The Willful Beings

If you, like I, have eyes that see,
to read these words and know
that meanings are a human thing,
as consciously we go;

If as you go you hear a voice
of one with voice like you,
to fill the air with meaning noise,
that magic humans do,

you're bound to think it common,
too familiar to be shocked,
but a willful, thinking being,
near your being, walked and talked!

To will a thing and act on it!?
Unbound by matter's laws?
No chemical reaction
can explain away this cause.

If we were naught but atoms,
and by their laws restrained,
each thought would not be chosen,
but follow, as if chained,

by inviolable laws,
one following another,
without a choice to break them,
to will this or the other.

We break the laws of physics
every time we think or choose.
For reason follows no set course.
We choose! My God! We choose!

If you are not alarmed at this,
amazed that we are free,
to break the laws of chemistry,
you're less likely to see

that each and every human,
who wills, and thinks, and moves,
deserves respect, has dignity,
should be among your loves.

Their right to live, to choose, to love,
is equal to your own,
and you, my friend, a marvel are,
and more than flesh and bone.

Myopia

My literature professor said, "Everything's a text."
The Freudian psychologist thought everything was sex.
A physicist materialist insisted, "All is matter."
Do bakers think all that exists is rising in a batter?

Good Shakespeare wrote, "The world's a stage" -
A playwright and an actor.
He too was subject to this rage -
This occupational hazard,

That makes computer programmers say,
"All is Code!" instead,
while idealist philosophers think "All"
is in their head.

I might hear out a plumber who suggested, "Its all water."
I understand a mother whose whole world's her lovely daughter.
To hear a saner view of things, I found her four year old.
She sleeps and plays and eats and sings, "The whole world's made of gold!"



(In our age of specialization, single vision and limited scope get in the way of seeing the whole in a healthy way.)

Spring

In the low crook of a tree
that blossomed white
in my brother's yard this week,
a robin had made a nest,
and my niece found three blue eggs,
mildly speckled and the same size
and color as her wide eyes.

Life beginning again
in the branches,
in the nest,
in my brother's children.

Easter.
Colored eggs and
kids searching
in the nooks and hidden places
for these speckled reminders
that life goes on again after
the death of Winter has taken
life from the Tree.




(People who live in modernity, who have separated themselves from the seasons and nature significantly, often ask what children hunting for colored eggs has to do with Easter. This moment with my niece answered them.)

Poor Boy

A certain man died
nearly two thousand years ago.
Regardless of what you think of him:
that he didn't exist;
that he did but was merely a man;
or that somehow, what billions
have come to believe --
that he was divine;
whatever your thoughts
on the matter, your life,
and the world you live in
were impacted by the life,
or the myth, or the words,
or at least by the words credited to
this small town personality
who was no big shot in the world
of his day.
If his message,
or the claims about him
do not convince you of anything,
at least let the impact of his life
convince you of the one thing
all stories of him claim he came to say:
that the smallest life,
yes, even small lives like ours,
yours and mine,
matter.

Nocturne

I walked out into the Night,
into the Darkness
that had expected my visit for years,
waiting to remind me that
I was one of Her creatures;
that the deepest self we hold
is always shrouded in mystery,
as She is.

As I quit my home
the leaves of enormous trees
shook like the beating
of Seraphim wings,
on fire with Angel holiness,
praising the Lord of their belonging,
pressing me forward,
forward,
in a march to their erratic rhythms,
away from the habit of home.

The poems that prompted
my spirit to the outing
I pressed tightly in the notebook
cradled in the curves
of my possessive fingers.

I opened the book
and the looseleaf oracles
somersaulted in every direction
before me, joining the choir of leaves.

I gathered them all, save one,
which led me further into the Darkness,
walking, then running,
chasing this newborn
Angel of God
along its pirouetting path
through the empty, early morning streets,
flat against a gnarled trunk,
fighting,
flapping violently to gain its freedom,
then lighting like a winged swan
upon a puddle.
There it sucked the weight of water in
as an anchor, and held.

"You must go,"
the Angel told me
as the fluid seeped.
"Go, and be caught up
in the winds of Darkness,
letting go of your plans, and finding,
at the end of your perilous journey,
that place where your spirit holds
and will not let go.
Where your constant seeking
is not enough to stir you from
your belonging,
and you can finally
be filled with the
waters of life."

Original Sin

I came to a conviction
to throw out all convictions,
so naturally, I still believe them all.

The sense that our potential
is lacking some essential
is best described by calling it, "The Fall."

At present, our reliance,
on falsely-worshipped science,
threatens every creature, big and small.

I'd love to solve these errors -
relieve us from our terrors -
but Tweeting sans merci hath me in thrall.

Two Fools

"Nobody judge me, I have the last word!
I'm free to be me, however absurd!
There aren't any rules; I'll do as I please!
Freedom means pleasure - a life full of ease!"

...said the fool.

"I value my freedom to work every day,
Improving myself in some measured way,
Through discipline, care, and working through strife,
Loving all that I love, living all that is life."

...said the Fool.

Credo

Some say, rightly,
that the rigidity of religious dogma
is often used to oppress,
and can support,
when misused,
a portion of the philosophy of a tyrant.

The only option, however,
is the openness
of having no dogmas,
which can be used to support,
without being misused,
the entire philosophy of a tyrant.

One by One

We will all go,
one by one,
as you did, Father,
late last year.

Not raging that you'd
soon be gone.
Not knowing,
as you climbed the stairs,
that you'd reach the height
but not your bed,
crumpling to the hallway floor
beside the cedar chest
she had, and loved,
and filled with dreams
years before she met you,
when but a slight,
brunette, pretty,
athletic, intelligent,
and happier
girl.

Real, Simple Questions

Where did I come from?
What land and what place?
Where born or brought up
that reflects in my face?
What parents? What brothers
and sisters are these,
who shared in my days
of struggle and ease?

Where am I going?
What land and what place?
Where death and my passing
will end this sweet race?
What children? What spouse
will cry for my loss?
Remember my days when
the stage has been crossed?

Who are my people?
What friends have I known?
In childhood? In youth?
Who has helped as I've grown?
Have I chosen the ones
who have filled me with life,
or the ones who cared little
and gave me more strife?

What is of value?
What should we hold?
Our heart's pure affections,
or silver and gold?
By what are we wounded?
By what are we healed?
What treasure are we
to remove from the field?

There is none here among us
without secrets to tell,
and the need to have
somebody listening well.
For we are our secrets,
our wonders and wounds,
and our hearts remain lonely
until we are known.

A Winter Missed

I watch them travel as they pass,
With backs hunched and heads hung low;
Indebted to this window glass,
For me, the chilled, white winds don't blow.

I can see the art of Winter:
The cottoned limbs of evergreen
Lined across the temple's center -
The only objects carved between

The pallid roof and icy floor.
They hold the Architect's vast dome
Of Pietrasanta stone so pure
It shames the shambled halls of Rome.

The Architect's last, gentle touch
Now wipes away the marble dust,
Which disappears without so much
A whisper to the dust-bleached crust.

And as the final flakes descend,
They lift their heads and understand -
Their burdened journey nears an end.
The masterpiece in which they stand

Relieves them of the chilled, white wind.
I'm locked out, and they within.

Reconciliation

There was once a crystal mountain.
It took in the sunlight
and spread its colors over the land.
Everyone could see
all the colors more clearly then.
Some people mined the mountain,
chipping away small pieces
and carrying them home.

The smaller pieces, without the rest,
could not disperse the light as well.
One piece shone green;
another only blue.
Still others were orange or red.

As years passed
those who had looked
so long at the crystal pieces
they had taken home
claimed that only their color
was important.
Some went so far as to say
that only their colors existed at all -
that all the other colors were illusions.

"Return to the beginning,"
I was told, on my knees,
finally, as light came through
the stain-glass windows.

The Glass

It is both half full
and half empty.
This is unimportant.

Is it poison?
Magic potion?
Pure water?
Blessed Sacrament?

These are better questions.
But the one real question is,
"Dare I drink?"

Loaves and Fishes

This morning I met a rich man
whose flower-decorated bicycle basket
was full of science textbooks.

Molecular Chemistry;
Gray's Anatomy;
Astrophysics.

He was in his sixties.
His teeth, gray hair,
and nails rough and ragged
from long months on the streets.

He inquired,
as any book lover will inquire
of another carrying a volume
as I was:  "What book are you reading?"

I was about to have breakfast
and he had stopped me meters
from the door of the establishment.
For the next half hour
we talked as passersby looked on
with perplexity and amusement,
leaving or entering the restaurant.
We spoke of atoms, cells,
natural and artificial molecular transmutations,
education, the solar system, God, beauty, and love.

We exchanged names
of books to read.
I wrote my recommendations
on a page of Gray.
Then I invited him
to join me for breakfast,
but he looked at the restaurant door
and smiled, saying he'd better
be on his way.

I gave him a little money.
He inquired, as any brave human
will inquire of another carrying a name
as I was: "What's your name?"

"James."

I returned the question.
"Gee-zuz."
I tilted my head
with the half smile of inquiry.
"Hey, Zeus", he offered
as a corrective, but then,
"Jesus" again.

"Whatsover you do..."
ran through my mind.
He smiled with his jaundiced teeth.

I went in for breakfast,
but I knew I had already had
my loaves and fishes.

Dalloway

She was the kiss of flowers,
and one morning she vanished.
A charming woman one loves in triumph,
and loving extravagantly, would spread open:
tears and sorrows; courage and endurance.
Pleased for this body, and being
loved in the earthly garden.

Sweet smell. Descend to the dignity
of writing her exquisite beauty.
"Go mad. Rather you were dead.
'Fear no more, says the heart,
committing its burden to the sea.'"

Smashed to atoms, the solitary traveler speaks:
"May I never go back to the lamplight;
to the sitting room; never finish my book."

ee um fah um so...
"For there she was."



(Words and/or phrases taken in order from the pages of the novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf as an expression of the book as well as of a recent love.)

Gold Leaving (After Frost)

Nature's last gold is fire,
Her shortest worn attire.

Her dying leaf's a phoenix,
A falling, flaming helix.

Yet Autumn leads to Spring,
As every dying thing,

Pursuing chance rebirth,
Must give itself to earth.




(In conversation with Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay" utilizing the same format.)

Only We

Envy the stones,
So silent and strong.
Be jealous of streams:
They cannot take wrong
Windings, like you and I.

The sky is the sky.
The birds soar with song.
They've no need for dreams.
Only we don't belong -
And long for our homes.