Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Journey's End  Janet

















some are already
        there
some busy themselves 
committees, volunteers 
puffing up their egos 
prove they are really here

some stay sequestered 
at their desks 
and count their stuff 
unable to divert
their thoughts from 
the inevitable end

and some of us
still linger in our youth 
before the wrinkle 
lines 
dancing and loving 
on the brink of eternity

the rest still gather 
at the retirement home bar 
savoring Happy Hour 
and given the challenge 
of news from outside

you'd never guess how 
safe and satisfying it is 
to be with friends
at Journey's End

Friday, May 16, 2014

Last Chapter - Helen
It’s been a long time since Old Age crept up behind me,
since she began nudging me down this darkening path.
Her quiet voice whispers soothingly:
“It’s all right. Don’t be afraid.
The last chapter is always the best.”
Proceeding with faltering steps,
 I hear crunching sounds under my feet, 
They are the sounds of dried memories,
of faded loves, past joys, retreating sadness.
It’s all right. Don’t be afraid.
Trees are never as eloquent
 As when they turn red and gold,
when they shed their leaves in a last hurrah.
And shortened days bring early stars,
lighting up the skies of tomorrow.
When the sun departs behind brown hills,
it leaves a glorious trail of yellows, pinks and lilacs. 
The last chapter is yet to be written,
So words must be carefully chosen
and punctuation, precise and true.
At the end of this path, I’ll find a gossamer door,
a soft opening between the Here and the There.
When the last twilight dissolves into night,
illuminate me! Wrap me in the nebula of beginning again.

                View Helen's Biography by clicking AUTHOR'S BIOGRAPHIES in right panel.

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Natural Order John Field


When I was fifteen my faith unraveled to its core
for some reason I no longer remember.
That was the year I stopped begging
the earth's absentee landlord for an afterlife
and began paying close attention
to the natural order of things,
such as the graceful sight of pheasants in flight
before I blasted them out of the sky.


In July our valley turned into a landscape
of sudden vanishings when a flood
stampeded livestock and uprooted trees
down the Upper Iowa River.
On Main Street I watched men wearing hip boots
and dead smiles loot grocery stores
and then disappear in motor boats.
In our backyard the prehistoric stink 
of rotting debris
outranked the fragrance of honeysuckle.

Deep in a daze that afternoon
and far beyond what I knew
I hiked the high-strung bluffs that circle our town
until I reached the sacred peak of Pulpit Rock
and then looked down into the angry heart
of a violent river. No answers there. Nothing. Never.
Just swamps where meadows used to be
and the kind of truth that's reserved for its victims.

So I looked up and watched a hawk
pause at the tip of its arc
and hang suspended in the air
as if welded there. Seconds later it broke free
from heaven's gravity
and slurred earthward in a liberating blur.
Then swooped up again so close to me
that I could see the tip of a tail
hanging out of its beak.
During that indelible moment
everything changed from anarchy
into an ethical life not forever
but long enough for me to forgive myself
and the next day sell my shotgun to a friend.



Sunday, May 4, 2014

WOE 2 Michael James



Joy, which used to run like an open faucet
full and strong before me, 
now dribbles, if it comes at all, as if a prolonged drought had 
dried up all its springs and turned its streams to dust. 
And even when I hear the small, insistent voice saying,
"Oh, but you know the line is thinly drawn twixt joy and sorrow, 
making them but two sides of the same coin, 
and equally valuable,” a coin of whose realm 
I want to know.

Joy was mine as a carefree youth, I spent my coin freely, 
barreling down lanes in the dappled sunlight of the forest, 
Bound for winding paths, breezy lakes, 
trout-filled streams, spreading lawns. 
A bicycle was my badge of freedom, license to roam 
wherever legs could take me, 
"Be back for supper," my only admonition.

Woe was someone else's, over a distant horizon, 
something even elders rarely mentioned, 
or if they did, used tones so hushed they would not dull my day. 
If I lived selfishly, it was due to the cornucopia of Nature, 
her brimming basket from which I ate and drank 
all day long, no thought of the morrow, 
catching glimpses of heaven in the paths l followed. 
And when it rained, the library, always at hand, 
like Nature, unstinting in its generosity.

During term, surrounded by people day and night, 
I sought refuge in the quiet of the woods and lakeside, 
so when summer came, I just stayed longer where I longed to be. 
"What did you do all day? I haven't seen you once." 
"At play in the fields of the Lord," I might have answered, 
though instead I must have said, 
"Nothing much. Went for a bike ride."

Today, looking back on my slow decay through time, I see
I still carry that badge of freedom, the bicycle, though its range 
under my seat, is like that of the poor fish 
in the puddle of the dried up reservoir 
waiting for the rain that doesn't come.

I do have Google Earth, though, 
which allows me to look down on those 
lanes I rode, paths l walked along, lakes I swam. 
Changes, of course, are glaring: more people, 
houses, parking lots, shops, and always, fewer big trees.
Thank God for memory ! Without it, I'd be a pinhead on a stick,
plunked down wherever I happened to be, 
deracinated, an empty crock, 
but full of woe. 

So it's memories now which keep old woe away 
which else would rob my heart of joy.
The ancient Greeks told each other to call no man happy 
until he has died well.
C.S.Lewis extended that precaution to involve experiences: 
No experience is complete 
until it is safely ensconced in memory; then it may be assayed.

I value my good memories (as don't we all?), 
though the few bad ones, about hurting others, 
I would love to leave. 
l'm mindful of Macbeth's agony 
when he's regretting the murders: 
"My way of life is fallen into the sere,” he laments. 
He can expect no friends in his old age, 
just curses, not loud but deep, 
for the harm he's done, 
not that he should have expected to live long anyway, 
unlike most of us today. in spite of our missteps, 
the years we live now give us time enough to experience regret 
of youthful errors, of hurts caused by our too little love.

But there's no point in dwelling on them, those errors; 
they can't be changed. 
Instead, let's conjure up a thousand greens and blues: 
intense blue sky at twelve thousand feet;
deep blue sea off Tintagel's cliffs, greens of beech, oak, 
chestnut, pine, and grass in forest's shade,
flickering sunlight on half closed lids 
under canopy of leaves up high.

Though not historical, these memories, 
they are valid collective or generalized impressions 
from countless experiences, 
and none the less vivid for all that, 
wherein the individual event became 
submerged beyond recognition, beyond recall.
When l've done something countless times,
the details of single instances blend together. 
If they didn't, my mind would become so cluttered 
l'd be unable to think. 
People with total recall must have 
a means of retrieving memories 
Lest they be overburdened by detail.

This dwelling on one's memories, or living in the past, so often called, 
may not be done by choice but by default, 
there being only unpleasantness in the present. 
So why not keep one eye on the road, the other on the past.
What else are two eyes for, anyway?