Absences

I am fine, though I think these heart pills kick my ass...

I ran out of steam and time in the last few days, spent most of yesterday in rest mode, and am moving slow today, resting up for the next week's work. I thank God that I basically enjoy my work. It involves research and creativity and because I am not completely suitable for it, it stretches me to the utmost, always has. I know it is useful work too, and I make small changes to the world in my bailiwick that I can go visit and say, I did that, even from years ago. But there is the other part of corporate life and it wears me out severely. One of the more tiring parts, my work is peripheral to the mainstream money flow and so I am never considered valuable or even essential. I don't actually complain because I have built the cushion required and thus never fret in the lay offs. Instead, I value the relatively frequent time off. I could use a lay off now.

Also, I am on the computer in work mode all day, all week. Sometimes I get filled all the way up beyond my capacity to take with the computer and just can't do one more thing. It was like that yesterday. There was a time in my life that I yearned for an electric typewriter, there were no word processors. There was a time when I yearned for the stand alone word processor too. Some of you might remember those. No matter how facile I am on this gadget, it is not my native country. It costs me to live here.

Karmic Life, My Cold Dark Dream

I have a tendency to believe in both the ideas of reincarnation and karma. I am not adamant because I am far too much a child of Christendom to not also feel that this one life is incredibly important. A full hearted embrace of reincarnation would seem to level this life into one among uncounted many. So for a man like me reincarnation does not solve all dilemmas and in fact raises one.

I take as a matter of faith that doing science makes sense because the universe is tricky and complex but it is not false. There is something that passes for objectivity that is meaningful. If something really strongly manifests, then there is something true in back of that manifestation. I take this to mean that since men sincerely take a self centered position that there is something to it. Self centered vision is not false, madness, hallucination but is instead an illusion that needs explaining and that explanation must reveal why it is so difficult to bust self centeredness even if you know better.

That is tantamount to saying if I am self centered, then there some way in which I am genuinely a center. Not only is there a God, but I am in His Image and Likeness, a meaningful center. That is not so easy to establish from the reincarnational point of view.

Yet, there is no better answer than reincarnation and karma to an equally difficult problem, which is why injustice can appear in a fundamentally just universe. If the universe lacks justice in this fundamental way, then it is difficult in that arena to accept a Just God. By its nature an Unjust God unravels. A Capricious God is worthy of disbelief. I have a problem with a godless universe. That unravels me.

Sorry. Here's the poem.

Karmic Life

That I should see you
Like that, over many lives-
Now like this, now here
Serving me for pay
When once we were family,
Or lovers, soldiers
In combat, and you
Killed me then. I will forgive
You in the next life.

January 25, 2009 8:49 PM

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

Heh. It was a song and video that was my muse.

My Cold Dark Dream

The sparrow flew in
Through the window, landed here
On the strewn papers,
On the table beside
My heavy heart on this rain
Filled night without you.

This could be a song
But it is my life that plays
In this cold dark dream.

Sparrow dying now
On the floor and the cold grows
Colder in my shell
Of an empty life.
My dream shatters. I break down,
Then wake to gray dawn.

January 26, 2009 9:23 PM

Twisted Truth, Feeling Time

Twisted Truth is a poem of exile. I do feel that I am in exile. I used to feel victimized and now I do not. Instead I "know" that I chose exile in agreement somehow. Actually I believe I pressed the point against advice. But in all honesty, underneath my sophistication lies a bewilderment, and the first reaction beyond that is a kind of victimization, a singled out feeling, a heightened self consciousness. Here is one of the koans of my life path. I do not presume to somehow deny this inner state. Denial of it would be a kind of insanity. Instead I wish to find and work for peace with my situation. I am more or less gaining on it. If I succeed any time before I am finished here my life will have been a sufficient success.

Still...

Twisted Truth

When they revise it
Before my eyes, blue for red,
Green for pale yellow
And tell me lies, lies
And I know what happened then
But they go all, "What?"
All their innocence
As if I was all screwed up,
That's when I know it,
That I have never
Ever really been a part
Of this broken race.

January 25, 2009 3:02 PM

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

Many years ago we had friends who lived in Putney, Vermont. They lived in the most amazing apartment, a very old building that had settled. They lived upstairs. The supports had dropped away from their floor so that it bounced, and it settled not equally so that the floor sloped drastically in places. We came in fall for the turning. We drove all over, and saw all kinds of magical things. In the spirit of magic, here is a poetic reminiscence.

Feeling Time

You lived in Vermont
All those years ago, buried
Your family there,
East Something township
Or North, on some small river
And one fall I came
To see friends who lived
Next to that cemetary.

We came for the trees.
It was you I found,
You centered in the old plot
Amongst veterans
Of Revolution
And children who died of pox,
Mothers of despair,
Some of old age too.
Your family plot, and me
Just then starting out.

January 25, 2009 7:31 PM

She's Over The Border Now, It's All Second Hand

If my lover left by jet plane. "I'm leaving on a jet plane/Don't know if I'll be back again/Oh babe, I have to go..."

If my lover left and I couldn't go.

She's Over The Border Now

I am far too late.
The contrails streak past my view,
Clearly demonstrate
That you are long gone,
Leaving me here to ponder
The state of my heart.

What more can I say
That means anything to you?
I hold the doorpost
As you fly above
As if we all should grow wings.

But I'm still grounded
I have my orders.

January 25, 2009 8:33 AM

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

Loving beyond all reason. Of course. We all know that really there is no other kind because love is itself beyond reason. This is the conundrum and the challenge. So often we enter an affair of some kind, knowing as I did from reason's standpoint that it couldn't work. Or we know by nature of reason that our kid's a jerk. So what? When I turned into a complete jerk it contributed to the end of my mother's third marriage. She could not act from reason, and my Dad could. He drew a line and she crossed it finally. I am happy because it saved my life, and I needed saving. However these actions went a long ways to ending that marriage. I am grateful to say that as it shook out, I still had both my Mom and Dad.

It's All Second Hand

I met you on the way
To the book club gathering
(This is odd for me)
Where we would discuss
Russo's book, called Bridge Of Sighs.
You agreed with me there.

The book's about them,
The ones who think they know stuff
Who struggle with those
They know don't know stuff.
But only because they love them
Beyond all reason.

January 25, 2009 3:52 PM

You Can't Fool Me, The Runaway

What I continue to wonder, how much of my spiritual landscape is still like this?

You Can't Fool Me!

The angry demon
Contained within this gemstone
Struggles to get out,
To get me, I'm sure.

Then you say this is truly
Great red compassion
Aimed at hindrances
I have placed before myself.

Oh really, I snort.

You sadly wander
Away, seeking to convince
Some other poor sap .

January 24, 2009 8:57 PM

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

As I have posted before, I am no stranger to a science fiction style. I started reading sf as a child. While I have moved on in my reading tastes, (currently reading Paul Theroux's The Elephanta Suite and Peter Mathiessen's Shadow Country with several non-fiction works in the wings as well as more novels), I can go back to sf at the drop of a moonlet.

Here's one

The Runaway

Hanging out here, Oort cloud bound
In a slow boat.
I'm near Triton, long beyond
The mess I left behind on Mars.

Couldn't afford the quick boat.

I regret leaving you
Without even one word before
But there it is, why you
Are better off this way,

Better off without this small heart,
Better off without these bad lies,
Better off without me period.
I am broken, damaged goods.

But oh my God you should see
What I see now.

January 24, 2009 10:15 PM

Black Pepper, Brain Shaving

When I am in love odd things happen. The world changes in so many ways. I find gratitude in odd places. Sometimes when it is going very well, is very fresh, there is a kind of quality to the light and sound of things, to the feel of things. Only LSD ever came close to this experience of being high and that only twice. I know what it means to be able to say I would die for love. I haven't felt like that since 1999. Before that time I had not felt like that since 1970. What is really cool, the echoes of love are still in my soul. I am so deeply grateful I have never been embittered no matter what happened.

By the way, I loved my wife with a life love but she never took me, transported me, changed me like this. I am not sure it is wise to marry someone who has this power in your soul. At least for me, the women who changed me like this would not have been good marriage material.

Black Pepper

I hear her. She stirs
Behind the words she wrote down,
Below the sweet rhymes
She made while setting
Her gratefulness in this place,
Declares black pepper
The fruit of her choice,
Asks me to hang a crescent.

This moon's lit by grace.

She defines the space
Near my heart and all this while

She caresses my face.

January 23, 2009 10:47 PM

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

I sometimes think about how evolution has placed us here, unquestionably animal, directly linked. DNA and mitochondrial DNA both do not lie. Bonobo Chimps are something like 98% human by DNA. And that's first of course, that our cells are themselves communities, that before bodies a symbiosis of one celled creatures occured with the mitochondria climbing inside to help the other cells by helping themselves. This is essential. And then plants and then animals. And then mammalians and then apelike creatures, and then our branch. I hate to think what happened to our forerunners and contemporaries because humans have always been so bloody minded. It is unquestionable that we overlapped with Neanderthal. We now have Neanderthal DNA, enough that it looks like we either didn't or couldn't interbreed as was thought for a while. This very likely means that we killed them.

I keep track of this stuff because I need to know somehow. But I get in some trouble with this brain of mine...

Brain Shaving

My brain needs shaving,
It's whiskers, too long, lead to
Thoughts like bears or cats.
I gather berries, or hunt
Hapless prey who bleat at me,
Do not pay due heed
To things like washing dishes
Or making the bed.

January 24, 2009 11:36 AM

The Bad Kids On My Block, Meeting The Goose

I grew up 8th grade through high school in a suburban neighborhood. There was a drainage creek in back of my house and a prune orchard across that creek. On our side was a water company grassy area. The creek was mostly dry in the summer. This was in Santa Clara, just beyond the south end of San Francisco Bay, west of San Jose, and east of (and before) what is known as Silicon Valley. We would have rock fights across that creek, which had steep sides, about 20 foot deep. The gap at the top was about 30 yards. It was all pretty safe because you had to throw high to make it across, lobbing the rocks (our side) or prune orchard dirt clods (their side) and it really was about turf, that grassy area on our side, good for football and stuff. Just beyond the prune orchard was a housing development. On our side was a housing development. Beyond us, more prune orchards. That was when we moved in. But later, when I left the area, there were no prune orchards. They had all been bought for housing developments. We had roads named Homestead and Pruneridge dating back to the original settlers.

The Bad Kids On My Block

I felt my head flame,
My inner space grew intense
With the heat of suns
Gathering near me.

Hot enough to roast locusts
Massing for their war,
That's what I thought then.

Hot enough to pop them like
Hard yellowing corn,
Like overstressed bags
Struck suddenly, gassing out.

Those kids would like that.

January 22, 2009 3:24 PM

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

In Oregon's Willamette Valley there are huge numbers of Canada Geese. They hang out among other places in the grassy intersections of major highways. All along the Willamette River and its tributaries, nearby that is the Clackamas and the Tualitin, the geese search out the varieties of insects that live at or just below the surface. They leave behind prodigious amounts of goose shit. They gather most often in flocks. There is always a goose on lookout, the rest tending to foraging. To me, this is so cool to have the wildfowl. Up on the Columbia River one time we went out to an island connected by a footbridge to a park to eat and eat we did. There were no geese that day, but the ground was basically wall to wall old goose shit. Dry and crunchy.

Often when they are in flocks overhead, because they have just come in or are just leaving, they are close to the ground and they call to one another. I love that. In both the houses I have lived for the last 28 years I have been in Canada Goose flyways even though the houses are several miles apart.

Even though we are most of two hours by car from the ocean, still the tides reach this far up the Columbia and into the Willamette. The gulls follow the onshore flow. They stay mainly along the Columbia. Even another hour inland out east of The Dalles (not many places do that, but there are Des Moines and El Paso, for example, so this is not such a strange city name) there are gulls who hang out at the roadside rest stops cadging lunch and dinner.

Meeting The Goose

The goose eyes me as
Only a goose can, erect neck,
Poised to raise her wings.

I have interrupted her.
She stakes her claim to this ground.

Scary as she is now,
She was magnificent when
She was overhead.

January 23, 2009 8:46 AM

Ocean Diving Off Your Shore, The Little Snapshot

I find this next poem one of my favorites. There is sleight of hand in it. Heh. I think it is a love poem. You may have another opinion. You are welcome to it.

Ocean Diving Off Your Shore

I found elephant
Tusks, a cannon, porcelain
And amber in piles
Off your island shore
On the seabed, and coins too.
The coins were in crocks,
Stoneware and crusted
With shells. Someone said this wreck
Was Dutch. I can't help

Thinking, me too, boys,
I'm an old Dutch wreck

January 22, 2009 11:17 AM

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

This is a poem about wanting to measure up to my own best self.

The Little Snapshot

I want to honor
Your place in my heart, taking
Special care to know
Who you are, know you
Are not the little snapshot
I keep of your shape
In inattention
To your presence in worlds
Beyond my own space.

I seek the graceful.
I seek gifts that I may be
Who you say I am.

January 22, 2009 11:55 AM

All In A Row, The Intersection

These poems came fast on this day back in January. Sometimes I am loosely woven. It takes a special discipline then.

All In A Row

I stand in a row,
All of me, upright, right dress,
But it's damp, that's wrong.
It's a hard go keeping me
In a discipline like this,
Especially when
The fog gets in all my heads.
This just creeps me out.

January 22, 2009 10:02 AM

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

And sometimes the only refuge is memory.

The Intersection

Sometimes when I write
These lines the walls fall away,
I turn a sharp right
In this personal
Moment and lose myself all
Over once again
Just like that one time
When I found myself in your
House, climbing into
Your lap, looking out
On everything that is
All of me, of you.

January 22, 2009 10:22 AM

I don't feel any urge to add anything much tonight. I can say that my part of Oregon is in a heat wave for the moment, and while our heat is not as high as some but one or two days out of the year, what we have is humid air most of the time. That really saps me. I am told I am to expect that to get worse now with my medical history.

My old girl friend has arrived to tend to her house here this week, and then to travel further south to Chico in California to see her mother. I have spent several evenings with her, like old times only as friends. We were always true friends. We still are. We have decided to travel together to visit a mutual friend soon.

Being with her is comfortable as always. Very familiar.

Post Delay

My life has too many cross currents just now. Should be able to post tonight. I also will have a few days off at the end of July due to a little travel.

Change Of Heart, This One I Saw Coming

I got caught one time on acid, looking in a mirror. Bad idea. I was locked in for quite a while. At least that is how it seemed. It was not kind. I was not ready for the melting of boundaries while being exquisitely self conscious. I was not ready for the quality of judgment, for the honesty, for the finely detailed story. I was never that visual on acid, and the mirror was no different, my vision melted and turned into narrative while what remained of my vision twitched and jittered.

Change Of Heart

I really do not
Want to look in that mirror.
This scares me silly.
I feel revulsion
For what I might see in me.

I remember that,
How I felt before
I cracked open that one time
And a little bit
After til I picked
Myself back up off the floor.

It was so real.

January 21, 2009 10:13 AM

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

I have mentioned this squirrel and this nut. Here is the poem that I wrote about that situation. The seedling rose in the spring of 2007. The nut was buried in Fall of 2006.

This One I Saw Coming

There's a small green shoot
Where that gray squirrel buried
His nut. He forgot.
Now it's spring. I watched
When he placed it, and now watch
This tree start to grow.
This beautiful sprout,
The walnut came from next door,
Is nestled beside
The old dogwood just
Now waking for the season.
Makes me sad, it does.

It's sad I have to pull it.

January 21, 2009 10:44 AM

Post Delay

Ran outta time. This will happen again tomorry :( I will probably be able to post tonight.

Who's Awake, Too High Up

I have the answer to everything. Contrary to Douglas Adams, it is not forty-two or whatever he said. But the trouble is, it is too perfectly general for any particular application. I could tell you what it is, but I am out of time.

Who's Awake?

I will cast my light
Hoping to cure the long dark.
I wonder who's awake?

Not who you'd think, I'm guessing,
Not the likes of them and us.

You said, "The master
Is harder to recognize
Than that ya' know, pal?"

January 20, 2009 2:26 PM

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

So when you wake up it isn't all peaches and cream, at least not just anytime. It is really good if you're prepared for it.

Too High Up

My head just came up
Out of this mist, peeking out
As if I was brave.

All puffed up with my damn self,
I thought I might belong here.

But there's snow around
And I'm sure not dressed for it,
My toes are freezing.

January 21, 2009 9:16 AM

Follow Love, I Was A Timber Faller

I do have a friend named Bill. He is a truck driver on medium long haul and we speak regularly by phone while he is on the road. I call, or he does during my afternoon drive home from work. We both have blue tooth. Here is one true blessing of cell phones. Now that I have unlimited anytime minutes for a modest price and he has put me as one of his designated people, neither of us risk running overtime. He never really said this. Must be some other friend named Bill.

Follow Love

My friend Bill, he said
I could leave the horizon
Alone, let the sky
Be spacious, the sun
Shine high, and pay attention
To how the grass bends.

He said the heart moves
To the sway of the green fern,
To the way one small seed
Falls into fertile
Soil, how squirrel scolds when I
Come too close to her.

He said, follow love.

January 20, 2009 1:09 PM

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

I have a friend named Julie. Her blog, The Buffaloe Pen is filled with amazing poetry. She tells stories. There is no one better at that. I thought I would try one.

I Was A Timber Faller

Me. My daddy. Yes.
His daddy too worked the woods.
We were all fallers.

To be out in the far woods,
No roads but the ones we made,
To stand upright, work so hard,
To feed our kids and women,
Righteous and true clean and good.
I am God Fearing, and now,
They've stopped me, kept me from that,
From all I really wanted.

I can't find real work.
They don't help. I don't want what
They have anyway.
My woman hates me now.
I drink far too much, too much,
My kids going wrong,
The worker says it'll
Come out right, but when? Oh God,
It was good, me too.

I was good back then.

January 20, 2009 12:53 PM

The Ski Tower, High Centered

I am a long time Lord Of The Rings fan. I tried to follow the elves to the lands in the west. To not know how the emigration of the elves turned out seems cruel to me. Of course, not even Tolkein was capable of telling a true elven story. Elves are NOT human. In order to be remotely like humans they have to step down, corral, back off, pin hole their presence. Otherwise they are at right angles to this plane, hard to even see. When they accepted Bilbo, it meant that a certain elven group would have to exercise that discipline to tend to him. It was what Aragorn's lover was prepared to fix in place so she could be with him, to essentially cripple her elven self for love. I can't write from the elven point of view either.

The Ski Tower

Looks like Sauron's eye
Could appear any moment there
Staring down on skiers
Not suspecting anything
Like such awful disaster.

The ring bearer
Needs to find another way
Up the snowy slopes.

January 19, 2009 12:21 PM

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

I got of my high center. This is not unlike stepping out of my elven self for the sake of movement along the high Way. I don't remember writing in code like that. It is a good alternative to being hung up and this being the way I find motivation to get going.

High Centered

You told me to move.
You held the whip's long shadow
In your whipping hand.
Made my withers twitch
To see that lurking notion
Of motivation.
I got off my high center,
Took to the highway again.

January 19, 2009 1:16 PM

Chewing Sticks, Losing The Masterpiece

So I notice with these next two poems that I got self conscious about how many poems I was writing. Chewing Sticks seems to imply that dogs are poets too. Hmmm.

Chewing Sticks

If I had pastimes
Like your dog did chewing sticks
Maybe I would not
Collect useless junk,
Would not have drank half to death,
Would not write so much
Poetry.

January 19, 2009 11:38 PM

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

I have had some experience with the emotional ups and downs of mental illness, how the ups in some smaller sizes can lead to creativity but in greater shapes lead to getting lost inside them. And the downs...how depression can literally kill you. I don't suffer the ups and downs as I once did, haven't for years, maybe even decades.

I have journals from my early twenties. I don't remember feeling depressed when I wrote them, but I read them now and they are the work of a depressed young man. That is an interesting thing. I do not remember feeling depressed, and I did not recognize depression when I read my own writing as a young man, but now I do. So I resisted the diagnosis then, but do not now. How odd. How completely powerful denial and defensiveness can be. What a remarkable experience of how you simply can't get through to the mentally ill with certain simple truths. If I am ill, then you may never have a chance to communicate with me in a fully open style because I will reorient your words and presence to fit my space and never receive you as you are. I know I am not the only one.

Losing The Masterpiece

I stare blank, far off,
Thinking I should get going
Then can't think quite why.

I remember the fever
I had over yesterday.

If a masterpiece
Came today I would not rise
To the occasion.

January 19, 2009 12:04 PM

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

As I write this, I am listening to the coverage of our loss of Michael Jackson. Sometimes there really are unique men on the planet, different inside, differently raised, and different in experiences outside too. If I am certain of anything, I am certain that Michael Jackson lived a different life. He was celebrated as the King Of Pop. He was isolated as only a king can be. It was once the prevailing opinion that divinity is close within kings, that perhaps they themselves are divine. I will not argue.

Think's He's A Poet, I'm Dying

Two reality stories. I have been exhorted periodically to come back to reality. Those various people have a bone to pick with my way of treating the world and my place in it. There will always be "those people". I do not mind at this point. When I was a child, my parents would occasionally do this. I should be quick to point out they mainly gave me plenty of latitude and also guided me quite well in many ways. I was an excitable child and a bit obsessive in my interests. I also didn't take direction all that well. I have always been a bit different, sometimes a whole lot different. So "those people" still hover around. Because I actually interact with a reasonably large number of people in AA (people who would normally not mix) I have the opportunity to run into them and hear plainly from them in a variety of ways. I am right here because I am not all there :)

Thinks He's A Poet

I abandoned you.
It was me telling stories.
That's when it happened.
Otherwise, staying
Near my nest and still myself,
Still ordinary,
On small simple walks,
I'd not have cast my odd lot
To quest for dragons,
To seek the vale of secrets,
Or some wilder place.

Now look at this man.
Hunched over pecking the keys,
Thinks he's a poet.

January 19, 2009 10:30 AM

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

This next poem is not prophetic of my heart attack. It is prophetic of the fact that my mortality is close to my soul in general and on purpose. I have every intention of speaking with Death, letting Him ride on my left shoulder and whisper to me from time to time. I also occasionally ponder the possibilities of disability, walking around my house as if blind, and at work being interested in the changes when I wear my ear plugs. But primarily my practice is making friends with Death.

This is not morbid. It is realistic. I am now far more than half way to my end, seventeen years matches my Mom, and 20 my Father. It is also a spiritual practice. Because this is part of my character, I am not very impressed at my prophetic remarks concerning my small heart attack. This is especially true of this poem. My heart attack was a minor complaint, raising mortality as a distant warning and probably wouldn't have amounted to much for a while if I could have ignored the pain or it went away somehow. I am living with another vein now that is constricted but it is not serious. We hope that pharma takes care of it.

I'm Dying

I have not much left.
I watch this breath ease on out,
Think maybe the last.
Exhale to the end,
A small catch there, then nothing
For a while, then in.
I inhale once more.

Amazing focus, feeling
All my parts and joints
But too far away
From the way I used to be,
Breath eases on out,

Think maybe the last.

January 19, 2009 10:55 AM

His Pure Tones, Why I Follow You

Two streams of practice. In my life music is a practice. That is a step beyond the technical. It is also a step beyond the claims that music speaks an emotional language. Music speaks a spiritual language, or it can, and it always does for any who are open in spiritual ways to music. His Pure Tones is a poem about this musical practice.

His Pure Tones

Oiled skin, sweated sheen-
It's the effort of the strikes
He makes repeatedly, drum
Then gong, drum then gong,
Steady, precise hits. Both sound
Long low notes that shake
The heart, crack the bones
Of thought.

I am stretched apart
In the open air
Of his sacred work,
Of his blessed gift, his pure
Tones: they sever me.

January 18, 2009 11:44 AM

***************************
By the way, I am not sure how to manage the blog in this regard...there is a tabulature command that I don't know. In my word processor, the "I am stretched apart" line should be tabbed in to signal it is actually part of the "Of thought" line even though it begins the second verse.

The second stream of practice is almost as old in my life. The Way is the English euphemism for Tao. I have never been in deep Taoist practice, neither in the martial arts nor in the institutional practices. But I have been devoted to the philosophy, especially as it manifests in I Ching. This practice began in 1969. It went somewhere. John Blofeld once wrote about this practice that at some point a devotee would leave it behind as an active practice, having received permission in some way to do so. I seem to have reached this point. I have indeed grown old on the Way.

Why I Follow You

Remember the Way.
It curves round the old straight path
Left from other times,
Other places, needs.

You've grown old upon the Way,
As have I who love
Your shining eyes,
Your pure song, your graceful walk,
Why I follow you.

We'll soon reach the willows
Weaving in the warm wise wind.

January 18, 2009 2:52 PM

Inversion, A Rose Opens

I say I am here as a Witness. I don't mean this as if I am some special creature given a unique task. I am sure Witnesses are a dime a dozen and in some real sense there is no one who is not a Witness. And yet in the story I tell myself, I am in a lifelong argument with God about some aspect of this life, a focus, as if I have come here sure I will win this argument if I give it due diligence. What amuses me, I am more sure of the plot than I am of the substance. I am not that sure what exactly I am looking for. When I am at my least mature then I claim I want to declare a world without suffering, that it is suffering that is the sticking point and that it is suffering that should depart this life. But that is purely adolescent and ever since I have learned the heavy forgiveness lessons I know that is not really it. But I remain toe to toe and eye to eye with the Creator. Yes, indeed.

Here is a Witness story.

Inversion

Dropping down from here,
From this single star,
I have come to see your life
The way it really
Is, not the way they
Say you are in the stories.
It's a steep descent,
A quantum shifting
Down for up, charmed for strange, you
For me in this ploy.

I am upside down,
Not ready - such timeless light.

January 18, 2009 9:51 AM

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

A Rose Opens reads fine to me as a love poem to a human lover, or a psalm to God. This is often true. I know I am not the only one who believes that love is always divine. Why wouldn't God have gray eyes, or blue, or brown, hazel, even black? Why wouldn't God have eyes? In a book called The Shack, a best seller in these parts because the story takes place in Oregon, the author envisions the tripartite Christian God as a black woman (God), a young beautiful woman (the Comforter), and the man Jesus. Female two to one...that's about right. That's a Trinity I can get behind. There are many such alternatives. The Chinese say, Heaven, Earth, Man. That too is about right. Hindus have masculine Trinities and feminine ones. Buddhas have multiplied as well.

But when I write, it is of me and you most often. Me and the three of you is cumbersome and crowded.

A Rose Opens

In your sight a rose
Opens at my feet, white, white,
A fragrant vision
Of grace. I've found your
Gray eyes. I have crossed my life
On long starry paths
Of fate, of destined
Solitude to reach this place
Where you welcome me.

January 18, 2009 10:46 AM

Absence, The Quiet Unmarked Path

A man I love gave a talk one time and he pointed out that when my distress is mainly mental, or when it is physical at least the mental component can be dealt with by focussing the time frame. He said that there is really nothing wrong right now. He said whenever there is distress it is either coming from the future or the past and if I narrow my time frame to right now my pain will be already over or not yet here. In other words it is nearly always true that there is nothing wrong right now.

I had a heart attack. I used this right now thing. Except for the hours of that bloody nose, which was really just irritating, there was nothing wrong right now. The pain was never more than manageable. The drugs did not distress me overmuch right now. Even the shit for brains nurses (the two on shift during the bloody nose) were mostly not there and that was fine with me. I did not fret through any of it.

Absence

Today, I'm absent.
I do not sit in this seat.
I deny presence.
I have no purpose
For being gone, but gone I am.
I would be here now
If I was but, no,
I am not here, not waiting
And not writing this.

January 18, 2009 9:08 AM

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

Here's a dream, a place I would like to be, behavior I would like for my own. There is a poem called Footprints that is a complaint and God's answer. Perhaps the footprints I write of here are something like that. Waiting for divine footprints.

The Quiet Unmarked Path

Here's a true silence
Drifting down like fine snowflakes
Collecting around
My tree, cooling me
As I perch on this lowest
Limb trying to see
The lines of all things.

Among things I hope I see,
Footprints may appear,
May lead me further
On this quiet unmarked path.
In the drifting snow.

January 18, 2009 9:23 AM