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.

August 8, 2016: A Story, However Unlikely

Tonight all I want is celebration

and my only dilemma

is where to start this ode:

perhaps Brahms or a waxing crescent,

but both are too common,

though in no way unimportant.

Availability is not a flaw,

for were it so, I would dismiss

both my flowers and the finches,

sins I could not be pardoned.

Tonight, though, I shall sing the rare,

a tale of two improbable people,

a contradiction in their geographies,

their meeting a pure accident

of a concert, a cathedral and a cat,

aided by an unwitting matchmaker.

making the miracle of Minnesota

joined to distant County Clare.

It became an encounter of light,

a glimmer of days they both saw,

which organized them not to wander,

but to firmly claim that ground

where some hope, hardly named,

persuaded them to go on

until they fell upon the joy

which might color two lives--

that wisely, they chose not to shun

Every Morning

Every morning I am glad to wake

to the light through the slats,

the gift of sun still there,

that great friend in the heavens

bringing warmth to the dawning.

It’s time to stand up and see,

to shake off the stiffness of night,

to lift my dog from the bed,

time to start coffee and go outside,

gather the paper and look at the mountains;

to welcome the grace of more hours

when perhaps nothing will happen,

though we might be blessed,

tumble into some new scent or flower,

find something that penetrates

to such a living depth inside

that we would never want to forget;

both of us happy and grateful

for another day on our planet.

Among My Peers

We are all one misstep

removed from disaster:

either by diagnosis or accident,

a fact we soberly accept

as the truth of our age.

Dreams from years long ago

have not come to pass,

whether private or public:

we are resigned to a present

imperfect and unpromising,

but find no reason to surrender,

no excuse not to hope.

We await each dawn,

happy to be alive,

to be full of thoughts

in these still lovely days

which color our moments,

to find the words we must say;

and to watch the children

who run, laughing through days,

who will people a future

which we may not see,

but already welcome

as if we were there.  

Recovery

There is so much to know,

and harder still, to remember,

that what might be called discovery

may be ill-gotten gains.

Some tune goes through your mind,

many notes but no title,

and then, as if by magic,

you know where to find it.

Some bird, entirely invisible,

sings in a nearby tree,

and you are mystified,

but suddenly, you know the name.

So many things have you forgotten

that everything is nearly new,

once again, almost as fresh

as the day you first knew,

and in the end it matters not:

It is a world of shadows,

but the joy of knowing

is never hidden for long.