Residue

I don’t know
where a boy
or girl might go

at the end but
all atoms remain
of the gone.
Then,
do the gone
really go?

Shapes and clusters
change, decompose,
remain,
ready to rearrange
or trade clothes.

When a star
(which I once was)
collects a little of
leftover unattractive
stuff and shines because,
the less handsome
become
beautiful.

One law
in the book
says,
“There is conservation of matter”.

I am matter,
you matter…
the two or more of us
matter.
Matter cannot be
created
or destroyed,
it becomes
another thing, maybe
it’s
‘doesn’t matter’.

Isn’t that a sort of immortality?

Whether God
says you are
cool
or
not
when you finally get up to the door,
your spinning electricity
still gets in,
maybe as a smudge
on the high heel
of some kind of
good president’s
wife.
Don’t argue with me about this.

Stars

Sometimes,
when it’s still,
I sing to hear the sound
and wonder if
our dusty-brown
birds do this, too.

Though worksong’s of
great import every day,
there must be time and room
for play.

In this way,
I dream
the creatures call each other
silly names at times,
sole to hear
them echoed back
when humdrum’s sun
climbs.

Further, yet, my theory is:
life keeps an hour
divine
for each and all to game at love.

The proof of this glows
high above earth’s
sorrow-rutted lane,
where all the many million stars
twinkle not
in vain.

Life, For God’s Sake

I had the most amazing breakfast. It wasn’t much but it impressed me. I feel the need to discuss. That humankind should find any meal an interesting subject for discussion amuses me. I know why I am amused. I see the incongruity of bothering to discuss breakfast when we have God or art or political theory to hash out. I laugh at that. I and many, keep an erroneous view that we are or can be more than ‘enjoying and discussing our food’. I often believe that such discussion is an inconsequential, secondary topic. Discussion should be reserved for something else, something more world-changing, earth-shaking. So, I laugh at the idea of discussing breakfast.

We/I have/hold on to an illusion that eating breakfast, defecating, fornicating and all other related processes are mundane. Such stuff is the background noise, the autonomous system of something greater. The quiet side of a more sophisticated pursuit. It is the small side of thinking that notices breakfast. The pure mind is higher. I am asking myself, “Do thoughts, dreams, emotions, scandals, politics, theologies really amount to something more important than burping and farting?” My guess, my gut feeling, my intuition says, “No..”. That’s why I laugh and others laugh at the mundane. There is nothing funnier than farting. It proves life amidst the noise.

What could ever be more important than awareness of life in whichever way and upon whichever realization that awareness manifests? I am aware of the taste of hastily prepared strawberries and a three-egg omelette with inexpensive cheese shredded on top. That awareness is the absolute core of being. Isn’t it? I fart, therefore I am?

I am also aware of the tragedy that November brings around each year. A tragedy to me, a something far more important than enjoying breakfast. A something that still needs deep discussion, as it involves so much. A happening that has potential to deepen understanding. Sometimes, the importance of understanding the whys and wherefores of existance seems to trump the importance of the enjoyment of a simple meal. An important thing happened to and with my family in November – so horrible, so awful, so deeply disturbing and so long ago. Yesterday, I got lost a while in the re-imaging (not imagining – imaging, I was seeing it) of the saddest ever scene. It took my heartbeat away for a while and hasn’t done so for a number of years. I was then and am today, destroyed by those events I could not control and could not prevent. …and? I feel pain, therefore I am but it wasn’t more important, significant than a simple breakfast. Those things are equal. All things are equal and miraculous, even-Steven. None should supercede.

I am, I continue.

There was a horrible event once and there was breakfast today. I am, I continue. There is understanding of the universe, our place in it, the reasons why for things and there was breakfast today. I am, I continue. There is war in Ukraine and there was breakfast today. I am, I continue. There is God or is not and there was breakfast today. I am, I continue. Others suffer, I suffer…there was breakfast today. I am, I continue.

That is almost a heartbeat, isn’t it? I am, I continue.

Here I go again with the miracles idea…. I don’t now and never did truly need a weeping Mary or the crossing of a divided sea on foot or a resurrection or a Messiah. Nah. There was breakfast today, I am, I continue.

My fingers hurt from advanced arthritis. I am, I continue.
I can’t pee the way I used to be able. I am, I continue.
My knee hurts. I am, I continue.
My hip is ceramic. I am, I continue.

There are birds, dogs, cats, clouds, moons, stars.
There is day, night, twilight. There are the most peculiar plants.
I am, I continue.

I pooped.

I am, I continue. There is nothing more important than the moment. That moment can never be anything other than OK. All that is is all good. There are bumps in the road… There is an occasional delicious breakfast… There is falling in love… There is enmity… Some of these things are good, some better, some less so, some actually bad/painful. It is still good, still proof of life. Yeah, I wish for a life in heaven, righteousness, significance, for understanding, for a more telling proof of life than breakfast and a cuppa but it is here, anyway. Once in a while, I can see it when I step back at the flavour of strawberry, at the intervals in “Clair De Lune”, at the utter grief of grief.

Someday, I may learn to cook more than an omellette. I may understand God. I may understand the ebb and flood of living but in the meantime, I am and I continue. Each moment is miraculous.

Sunflowers

Work and my season now
done, I seek for the power
of deep wine with bread.
A light touch of breeze and
sun bless my head,
hatless, this hour
by the sunflower
garden.

The tall plants are placed here as
‘decor’ meant to lift spirits
but I sense they are something more.
Each one reminds of
an old woman bending,
her faded hair of former yellow petal,
drooping in curls
at summer’s ending.

This one near, and her companions,
seem
bedraggled, former girls
whom even the bees have left,
finding no further sustenance at breast.

As I now do,
the giant blossums rest.
Sun angles late and
of their burden seed,
these vessels become
soon bereft.

In the proper time,
all earnest labour reappears,
and freshened blooms toil,
upward from the thousand pin-striped,
ripened tears
that found rich autumn’s
ready soil.

This will happen
again,
and again,
until some brash awakening
changes the pattern’s
shape,
improves upon an old design.

In the meanwhile,
to a uniformed waiter
who offers salvation’s quiet smile,
I sigh, “A cuppa coffee?
Yes, thank you, that would be fine.”

Conversations About God

I schemed that
birds had conversations
on a rooftop edge adjacent
to the window casement.
My eager heart imagined them
set about a Sunday’s reflections,
quiet amongst themselves.

These beasts are nature’s genteel wings,
feathered in the very best
goin’-to-town-brown,
and it seemed, for a moment,
in private terms,
they shared much more than sing-
ing
before one,
then two
and three flew down,
resumed attacking worms.

What’s real congeals
by consensus, the root of fact;
that sky above is empty black
and atmosphere’s what sun lights blue.
Under majority’s rule
we see things true;
that life exists in myriad ways
and days aren’t endless,
they fly away
as my talking Sunday birds did do.

Time has limits, I suppose.
It came from somewhere,
how it ends,
who knows?

Perhaps,
as we often do,
the birds discussed this,
deciding the which,
the what and the who,

The Outside Voice of God

I sat some moments
by the great lake, lazy,
watching water-craft
shrink to meet horizon’s final edge.
Careless,
I allowed imagination’s
idle mind to witness
boats, birds, water, all
pouring over some oft-discussed
and never-discovered
flat earth fall
that, even when searched for,
remains ever further.

If I am correct,
and Science tells it true,
time’s a promontory ledge,
beyond which nothing flashes,
and from which
is no grand, sweeping view.

For one instant, today,
I occupied small space on a vast beach,
observing, considering the far-off place
hours, days and minutes will never reach
while above,
our nearby star’s gaze
vibrated all elements of sky into
an indescribable cloudless blue.
My shoulders, my arms
warmed to that same rhythm
and thoughts spread out,
tinsel on restless waves.

The Boy And The Bear

(Boy, Lost in Woods, Says Bear Kept Him Company – CNN)

(“I don’t want to cast aspersions on the child but I think (this) little boy had a fantasy. . .” – Chris Servheen, bear researcher at the University of Montana.)

(…are you there? Mr. Bear? – Johnson/Blaney)

Having lived
two long years on his planet,
and learned of legs
and arms
and play…
a little boy once
wandered away.

Bright wonder rang few bells
of warning
and the sailor set to sea,
unawares on summer’s morning,
grand adventure teases tragedy.
Most very young don’t know that yet,
being aware not hours enough
to learn all the things
they’ll never forget.

Engaged at the study
of fluttering,
led by butterflies,
The boy forgot what mother feared,
(no suprise)
until brother and sister and brother
disappeared,
far from sight, out of mind.

He found himself behind,
in thickening forest,
surrounded by an unfamiliar chorus
of grasping dark and twisting vine.
It was
way past dinnertime.

I imagine
every creeping, crawling crunch,
scary, fantastic, new,
lit his world again spectacular
as fairy tale and fable,
heard from story-books,
came true
in the way a small child is best able
to make them do.
Such wide-eyed life amateurs,
eager to seek what’s real,
yet yearn for comfort’s ordered breast,
knowing how home and hearth
feel.

The sun went down,
the moon came up,
the moon went down,
the sun came up,
the sun went down,
the moon came up
and still,
of his whereabouts there being no sign,
the wilding wood
proved good
at hiding a boy too small
to find.

Until,
one day after forever
plus a further while,
deep in the quiet of tangled trees,
a tremulous quiver,
“Mama?” brought a smile
and he’s found!
Weary searchers loosed their frowns,
ran toward the sound,
scooped the missing traveler
up, shared him all around.

Papa sat proud,
with the child on one knee,
as the sheriff grinned,
“What’s done has finished,
happily”
and listened to the questions multiply,
“So… just exactly how’d
a fragile child get by?”

When asked, “Was it lonely there,
in that shadow, by a tree?”,
the little boy spoke of a bear,
who kept him company.

Feeling Grumpy

Anger spun
in spokes so thin,
warning dewdrops
did not glisten.

I’m captured prey,
muted heartbeat.
The gasp of delight,
I might have felt
at colour or birds or day,
is choked in rip-proof silk.

Held as a hunter’s prize
but poisoned,
emptied,
already dried,
I wait for the spider’s surprise
and pity
an eight-legged, rumbling beast
who finds
such a miserable feast.

A Splendid Day

(It Is Such a Splendid, Sunny Day – Sophie Scholl)

The garden is heavy again in bloom,
wild beasts busy at their work.
This stone blue water planet,
the multitude stars,
the green things,
the creatures
must ignore dark puffs of destruction
to wend the way.
What or whom can move are
stepping over lifeless things
because those fallen shapes
are nothing more than ordinary obstacles.

All that dies for principle,
dies.
All that lives long enough,
dies.
Time thumps in as a marching band
of deadly olive drab machines,
sings of victory,
recruits the willing,
smashes them and everything else
before it rumbles out.

Fear? is an elixir potent
enough to paralyze,
don’t taste of it!
Plant your row,
bend toward the sun,
drink your fill.
All days are splendid.

Santa Claus, Jesus and the Fourth of July

Santa Claus appeared
wearing nothing, one night.
He stumbled to my bedside,
whispered, “Don’t turn on the light!”
and crawled in.
I thought it was a
Netflix series
about to begin.

“Are you cold?” I said,
as quick between the covers he slid.
His reply?

“Hell, no…on the Americans’
fourth of July?”

Oh, my,
either this was mighty interesting
or I wasn’t thinking straight,
it WAS late.

Like many,
I’d long buried Santa deep
along with rhyme,
fairy-tale, make-believe,
and other once-upon-a-times
when
right there he suddenly was,
another butt next to mine,
only separated by fuzz!

This rich scene snaked
once or twice through my head,
left me wide awake,
blinking, in slumber’s
stead.

I rubbed my eyes,
felt wonder,
shock, surprise.
Nestled up next me here,
one leg on my thigh,
was my guy.

“Santa,” I asked, discreet as could be,
“Would you move that leg?
It’s kinda bothering me,
..reminds me how Jesus did, previously.
Oh,
by-the-way,
I’ll make you an egg
in the morning.”