AROUND THE HOUSE IN A BAD MOOD
I awake from unremembered dreams troubled yet
I’ve slept well
In spite of worldwide poverty,
Death and destruction – a chronicle of
Certain doom for the open sores; souls
Vulnerable to the underside of
All nature human
I sit on the shores of a lake
Comfortable yet homeless
Knowledgeable of the past yet
Ignorant of the future
I am bereft of the lessons that
Turn experience into wisdom
Today in a time when deeds and
Action can be parsed to the nanosecond
I’ve missed the exit
Remaining on this mobius
Loop of a life – guilty
Dining with Bacchus and
Fiddling with Nero
AROUND THE HOUSE IN A BAD MOOD
I awake from unremembered dreams troubled yet
I’ve slept well
In spite of worldwide poverty,
Death and destruction – a chronicle of
Certain doom for the open sores; souls
Vulnerable to the underside of
All nature human
I sit on the shores of a lake
Comfortable yet homeless
Knowledgeable of the past yet
Ignorant of the future
I am bereft of the lessons that
Turn experience into wisdom
Today in a time when deeds and
Action can be parsed to the nanosecond
I’ve missed the exit
Remaining on this mobius
Loop of a life – guilty
Dining with Bacchus and
Fiddling with Nero
A DRINK FROM THE WELL OF SORROWS
I’ve just walked a half mile down the lake, to the landing in front of the local restaurant and pub. A place that, on warm summer Saturdays, runs loud with music and laughter. But not today. Today the landing boasts a County Sheriff’s command center in what began three days ago as a search and rescue for a 22 year old Cornell senior who, sadly it appears, will miss his graduation tomorrow. I talked with the sheriff for a long time and we ended our conversation by trading parenting stories; examples of how the Grace of God can spread wide and diverse even as this current situation changes from rescue to recovery. I retrace my steps home, slower, searching, and hoping young Christopher will be found snagged unseen under some lone dock, hugging the shore – alive.
I think of Christopher’s parents and just how two people bear up under such sorrow; the greatest parental nightmare. It must feel as if one has fallen into a nightmare well – slowly descending clawing at the slick and slippery sides of hope. How can hope be so strong in the hearts of loved ones and still end in loss? I have no answers just questions and abstract visions of grace hiding in the shadows of an absent mercy.
Maybe we are here, a collective, alone expected to reach in the bottomless well of sorrows – all of us to take a pinch – just enough to be absorbed by our own personal grace – sorrow’s counterpart. If we all share in this well of sorrows then no one has to bear life’s blows to the empire alone. Oh that this could happen. But we are a singularly proud and vain lot ever-willing to sink our faith in the material realm and be aghast when it fails us. And when the material world fails we are unappreciative of the fact that “all” we are left with is – hope. It floats, has feathers, wings, and wells of its own. Hope abides in the hearts of Christopher’s friends who will miss their own graduations in hopes of finding him. Hope abides in the hearts of the rescue boats crisscrossing the lake as I stand on the shore crossing my fingers. Hope abides in the hearts all the local volunteers who have reached into that dark well and pinched a bit of sorrow – pulling nature’s scripture from the dry caves of preservation and hoping against hope.
THE BOOK OF TRUTHS PAST
Oh that there were a book
With no question to its accuracy
Where one could only look
And see mistakes of history
Learning would be inherent
No shadow of greed to fall
Across the heart the parent
Not young enough to know it all
The book would stand tall behind
The door of every man
A shotgun of knowledge kind
And aimed with a steady hand
The book would flow torrential
Facts and historical drama
No skimming of great potential
Or dreams of instant karma
Book: A dramatic monologue
Proving Adler’s aggressions
Book: The human travelogue
Of our material obsessions
A book impossible to read
Through rose tinted lens
Reality’s ugliest seed
Blooms real and honest gems
This bible of truths past
Will center all ceremony
And anchor our future fast
Outruling hate and acrimony
Twist the question marks of life
To laws inherent day-to-day
Book of past truths will be rife
With lessons to show the way
A dictionary to live and sleep
Between the sheets of truth
With rent my room and board my keep
And honesty for my roof
Who will the first page start
Tempting suspicion of cynics
Dare a brave message from the heart
And peacefully slay the mimics
TERRIBLE GOODNESS
We legislate our terrible goodness
As if nature didn’t exist
As if she will not open her great maw of
Poetic justice and suck in her
Poisoned air
As if she will forever
Keep mighty trees propping up
The stars that have died eons ago
As if she will forever allow
Freedom to be
The barometer of a civilization
We have failed in our charge
Blind to the vision of bleached and
Scattered bones of an
Earth free to be
Legislated to death
The bomb in the baby carriage
Tells us
We should all be enslaved
By limitation
There should be no freedom
To be evil
To the earth – or
To each other
WHAT THE GODS KNEW
No “why?” of golden age
At peace with my life-sustaining
Looped desires on fixed stage
No things to want remaining
Labored fact, age doth bring
Leaves Chronus parsing truth
Calypso discovered not a thing
So danced a dance uncouth
Bacchus, saw life at its brink
Threw up one hand in despair
The other offering the drink
To Aphrodite goddess fair
SO,
Mount Goddess’ sacred doom
No matter the hue and cry
Answer found not in any room
The fact: we all must die
FLOWERS TO COME
Waiting for words to come – from the sun
Winter words have gone
Melted into the rain and mist
In a season that dares complaint –
Forcing – muddy
Solemn looks through paned windows
And the worm-fatted robins giving up
Their red breasts against the spring storm
Today
I call the flowers to come
And color with their
Paint brush petals –
Swiping tints over my shortened horizon
A Spring – loud and honest
Quieting the hissing of time
That skulks behind the woodshed
Ignored, for now drowned
In the sun’s blaring bugle
Calling the shy pastel asters and
The State Fair zinnias
To summer’s hot stage