Love

Washed in an early autumn rain, these 
Tears hot then 
Cold, coursing slick like old sorrows 
Arrowing down my cheeks into the 
Heart of my emotions, 

Flooding my way as I pick through 

What the whole cloth of my

Life feels like,

Rents and all, 

The fabric is stretched and 

Fraying, but it holds

Still, what will never resolve, because

Is doesn’t resolve, settles:

Tacit

Protected and

Preserved,

Honored,

A fine way through, although 

Not easy

I toss and turn the word over and over,

I let it settle, knitting into my

Bones, my

Breath and sinew, 

Tacit. 

Seeking resolution,

Because breath compels, 

Because the heart beats,

Time after time I 

Find I just don’t want anyone else 

And, I don’t want to be anywhere else.  

Here, in some hard-fought 

Fulsomeness, hard-won honesty, which is 

A powerful place to be, 

Scary and demanding,

I slip into a universe of tension 

I won’t relinquish,

Summoning steadiness, for the why of it

I’ll never know,

It just

Is.

JR6dnAjjOTE

It’s Just the Rain

I’ve been fallow, 

Lost in the angers, fears, un-understandables...

The own creative mine of me sleeping, 

Stunted and afraid. 

But as I flipped through a magazine tonight 

With unseeing eyes,

On a page, a rush of words,

Poesy, 

Perhaps reminding me some 

Way to better balance. 

Even a hard rain, though, 

Like in this moment, once

Familiar in the way of comfort

Now frightens me. 

And what is happening is 

Everywhere unimaginable 

Now, 

I do not know what to do 

With this

And so, and

So I will just let it be. 

He was a Friend of Mine

Where do you go?

Where do you go when things are

So outside comprehension? 

Maybe I just tend my garden,

Worry about my really old dog, but

He never stopped.

He tended. Thank you Frank.

Tend, actually, that’s all I can do. 

C’est sufficant

RIP and you rise. 

In memoriam Frank LaMere

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JR6dnAjjOTE

Chamaecyparis

I sit on the small concrete bench

Under the trumpet vine in the 

Evergreen garden, 

The chamaecyparis 

Bending into my frame, as I look out

Up north into the darkening sky. 

The trumpet vine is old, winding, sinuous 

Old and laden with that 

Coral orangeness about to pop

There are fireflies in this peaceful place

Although there’s 

No way can I capture them.

Suffice it to write

These fireflies winking 

Are the gift in the chaos. 

I snap a photo 

Looking east toward the back of my house

Over the top of the arbor vitae hedge surrounding

This old garden,

It’s flat, no light from my house.

Sometimes it’s a rough passage

Between here and a house unlit,

Or maybe I mean lit,

The toll of the struggle pours into

These last days,

And I’m just determined,

Maybe, no, praying for balance. 

 

Sometime

I’ve been sitting outside 

Working outside, we have,

But oh Lord, the black flies,

And just now persistent 

This summer. 

The other night I started to think

About unthinkable. 

I’ve been here before. 

When I think about this all

I remember crossing the bar 

In Astoria, with uncle Jack

A bar harbor pilot on the Columbia.

He took us deep sea fishing. 

A wild mile wide, that bar into the ocean.

Once a bit ago

When trying to get my balance 

I thought about crossing the Rubicon.

The shorthand of beautiful languages, oh

Those poets of human passages, 

Their words settle around my shoulders, 

Whispering

Or maybe just the long sounds of night, shhh

Listen now, memory so vivid, and

The further I go with my stories

The more things seem to knit

Together,

And there will most likely

Come a time when the good things

About the old ways rise like a sweet mist

To bring us back, changed and in tact.