November 11, 2016

I am outside, walking with my dog,

both of us a little slower now

as we move through the new dark

of this mid-autumn evening,

and there is a super moon

( or so we have been told

by all the learned astronomers),

the brightest mankind has seen

since 1948-- auspicious indeed.

In that year my brother came forth

and my father was soon departed,

off to find new ventures up north,

starting a three year separation.

Thus, I am sure it is meaningful,

but Maisie is not so certain,

still earth bound is Ashe

with all her doggy concerns,

the smells that assure her

she is somewhere near home,

and not a bad place to be.

While I muse of heaven and forever,

and search for links to the past,

she reminds me that this soil

is where we are consigned,

of the need to find our path

through the maze of each day--

in this lovely breathing now.  

Devotions

(Read at the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship November 20, 2016)

I can’t subscribe to piety,

but perhaps I will be devout,

though I won’t be too specific

about where I direct it.  To be aware

rather than observant is my direction:

sure of the love bestowed on me,

bathed in gratitude every morning,

but less certain of allegiances;

much as in listening to Bach

I am assured of majesty

and confident of eternity

without trying to be exact;

though on some nights I am happy

to defer to the last few crickets

in their song outside my window,

defying the days which must come,

or to a moon so large and bright

that eyes almost conceive a corona;

and so it goes on, this gift

I scarcely deserve,

this wonder that needs no name.

November 2, 2014: All Souls Day

Sunday morning, sitting in my pew,

the trees where I watched

the waltz of the leaves in August

were now bare under gray skies.

How fitting for All Souls Day,

a day we oddly celebrate

the voids in our lives,

those dears we cannot replace.

I thought of great souls and ordinary,

the people who fixed our lunches,

and others whose burden

was to alter the times we inhabit;

all now become our honored dead,

the people who made us possible,

those who left us this place

that we can call home.

As we sang the last hymn

the clouds began to scatter,

the sky found its opening,

let the light fall in shafts,

and the world moved on.

No Regrets Need Apply

I shall not bother with regrets.

It’s all hypothesis,

and there is no evidence,

no clear path from A to B.

I might have been a historian,

fingers dusty with old documents;

or, as my father wished,

a lawyer, parsing the points

of cases full of rights and wrongs;

but instead, near the end of life

I am finishing up as a poet,

full of concerns for the past

that I negotiate with scant data;

arguing the elements

of what is good and true

without the benefit of statutes;

but living in a world of asters

and flocks of blackbirds massing

in the light of a changing season;

and my fate seems satisfactory,

much more than merely acceptable.

My Vocation

So many poets write of pain,

of day brimming with troubled thoughts,

and I can’t.  I have been spared,

lived a life mostly full of grace,

or at least when difficult

it was something I managed,

or imagined that I was managing.

I was at at peace-- and even better--

with my parents as they slipped away,

have no quarrels with my brother,

still live with my wife,

and a miracle-- talk to my children.

The intimations of mortality

have presented themselves, as they will;

a folly to deny-- and yet--

they are still in the wings,

seemingly not ready for their cue,

and so it must be my duty

to tell the other story,

to wake and witness wonder,

to sing and shout thanks,

and that is what I propose

as long as pencil finds paper.