Outposts in the Madness

Sketchy, walking this line 

Along the bow of disbelief

And the ballast of

Certainty and balance,
An insisting narrative

Seen from the rim of the abyss.

Whatever point is there

To any life, if one cannot

Trip along the high wire now

And then, reimagine an

Unexpected glory and 

Puzzle about it all

Right up through on the way to 

Salvation, and all the time

Thankful for 

This gift, life, 

Golden on the horizon.

Grace comes in

Draughts of light, memory, 

Joy, the carrying currents,

The maybe physics 

Of how things go along.

Motion slows, lets
Language in, words that 

Just seem right, 

Stream of seamless

Synesthesia, this world is,
As it was and is,

And I think into the 

Feeling that has nestled on

My shoulders,

Almost all is well, 

I trust that 

All is well, that 

We will get there. 

New Light

We take love where we find it
She said to me,
And decades on I understand
That it’s whole and
Doesn’t go away,
Love
Doesn’t go away.
It changes
Stretches, gives, releases
Tensile, everlasting.

How do we find, on our
Hard roads picking through
Brambling thickets,
That salve of endlessness?
I think it finds us,
Love does, a buoy,
A ballast into any storm,
Into any unbelieving.

What we think we can know in one
Lifetime is folly; one
Lifetime just a construct
In the spangle of question,
Mystery, and why.

As the dust of it all
Glances off my clay
I feel the eons brushing by,
Silver and infinitesimal.
There are no truths as we go to stars
Save one:
We are where
Love takes us, which is
Where we find the truth.

Written Fourteen Years Ago

My Mother

Every day I pass the spot
Where the picture of her hangs.
Frozen in the frame,
Her smile is bright and does not change.

Her skin untroubled, smooth and young,
No gray is in her hair,
And over time I see her less,
Forgetting she’s not here.

Sometimes I turn, pick up the phone
When I'm preoccupied;
I need to get in touch with her,
Perhaps for some advice.

Forgetting for a moment then
That she’s been dead five years,
My sense of time is scrambled,
My place in it unclear.

But didn’t I just talk with her?
Wasn’t that just yesterday?
I don’t know where the moments go
But sense them slide away.

I hadn’t had the feeling that
Her death had left me grieving
For after all, I saw her face
Each morning, every evening.

But visiting my son I saw
With old, remembered pain,
A different picture of her there,
And felt her death again.

And for a second, just a flash,
I wondered at that face,
The picture carried in my head
Was suddenly replaced

With yet another smile, a gaze,
I heard her speak to me,
No longer frozen in one age,
But fluid memory.

~ PHL
1920 - 1999

Sometimes

Only the harmonies survive

Keen, together, and as complete

As the chord joined, resolving into 

Breath as one.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qm-NGwTRMlw

Moving through Trouble

Nothing makes this easier

Season balks at its rebirth

Everywhere the vapors,

Discontent and worry,

And I’m thinking the

Best way to deal with all

Of this is to take it

One day at a time

And in the carousal of 

This particular spring,

Her barely-greenings dressed in 

White pinwheels or soft

Large-dropped gentle

Rain, or whatever they 

Are as long as there’s

No hard frost, 

Are blessings,

Are dreams’ remnants, 

And they are promises, and 

They are whole  

In their own times.

Elegy

Now you come up for air. 

The wind

Blows hard outside,

Bangs the storm door when 

You try to keep it open.

But you smell spring,

Stubborn, damnit, and 

You should know better than 

To doubt it. 

Now, at least

In season’s stall, 

There’s time for learning

When to plant, and what

Soil in this rich land 

Will nurture 

Ponca sacred corn,

Here, amid Haudenosaunee.

As in all things, just only 

Tethers we can’t see

Stitch this life 

Together, and the rest goes

To stars, sand and dust and 

Nighttime glows to

Morning. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bQToGcTWSRQ