I will practice death: A fragment

I will practice death
  by drinking the universe
      with my morning coffee

I will practice good-bye
    one bite of toast at a time
       savoring the butter

How I Know Oregon is Home

I know this is home when I see

my soul writ large in the silver nitrate sky

autumn leaf confetti on a wet sidewalk

a collage of flame and gold

sprinkled with droplet worlds

I know this is home when I hear

the forest breathing in the Easter dawn

the sweeping cataract’s roar 

the bird-trill in spring and crow-caw in fall

and God’s hushed presence in the heart of the forest

I know this is home when I feel

rain’s mist on my cheeks

brisk air on November’s eve

my well-watered soul taking root

I know this is home when I smell

  life in loam-fed moss

  renewal in decaying fir-trees

  a thousand-years of springtime in a mountain-born stream

I know this is home when I taste

  ions in the air

  the dark, steaming presence of coffee on a chill morning

  and friendship delivered in a pot of home-made soup

If We Are the Disease

I visited earth's heart yesterday.
Her moss-covered arteries shimmered with golden leaf-lace.
An afternoon visit,
  hushed intimate moments splashed with humanity -
    laughing children, barking dogs,
    jogging women, strolling couples,
    a chattering family taking selfies
  in the strong, thick arms of an ancient, overturned root.

I rested my hand on the naked trunk
of a bark-stripped tree
scarred with initials and hearts.

I love you,
  I said to the wild world.
Do what you must.

If we are the disease, do what you must
to heal your battered soil-fed heart.
You are worth more than all of us.

One thousand years from now,
you will find a way
for the best of who we are
to live on in you.

It won't be
a selfie.

What Birds Know

The birds know something we don't know -
a change in weather, a coming doom.
One hidden sound or secret move
and they swoop or fly or flock or dive.
They have their reasons. They won't say why.

The birds know something we don't know -
when to rise and when to gather,
when to feed, when to scatter,
when to mate, where to nest,
which flowers brim with nectar as the sun begins to set.

The birds know secrets they cannot share
or if they do, I don't understand.
I can't read their language of sacred dance
that pirouettes across the skies
with their bright duets and their song-laced cries.

My rhyming is useless, my meter mute.
I lay my heart open and welcome them in,
but human beings are dangerous kin.
The gap between species yawns too wide
and loneliness lives in its canyons.

All the same, I will study the birds,
sit in their presence and try to learn.
In the monastery of my garden,
I will study with the birds.
They know something that we don't.

Bloom Like the Wildflowers

Bloom like the wildflowers,
as if you had no choice.
This wreck of a world deserves
rampant beauty and cascading love
and desire that scorches the flagrant banners of cruelty.
When did we lock our hearts in cages?

Our true hungers hide in our minds' cages
building machines to devour wildflowers.
These are the fruits of a nation's cruelty.
Don't pretend that the subjects of tyrants have no choice.
Songbirds and honeybees can still feed on the remnants of love
and build the intricate homes that the earth deserves.

A bare floor and a cold cell is all that a man deserves
when he turns away from children sobbing in cages.
How can this stark wilderness grow love
when our  combat boots trample children and wildflowers?
Count the moments on your rosary. Each one is a choice,
a momentous leap, a tango between kindness and cruelty.

When a tiger devours its prey, is that cruelty?
Is animal instinct all that the soul deserves?
How can we call it instinct when we have the power of choice?
Even animals twist into insanity when they are kept in cages.
If we poison monsters and devils, will they vomit up wildflowers?
When they die, can their rot and decay fertilize acts of love?

These days, people sneer at the idea of love
and feed on glorious visions of cruelty.
The streets teem with hatred and nobody hands out wildflowers.
The boiling ocean simmers  - the only soup our failure deserves,
made from the bones of sea-starved whales that become our cages
if we embrace despair and squander choice.

In a moonlit desert, pilgrims wander past the hope of choice,
searching the sands for wisdom, mistaking mirages for love.
This parched place needs no cages.
The landscape is its own cruelty,
a desolate and lonely shrine that no supplicant deserves,
a holy land too harsh for wildflowers.

One day fields and forests may overwhelm our barren cruelty.
The earth's great dance of existence deserves
nothing less than the partner of its choice.

Edges Dipped in Sunlight

I am in love
with the edges of growing things
dipped in morning sunlight

the post-dawn slow unveiling of translucence
on round and burnished leaves
or faintly feathered grasses
or gilded dots of nectar-heavy blossoms
awaiting the pollinating pilgrims
who briefly sojourn here
to make their morning devotionals
with me

The simple glory
of this light-kissed verdant place
can resurrect my fallen heart.

Haikus in a Summer Garden

Shadow of a crow
glides across my garden
mirroring the clouds.

The morning sun burns,
soaking my neck and shoulders
With noon’s misplaced heat.

Persistent breezes
tickle lilacs, whispering
Remember my kiss.

Blue heavens open,
welcoming hummingbirds. Trees
murmur soulful odes.

Peace in the corners,
like tender shoots in springtime,
grows only with care.

The Trees Said "Yes"

        1

Walk with me, 

the shadows said.

And the trees said

Yes.

Watch with me,

begged the dark, cloud-marbled sky,

until the night is weary 

and dew beckons 

like honey-drops from the lancing thorns,

and the church-bells ring through the chill air

and the dawn lashes me with stripes of gold.

Watch with me.

Walk with me.

Listen.

And the trees said 

Yes.

        2

Were you listening when

the trees said 

Yes

and

the sky said 

please

and 

every singing bird 

fell silent?

Were you speaking when

the earth groaned

and

the fish burned

and

our frozen past

melted?

Were we weeping when

we drank ashes

and

swam in sand

and

the jungles collapsed beneath our weight?

Traveling Sinuous Rivers

I have gone traveling sinuous rivers in solitude.

Am I still a traveler
who watches
who teaches
who learns?

I begin to remember
how I hid
how I mourned
how I laughed
how I loved

I feel down corridors for myself
and shake hands with someone I once discovered,
silently wondering

Am I now the person I have spent my whole life becoming?


Written on the way to a college reunion, 
with thanks, for the final line, to
Mary Catherine Bateson's "Composing a Life"

The Budding Future

Springtime and I can see the future -

Poised between rose leaves
Topping the sceptered iris
Couched in the peony buds
Dotting the fat clumps of waving raspberry stalks
Casting a cautious glance from the slim limbs of the smoke tree -

The Future:
promising - unruly - explosive

Flower buds keep their promises
unless the world turns too cold.


- May, 2019

The Waiting Crow

There is a crow that sits on our rooftop
waiting
nests in our chimney

silent
on most days

today he calls to his tribe
sable ministers crossing sunlit skies
wounding souls with sound

Suffering is real here
in this now-world there
in the will-be
waiting
nesting

silent
on most days

Meditating with Bees

Watching three bees hard at work
in purple blossoms of sage and mint
I practice radical acceptance
studying the flashing facets of a childhood memory:

screaming from pain and the shock
that my place of make-believe could harbor
this sudden venomous attack
stung by the bee and the cruel betrayal
of my beloved treehouse
wishing I could turn back time and find
another place to sit
and leave the bee in peace
to let me be
while my mother spread baking soda
on my knee

Four bees are now at work -
energy, danger, beauty, utility
held in the blooming space of my flower pot.

The world is better because of bees
and I am still
afraid.

I remember: Pre-apocalypse

I remember when summer's warmth was not
an angry hellish thing
I remember when islands did not drown
and winter did not ravage
when subway tunnels were free of floods
and mountains were covered in snow
and hurricanes and earthquakes and volcanoes
only occasionally laid waste
I remember when apocalypse was a subject
for speculative fiction
and doomsday was a war-born event
that treaties could at once prevent
I remember when humans were not dinosaurs
and water was not poison
and skies were not orange
and fish did not suffocate
and polar bears made sense

Summer, 2018

Farewell to a Tree

The cherry tree next door
Rotten to the core
Laughed so hard it split its sides.

How could that be?
That tree -
Home to hummingbirds,
Bearing blossoms whose storm-spun petals
filled the sky at the lick of a spring breeze,
Delicately dropping fruit with the kiss of June -
Must come down.

Even trees, it seems, cannot live forever.

Someone's Else's Shoes

Today I wore someone else's shoes
by accident

Worn out by anger
clothed in conviction

An ill fit that I knew at once.

I could not walk far in them.

Books and Biscuits

for Todd Bol, 
founder of the Little Free Library movement
rest in peace













In my neighborhood, dear one,

books wait for me around the corners

in little wooden boxes built with care that say

“Take one. Leave one.”

Text books, magazines, dog-eared classics

and brand new bits of wisdom 

or adventure.

I pull old friends off my shelves,

fill my backpack, 

and leave them by the armload.

They always find a home.

Your neighborhood may not be so blessed.

In your home, books are in short supply, 

but in this room we share,

we share -

words and stories, truth and laughter

snake skins and hand prints and 

portraits of princesses, 

robots and monsters,

hugs and tears and knock-knock jokes.

Take one. Leave one. 

And we will meet 

for hot chocolate and sourdough biscuits

on some fall day

surprised by sunshine

and books.

Tongue of a Teacher

The Lord has given me the tongue of a teacher
Teacher whose eyelids are weary
Weary of battling evil
Evil, a vast word
Word by word by word, we climb
Climb the daily steps
Steps of the temple of learning
Learning to be calm, be here, be wind
Wind and trees, river and stone
Stone that is shaped, river that flows
Flows and ebbs, erodes and feeds
Feeds the trees
Trees that give, trees that bear
Bear with the storms, bare in winter
Winter wind lashing the branches
Branches hung heavy with fruit
Fruit of the knowledge of good and evil
Evil, a vast word
Word of the Father
Father of lies
Lies of our leaders
Leaders with false tongues
Tongues that can lash
Lash like the wind
Wind that is weary
Weary of wandering
Wandering humble with bowl in hand
Hand to mouth
Mouth with a tongue
Tongue of a teacher.

Feet of Clay

Feet of Clay

Dear ones,
prayers of promise to the future,
I want you to know
I have feet of clay
And though I love you
I will forget -
names and birthdays and
how many lizards you have.
I will forget
and you will change.

You will grow tall
and lose your cherub’s fat.
Your face will harden,
maybe, too, your heart.
Your muscles will grow taut and lean.
Your hips may swell.
Your eyes may shift their sheen
While other dear ones fill my busy mind.

One day you will stand in my doorway
expectant
An eight-year-old only inside
inside
inside your eyes.
“Remember me?” you ask.

My heart remembers.
I promise it does.
But my brain is worn
and crowded as an antique train station
that welcomes hundreds
and sends them on their way.

Forgive me, dear ones.
I have feet of clay.

On the Brink

On the brink, on the edge
The precipice, the abyss, the ledge
You reach out to me,
Your cry for help
 echoed by a host
 of survivors
 and of ghosts
silently insisting I step up.
My heart trips on the weight of it.
Can I weave my words into a lifeline?

Stay.
Live.
Learn as long as you can
And I will too.
Let's meet on the mountaintop at the end
and share stories of our adventures.

The Jagged Edges

Contemplate the jagged edges:
of raspberry leaves

and soaring pines
of shredded clouds
and war-torn souls
of letters etched in granite
and the pores of aging skin.

Can you feel the edge of God's shadow
when you wander inside it?
Can you know the shape of God's footprint
when you stand within its walls?

Jagged edges give
to floating molecules their form.
They are the borders
that define the name-filled world.

Borders come in many shades.
Let us not get drunk on them.

Does shadow imprison light
for crossing the border at noon?