And so she trades her sail for still
her wake for windless waiting.
But at least her harbour’d
solitude brings with it
many stories.
Picture: www.old-picture.com
Month: April 2013
Bagpipes
Notes rise like smoke
choking out all others
with the rough hands
of time and tragedy.
Their beautiful hums
sing a sustained song,
peering with insistent gaze
into hearty souls
and soulish hearts.
Broken teeth still chatter
with the bite of loss
and the taste of pain.
But this broad sound
rises to the occasion
like no other.
A land, many times stolen,
is the only crucible fit
to shape this enduring
roar, this brutish beauty.
She, soaked in brine of peat
and multicolored limbs,
snorts in stoic disregard
for all that dares
impede the moorish march
of belief in yesterdays.
Any old fool can pose
a lust for tunish repast
‘round doilied tables of tea and greed,
disgust of the rich, the divas of demand.
Not this sweet savage,
not this tumble down lullaby
haunt of kings, joke of ghosts.
In her misty-eyed song
you’ll find no sorrys,
just a jolly lament
and the bittersweet ceilidh
of the lost.
Sing along…if you dare.
Picture: www.bagpipers.com (my kinda website!)
Conundrum (or the best realization available to one unable to see)
I don’t see it.
You said I would,
but I can’t.
Am I blind,
or are you a liar?
Or have we both
been misled?
Do I ask
too many questions,
or do the questions
ask too much
of me?
Little girl picture: www.jen-elise.blogspot.com
Old lady picture: www.brokelyn.com
Beannacht (Blessing)
As I’ve mentioned about a thousand times, I’m possessive of a deeply Celtic, mystical spirit and as such, am drawn to others of similar ilk. Irish Catholic poet, writer and Hegelian philosopher, John O’Donohue (1956-2008) is one such kindred spirit. At the risk of sounding crass, to read O’Donohue is to make love with words. His facility with nuance, the numinous and near, the transcendent and tame, of the thin places of the world is second to none.
The following piece is one of my favorites. I’ve used this in liturgy many times and return to it on almost any occasion just to speak the words that, in themselves, bless in the saying of them. Read it once quietly. Read it twice more quietly. Read it out loud a third time. Finally, let it read you.
Then, wait. You will not be disappointed.
Beannacht
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
Picture: www.garyverderamo.com
A Slow Awakening
You awake
from your long slumber
not rested, but certain
that you’d never even
been asleep.
And now, an impatient wind
teases the nostrils
of the promiscuous trees.
They huddle together,
sharing secrets.
The heartbeat of Spring,
resuscitated
from your sporadic rest,
jumps again to push
the filaments of breath
back into the sleeping army
of dirty, brown grass,
now blushing green.
Forward then, dear soul,
Wind of wind,
Scent of scent,
Heart of heart,
revive our favored memories
now colored with
the speech of stones,
the sky’s delight,
the lightning’s embrace,
the now and nocturnal –
awaiting to hear
the New of the new.
Picture: www.essenceinphotography.com
Empty House – guest poem by Seymour Jacklin
Another guest poem today. This one is by another favorite writer/poet and emerging friend, Seymour Jacklin. He is also a gifted storyteller with an awesomely cool accent (think South African blended with potpourri English). This one is spoken word which, in my opinion, is the best way to capture the fullest essence of the multi-sensory art of poetry.
Enjoy.
in good company – a guest poem
I have a number of friends who are writer/poet/musicians like myself. Dan Erickson is one such friend. For my daily offering for National Poetry Month I choose to share the following piece from his personal blog. It was originally posted on April 21st. You can find the poem on his blog here.
in good company
Imagine a world without chicken soup,
where cooking is joyless. Imagine a
world with no rules of order,
no elements of style. Imagine a world
in which Peter Rabbit and Huckleberry
Finn never existed in word or
imagination. Imagine a world
with no “Leaves of Grass.”
The “self-published” have often
been looked upon as less than writers,
sneered at by a snobbish industry.
They’ve been rejected, accused, ignored
and left to rust. They’ve been treated
with disrespect, disdain, and dismissed
as amateurs.
I know.
I was once told,
“Your story is splendid, but we have no
room on our shelves.”
Splendid? Indeed!
It’s a harrowing tale of rape and child abuse.
The critic never read a page.
Stories survive. Survivor’s stories live on.
Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair, Carl Sandburg,
James Joyce, Steven Crane, Edgar Allen Poe,
Walt Whtman, Ezra Pound, Henry David Thoreau,
Thomas Paine, and Virginia Wolff,
just to name
a few.
Roses are read
Roses are read,
where color is words.
Violets are blew,
and sing with the birds.
Her tendrils in time
stretch out to renew,
for Spring isn’t blind,
her labors ensue.
When yellow as time
and auburn as rest,
there comes but a moment
only love knows best.
So turn from the Westland
where winter-deep lives
and point your eyes East
to gifts Summer gives.
Here, in the triage
of heaven’s remains
we see what is needed
to seed late Autumn grain.
Return’d now to Fall,
with not yet wearied skies,
and before sleep succumbs,
she bids all goodbye.
Picture: www.everyseven.com
Dinnertime for the quail
The quail can always find a home
‘neath bush and tree and garden gnome.
Their pencil legs a meager stand
are still enough to ‘scape my hand.
They jut and dart and squirt around
like wing-ed hamsters, rarely found,
and when the time has come to dine
they squiggle cross my lawn to find
a twig, a bud, a worm or two
to feed their quail-ettes like they do.
They never come just two or three
but dozens, quite the sight to see.
These paragons of Spring time flare
though awkward, still they, willing, dare
to squat inside my arbor bush
until their next big dinner rush.
Picture: www.mommaneedsabeer.blogspot.com
A decision
Looking at his watch he notices
how evenly spaced are the numbers
that so unevenly divide his life.
So, he takes it off.
Picture: www.123rf.com
innerwoven 