

If the shamanic roles are traditional, ancient, it follows clearly that some of us are born for these roles, and have the talent for them. Now of course people like this if exposed in unfortunate ways are thought quite ill.

The spiritual realm is denied by so many now. That denial adds a special discipline because defensiveness saps shamanic power even as social stigma does. And as ever, the presence of manipulators who pretend to power for personal gain gives the forces of denial a strong place to stand. Who can argue with protecting the social milieu against charlatans and superstition?

Shaman

I go to those woods
Seeking strength and purity
As you told me to.

In the glade I found, I lie
Crucified by memory.
I take shallow breaths.

Pierced, bleeding, the price: my life
To become myself.

Birds In The Dogwood

These are two of the dozen or so goldfinches who are hanging around my sunflower seed feeder.

Acceptance, Look Past Me

Why do I have the spider theme? I have no idea. There was something going on in the blogs I follow though.

Today was a remarkable snow day which put the Portland Metro area weather into third place for the most accumulation of snow and ice ever in its own history. This is clearly not the stuff that Maine is made of, or Chicago, but it paralyzes us because it is so rare. We didn't have any last year. I spent my morning digging out so I could maybe go somewhere.

Actually, I thought that perhaps I could get to a Les Schwab and get chains so I could go to work. But they shut work down for the rest of the year or until we really thaw out. What was happening, the snow was coming down the whole time, so five hours of digging and I was complete, except there was an inch of fresh snow trailing behind me. By the end of the day it didn't really look like I had dug out. I had to take two naps to recover.

Acceptance

Yarn spinner, small one,
Spider master tale teller.
It is your nature.

I bow, I bow. This
Is my nature, to accept
You and your fine silk.

It is how we are, good friend.
Now it's time for golden tea.
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Look Past Me

Look past me, good friend.
Follow my sight line within.
Become transparent.

Walk through the misty curtain.
Feel the wake of your passage.

Then cherish your light
As if it were delicate,
A fragrant white rose.
**

Indeed, I am convinced that the problem of world peace is individual and requires fundamental changes of inner state. I would call that inner state "consciousness" except that I truly think that feelings, willfulness, sense of power, and many other things that might not actually require consciousness in any normal sense are involved. One friend of mine said his theology is "we either ALL go to heaven or we don't". I really like that, sort of a country western way of expressing the Bodhisattva ideal.

Bodhisattva is a buddha who lives the vow that he or she will not leave the planet until all sentient creatures can go too. A great many Buddhists take that vow as part of their practice.

Spinning, Encounter

It has been a difficult day, the first day of winter, with snow, then freezing rain, then snow, and now another layer of freezing rain. There is 8" of frozen stuff on the ground. There will be more before morning.

Why do I write? It is certainly an inner space that I uncover. I do not know what I am going to say at the start. I get some idea, these days, usually the first line or something that becomes the first line...then the rest develops somehow. Thus, the stories I tell I tell to myself first.

I have an old friend Christine who said that early American artists were limners. They line and illumine. Thus in this next poem "line" is not like a coat lining (unless you like that better) but line as in drawing lines.

Spinning

The stories I tell,
Only I really listen.

I see you spin yarns
Like me. We are small spiders
With long silver silken threads.

We line the blue sky.
We line the wide horizon.
Yes! We line ourselves.

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I am a stubborn obstreperous man sometimes, and especially when I was younger. And a know-it-all besides. I'm amazed that anybody likes me...well, I've been working on it...

Encounter

So I stood glaring,
Staring him down if I could.

Square in the wide eyes
I sent my steely cold gaze.

I found no end to him, none.
I could not quite breathe.

He touched me then. They pierced me,
His unblinking eyes.