Even this has passed,
But all too soon.
It has left yet
Is not forgotten.
It remains in touches
Scents and feelings,
In bright white smiles
Hiding the truth.
Soft kisses smother the sadness for
What could have been.
And so it has become only a tool
To be used, a means to an end.
Now it is nothing more than a silence to be heard, and
A touch to be remembered.
The magic of the night.
The brilliance of its darkness, the darkness of its light.
My soul is deep in the arms of midnight
Too deep to see,
To blind to know, with cries
Too silent to be heard.
I am astounded by the simplicity of the night,
But shocked by its truth.
So much time has passed with too little thought.
Now it is gone,
Forever to remain – unnoticed.
When anger leaves, disbelief fades
And my heart takes a deep breath and feels a new peace.
Inside I feel different, sad but different.
The shift in conscious that I have longed for has taken over my being.
I have learned through experience that I won’t die…
That this is not what will kill me and as a consequence I know
I can accept that it will be what
It will be, or maybe not be at all… and that either way, it is ok.
Anger has left,
Disbelief has faded and, unexpectedly, peace has returned.
For this I am grateful.
(this is a re-post from two years ago – with edits)
They are nothing less than silent, swooping, gliding,
Magic,
Whose calls echo through bare spring trees
And color my nights with beauty.
One calls and waits.
The answer to come when it will.
With each call, the distance lessens between their
Voices in the night.
That which fills my night heart with light and joy,
Fills the hearts of others with fear.
It is the fear of ending.
An ending that comes out of the sky
In silent, swooping, gliding, magic.
The magic of beauty or,
The magic and freedom of death.
It rolls out in waves from
One thought to another.
It remains as one heart flowing into the other
Then back again to me.
It travels by glowing starshine that lights its way
Through the darkest nights only to
Leave me at dawn as sunshine brings back the true sight,
Sound and taste of its love.
But as it leaves, its absence is not sad as the void left behind is open,
Open to every other possibility love can explore.
It becomes a love bigger than me in spite of its misplaced attention
And I see that it was meant for me, after all.
It is back!
It has been gone so long, I thought it had forgotten me and
Had left me behind to wonder
And miss it,
To search for its faltering presence and
To long for its comfort.
My wanting and longing kept it away.
My acceptance of its absence, for its own reasons, not mine, brought it back.
I must resist the urge to hold it close
To crush it with my desperate need.
For its need for me is as strong
As my need for it.
The un-manifest became manifest.
What can I say –
There are no words left…
No correct ones, anyway, but even without words
love’s heart lingers.
The useless words drip down the windows of my soul like rain
Turning snow to slush
And white noise to wet mud.
Sucking me under again.
The memories can’t be erased, or ignored.
And although they can’t be sucked back into non-being,
They begin to fade and with time become so thin they blend with the dripping snow,
But still I cannot, will not, forget or give them up.
I know the memories will remain mine,
Always mine and each time the same.
They will stay in my mind beautiful and true
Until time steps out of time and begins again.
(Poem #5 April 5, 2017)
Evening shadows shift
Through broken windows.
Chimney bricks slide down the roof
Puddleing under the lilac bush.
Weeds spread into the driveway
Reclaiming it for themselves.
When was this house built?
Was it ever new?
The yard and doorframes bear witness
To the families who grew here.
Long forgotten toys and broken swings
Hide beneath the matted field grass.
A broken clothesline flaps in the gray autumn breeze and
Sprung clothespins mold and rot into the ground beneath the broken posts.
Feral cats are now the only life that calls this old farm home,
And birdsong still fills the rafters of the barn.
The barn that once held livestock
Sits shifted on its foundation,
Listing and leaning to the south,
Away from winter’s fierce winds.
The stately oak gracing the front yard is rotten and broken,
Its fingers through the house roof.
Where did they go, the people
Who called this place home?
When the last one left,
Why didn’t they clean out the house?
Why not take the toys?
Close the windows? Lock the doors?
Did they not know they were
Never coming back?
The windmill out back has long ago
Crashed into the apple orchard,
Breaking in to pieces as it fell
and crushing the trees it had stood watch over all these years.
But in man’s absence
The apple trees continue to produce.
The lilac bushes flower every spring in spite of
Not being “cared for” in over 40 years.
The forest is slowing creeping back in to fill the void
Left when the field was abandoned.
All that remains of the people who once called this spot of land home
Is the family graveyard,
Where stones are carved with love and care,
Preserving for all time the names and dates of those whose lives began and ended here.
But the lilacs don’t care about being preserved,
The Oak is beyond pride and the buildings are slowly returning to the soil,
Just like the bodies beneath the stones.
Another 40 years and the stones will be all that remains.
They will be all that is left to tell the story
Of a time gone by.
The story of a house built to last a lifetime, a barn crafted with pride,
The story of generations of a family who lived, worked and died on this land.
A story only the stones will remember.
It waits with patience hands
Outside our knowing, waiting to be let in.
Its story is always the same,
Its truth dependable but not always what we want to hear.
There is no hypocrisy, no deceit in its soul.
It is the soul that fills the void, that encompasses the eternal.
It exists in rhythms of time, tides of dependability,
Cycles of freedom and seasons of hope.
It can be ignored, but never escaped and so it waits,
In beauty and joy, in bliss and acceptance, in love and peace,
For us to wake up and realize it is but a mirror of ourselves,
The face of our existence, the light in our souls,
The essence of our being
Before we were born.
It was just a game,
But it was all we had.
The rules were written as we went along.
He lead, I followed.
Everything changed from week to week
But always stayed the same.
The music played to fit the game and
Players changed with the tunes.
I never doubted in the moment,
Only in the absence, and it seemed to always be the time of absence.
The reality of the missing would come to me
Before the leaving.
I would rest my head on his chest
Listening to his heartbeat.
I would try to hold him inside me, all of him,
In each fleeting moment and then he was gone.
Once again reality would return to embrace the void, and
The long anticipated fulfillment became just another memory.
Then came the waiting for his
Footsteps on the wooden porch,
The rattling of the outer door,
And the bells ringing on the inside.
I knew it was just a game, his game,
But it was all I had.
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