Our Creative Legacy: Poets

And so the seed, in silence grew
Lighting the edges of the moon
And traveling to distant places
Only to return and touch us again
Closely weaving a strange
and wondrous thing.

In slumber he took friend or foe
Along on his journey to the West
Breaking bread for fasting souls
He gave to them according to their needs
And protected them from violence.

The dawn did break over the mountain
Where its rivers run to the sea,
It was there where we met the boy and feared to take a step
Least we tread upon the splendor of the earth
or fear we might disturb the mysterious sounds
That bring our eyes and ears to splendor all around.

But here in this strange land,
the child grew to give us hope.
Hope that love exists
to deliver joy and beauty round.

He grew and his arms are full.
He mended damage of the past and showed us as we grew
a lighter path, where the edge of darkness only lingers.

That boy is all blue and gold and reminds us
That love is the deepest shared, an act of faith,
A grace that fear will forever go
And in its place bring us close to heaven.

The poem is a servant in the house
A quiet bell from an inner feeling
Far from home or earth or sea
It must be!

For it is the stopping-off place.
The end, not the quest;
The reward of pain,
The giver of pleasure.

For in my flight (of years ago)
Above the earth I fell
And so broken on the rocks that in time I
Somehow mended, in forgiveness,
By the tones from the sea
Where even fish swim in reverence.

Oh, men, take rest,
Bring your seeds, your seasons,
Your wanderings and plant them on this coast
Here in this garden, and trust
Them to my care.

He stepped through a small door
forced by the blustering wind
off the Hudson River
into his space.

I recalled a similar space
further uptown, Harlem perhaps
then another one in the garment district,
offering latihan and cookies,
but here, today, the light from the windows
draws me round and I
circle wide as riding waves of sound that
crest as the rhythm of the gallop creates the gait.
I accept your space
I accept your light
Riding softly through
rolling hills from East upon West;
North submerges to South. Without time and
with only my confidence, I surrender.

I face an iron door,
I accept your distance
I do not accept your silence
Will I ever know you?

The earth moves beneath my feet.
Vibrations possibly,
Words lost in a mumble, meet my spirit,
I rise from my fire and yield to time

For within our time
There is this place
Where we will hold hands
as we exit.

I watched my flowers toss their heads in the wind.
Next, I found the concrete stoop
outside on the porch.

Today the apricots are falling
like a healing rain from the trees
to fill my peach baskets,
and I sit to remember the past
as his ashes mingled with my tears.

He had placed a thumb print
on my forehead before he died.
My act of contrition was then as it is today –
to gather apricots.

I once walked with him in the Sierra Nevada,
wearing my hiking boots and writing songs we could not sing.
Along the old trail now Route 49, we walked through the fires
here and there and shot some rapids, only to get lost among the rocks and manzanita bushes.

Last night I dreamed of him as the earth trembled under the midnight sky.
So, I cross the threshold of the old oak door
and gather together my apricots, and I begin to sing our song.
I hear it playing moderato cantabile
In the key of B flat-major:

“Within the stillness
in the center of my being there
is the openness and the quiet
in the quiet of my being there
is God who brings me to his heart
for in the center of his heart there is love
and in his love there is an openness
that taps the quiet of his presence
within my home my body resides
and there I am the light and
I ignite
my fire.

The heaven laden lilac air
Spreads across the hot June
Night penetrating our nostrils,
As a kiss upon the mouth
May last a life-long time.

Deep lavender bank;
Our memories to hold their beauty
Through old images of winter’s ice and snow.

But yet we always slide around the bend,
Landing on a bed of lilacs each spring,
Knowing beauty exists,
As their fragrance lingers always,
Always with our triumph over emptiness.

I awake to the end of a dream
Of you who would hold me;
Create a cup or bowl
Of steaming rice. Instead
I sat at the end of my
Bed, neither slipping in
Or falling out. Standing
Vicariously balanced with
One foot raised – where do
I step and where is my place,
As the wheel turns? How
Can I shape from the
Inside out and still hold you
From outside in, just as
The cup is shaped by the
Turn of the wheel?

But look always with envy
At those houses lit
From within, and I spread my
Arms to embrace their
Warmth. There seems no
Door, say I, from where
I stand. You live in your
World and I in mine.

I love you, this is a miracle
I am in that place
The only place I ever wanted to be

Asleep, you touched me and I woke up.
Flooding my heart with our hands,
We touched in sweet surprise
and crossed to another space

I open my world to receive you
My heart flows like water
turning fear into dance
the waterdance,
the dance of love

I walk into the light
the oneness
as the mystery unfolds

I am who I am
And take refuge in you
You flow into me and I move into you
With stillness we hold hands and
Enter into the garden of prayer

05/12/2010

What if there is no limit to love
no boundary to ourselves
no end to our creativity?
What if we are unimaginably loved
as the love we already are?
What if there is nowhere to go
no such thing as getting stuck?
What if the sense of stuck-ness
is but an inevitable step in the dance
of our own Infinity?
What if we are the love we seek?
What if the search for our authentic selves
is the already the authentic expression
of our true Selves?
What if we could not fail
failure, but a failure to see
that every failure is only a mirage?
What if we are only making believe
that we’re broken, not good enough?
What if these descriptions
of our inadequacy and continuous
falling short of where we think
we should be, are but nonsensical
imaginings of a hyperactive mind?
What if our agitated egos are simply
immature, darling children
playing at being so silly
that taking themselves so seriously
is the very silliest thing they could
possibly do?
What if our imperfect, neurotic personality
is nothing more than a bumbling clown
played by God to make herself laugh
yet all the time forgetting
that she’s just a slapstick
wonderfully made up character
like a “Charlie Chaplin”
created to delight herself and others?
What if “reality” is but a kick in the pants
Or shorts on fire
Or blowing bubbles
into the wind?
Blossoming

Already an opening
Already a blossoming
A flowering pleasure

The Gardener knows
Just how much water
Just how much time
For the ripening fruit

Just For a Moment

I need very little really

The cherry tree blossoms

but for a moment

…that’s enough

12/13/08 (Dedicated to my dear friend, Kathy Quigley)

Standing before a blank canvas
Oh, beautiful clear sky
Let fly the wings of creation
No destination
No point

Nothing can obscure the presence
The boundless sea of unconditional love
Even the clouds do not obscure
They reveal the breathless breath
The depthless depth
The joy without cause or care

Which brush calls?
What colors beckon?
What shapes form?
Who lifts the brush?
Feels the tingles of delight
That touch the blankness
The zero point
Where emptiness and fullness have never left?

So what if resistance puts up a fight?
So what if dark emotions arise?
Or lightness of being?
Or thunderous angst?
Storms are as beautiful as sunlit horizons
Monsoons, as natural as any clear blue day

We start at zero
We end at zero
Where judgments are simply empty noise
Where creativity includes every thought and feeling
Every nuance and tactile sense

Painting is a process without cause or care
Even when the mind may rant and rave
Especially when there is challenge
What seems to block the flow
There the new expansion
There the ever-present realization
The awake-ness that always is
There the end and the beginning
And everything in between

So let fly the colors and shapes upon the boundless, empty sky
Let the hearts flaming love burn in fiery heat
Let the minds cold rain evaporate into unknowing
Be the movement of Love’s brush
Be the rich texture of the one moment
Be what you are, oh, dearest one
The beautiful clear sky. The beautiful clear sky. The beautiful clear sky…

11/27/08

In truth, there is but one poem
Expressed in an infinity of forms
Clothed in a multiplicity of fabrics
Felt in swoons of texture, color and gorgeous patterns

It is a poem that crawls upon the soil like a caterpillar
Abides in cocoons for a time
Eats its way out
Emerges with wings; a butterfly set free upon a wind

Dogs bark this one poem
Fish swim this one poem
Accountants, assessing accounts
Tallying the numbers, are this poem

The one poem
Is all that is written
The one poem
Is all that I write

The one poem has no end and no beginning
No middle, no boundaries, no center
The one poem speaks in every language
As every human being

The one poem is bird-song
The one poem is traffic noise
A sneeze, a calmness
Each and every upset and triumph

It is romance
It is danger
It is rough
It is a delicacy

It is everything
It is no thing at all
It rises and falls
It is quiet and full of sound and fury

There is nothing that is not the one poem
Therefore the one poem can never be lost
Or discarded or neglected
For even rejection is but another form of this one poem

You, who receive this poem, are the one poem!

© September 25, 2009

Barefoot on Summer warm blacktop
I look down to see rainbow prisms after rain
Fall on blue chalk remnants of a child’s game of
Hopscotch – squares formed in mirrored pyramids
Play host to fireflies sparkling in a canning jar closed
Tight but punctured with small holes for air

Inner memory races to the corner
Squints to see a hurdy-gurdy
Childhood in small town exposure.
Climbing trees, dressers and cross-beams
Harlequin leaping in and out of costume
Turning jump ropes into melting tigers
Legs rounding diamonds for home plate

Now I come with silent heart to you each day
Digital camera replaces the Mason jar of insects
For long hours I stand in someone else’s garden
Peering through two lenses –
The one who sees and the one who is seen
Marvel at the deep-red petalled pinwheel of
Hibiscus blossoms fixed to apple-green calyx

You are Hummingbird at last at rest on stem
A Degas display of white petticoats
Rippling in atmospheric forethought
Flaming red scarlet lips open “ahh” in the
Wonder of seafoam returning to shore

I love you, Hibiscus, as I find you.
You whirl like peasant in the evening
Under the stars arms outstretched
Blossoms spent lie crumpled at
Your feet with surefooted
Understanding.

O Hibiscus how does it feel to be you?
How can words describe the color of mud between toes?
How to return to the Love I knew in the ooze of wet
Such sweet off-the-vine succulence
The days of Dew-bowed grace
Before worship became an asymmetrical
Vitruvian Woman turning off and on
In creaky revolutions like the aged family sprinkler

And yet, without understanding, you move me from
May Day solemnity to tongue that moves to taste
Your golden pollen with eyelashes wet with
Longing for the simplicity of open blossom.

Watch me do my Butterfly strokes, Hibiscus
Cross the distance to you like an Olympian
Shed the folds of flesh wrapped taut in bud to
Lean-hooved nonchalance of full blossom.

Faith has fused with finger
Held in awe above a shutter button
Releasing a million frames per second of
Hibiscus blossoms –
Opening me in Sunlight.

© October 4, 2009

Divining rod
Pulsing for pockets
Of hidden gushers –

That which I cannot utter aloud to you
I blow with kiss across the chasm
With the lingering fragrance of
Lavender in harvest tied
In clumps around the
Chill of heart that doesn’t understand

Arms reach out from the
Intersection of a
Midwest cornfield
A scarecrow’s arms
Floppy hands

Rabbit ears bent and wound
Thick with aluminum foil
To bring the black and white
Television reruns of Lucy and Desi
Into focus

One middle finger thrust stoutly upward
in a statuesque orangutan display
of venting from too much steam
The boiling point of cooked oats

I am standing at the intersection
Where the current flows out
From the tip of two
Extended
Middle
Fingers

The East and West of me tuned to
Different stations
A can held up to ear
Dangling string
Connected to
Polar opposites

Conch shell calling me home

Not mine
Maybe so.

Water in the heart of the river
Will find its way to the source