Warm colors not from outside

Outside, the garden’s disarray reflects his own spirit.
He gazes beyond today’s errie political mendacity,
attempting to follow the message of Thanksgiving.
The season’s story asks with answers and gives questions.
For now, nature’s bounty has shriveled to dry, itchy skins.
The joyous noise has ended, the guests all departed.
Remnants linger.

A hickory smoked ham carcass bears the scarred record
of hungry hands which sliced morsels into salivating mouths,
a thankful sharing of sustenance. Pillows and wool blankets,
suddenly cold, lie folded neatly near the futon bed,
which is now restored to its day job as a couch. No evidence remains
of the two cuddle snuggets which giggled there the night before.
Nor any more tinkling sounds of little doggy tags prancing
round Mom’s legs, skirting all arms but hers, bonded in devotion
to her care alone, with angelic innocence, golden halo. Glittering,
smiling eyes have gone. Squeaky floors are mute. Missing Espresso,
sounds and smells are silent. The cacophony of stuffed hours
has floated away. Surrendering to the moment was easy
with three conversations bubbling for attention all at once.
Happy consociates huddled around mini-decisions,
who wants to go on a walk, when it’s nap time. Ah, nap time.
Torpor weighed in after all. Events happened, with no one bearing
singular responsibility. A snack or a nap or a laugh was shared.
Familiarity insulated us from the cold, strange world
beyond the glass windows. The den bustled with clusters
of happy commotion.

Alone now in his newly painted great
room, his mood is comforted by the warm colors, gold, orange,
deep burgundy purple. That was the idea. The gray day surrounds
us all in our pools of warm light. The garden beckons
with the answer to this sweet emptiness.
Pick up where you are and tuck away these memories
for a long winter’s night.

technorati tags- Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving poems, gratitude, garden

For Barbara, until we meet again.

This beautiful eulogy was written by my housemate, Joseph, who was quickly becoming friends with Barbara.

How can you.
In spring.
At Easter.
Was it Good Friday, Barbara?
Will you rise again the third day?
Master, had you been here, my brother had not died.
Had I heard the phone ring
Had I heard the phone ring
We were going to color easter eggs
Maureen Beth Katrina Me
and Barbara
Saturday we were going to color Easter Eggs.
Have a jolly old time.
Make new friends
Have a jolly old time
For easter, for spring
For rebirth.
If a man die, can he live again?
Barbara.
Beth had bronchitis.
Maureen had to rush to help a friend.
Sorry, no easter eggs.
Sorry Barbara.
Sorry.
Sorry.
I called, left a message
Sorry, no easter eggs
No celebration of rebirth
Later, I’m sure, sometime. Hope you’re well.
Click.
You called. No one heard the phone ring.
Was the blade in your hand when you called?
No one heard you call.
No one heard you calling
No one heard.
If if if if. If only. If.
No one caught you.
Could I catch you? Could anyone?
You looked into me:
Hungry eyes, longing eyes, I held your eyes as long as I could
Barbara.
I’m not Gabriel.
I have no silver trumpet.
I cannot hold your soul
Slipping slipping slipping away.
How could you
In spring.
The roses will bloom, Barbara.
How will they bloom, knowing you are not there?
Will they not blacken, a sudden blight
turn your yard to mourning?
No, Spring will come
Roses bloom.
They whisper: For roses know. For roses know.
Roses, trees, they have come, they see:
Human lives burning light bright flames
Little lights burning burning burning
The roses know,
They dance, they hold her
Her suffering soul nestled in their velveted petals.
The roses know
Sorrow. They hold deep in their dark velvet heart
The roses know
Roses know it is spring.
Roses wear thorns and wrap themselves in velvet
Velvet: dipped in blood.
We pruned your roses together.
Cut out the dead
Cut out the old and useless and overgrown.
Cut back to the fresh, bleeding green of life
Cut it back.
For it is spring. Time.
Time to: Let death go
The soil whispers of dead things falling to the ground
Dead things: slipping apart to feed
New glowing green rising from the soil
It is spring. Let us whisper: rebirth.

Foxglove Fairys

We sat outside after dark
sipping mint juleps
tasting the relief of a gentle breeze
to soothe the long, hot breath of day

The light of several torches
brought them out,
the foxglove fairies.
From between flickers they flitted, translucent,
from under the bells’ pink florescences.
Looking closely,
little purple footprints could be seen,
evidence of romping at
sparkling parties
down
amongst the underbrush.

One flower
leaning close by our chairs,
peered at us with eyes
of nocturnal lilliputian romance
musing in the moonlight’s slippery rays
catching our thoughts
in platinum jars.

Incandescent Nectar

Anybody read German? When Ralf and I lived together, he transtlated this poem of mine so we could print out cards for both our American and German friends. The photo is one i took of roses he gave me, which I thought looked stunning against the snow.

This poem was inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus. His mystical style touched me deeply. I read a version which had the German and English side by side. So I picked up a little German, too.

Garden of Growth, II

Upon revisiting and revising this poem, I noticed how much its message applies to life in general. As I age and hopefully grow wiser, I am learning that letting go of habits is not only vital to happiness. It’s also vital to learning and to growing as a person. I’ve recently started studying Alexander Technique, which I will write about more soon. One of the basic lessons of the method is to let go of the tension in the neck and stay open in your awareness. This is harder to do than one might think. Alexander called it Primary Control. I like to think of it as Primary Flow. Let each second go as it happens. Repeat. Rather than creating a superficial life, this idea allows one to experience the richness of the moment much more deeply.

The seeds emerge naked from gray, rough soil,
though most will perish as grist of earth’s scheme.
Their compost holds kernels of mealy toil,
micro teams, tiny mules carrying molecule dreams.
This war marches on. The drama rolls fresh
with each rising and falling of seasonal flesh.

I used to gently cradle those leafy twigs,
pining within their rhythmical trance.
I fiddled and darted, lost and ready
to control that volume of verdant folly.
I toiled from dawn to dusk to cage this romance.
I staked stems, preened buds,
willed red berries on holly’s branches.
I beamed with delight at delphiniums blue night
but daily squished aphids with horrible fright.
Hinoki’s form would finally reach balance,
necessitating tragic hacking of nearby Hamamelis.
Trailing Nasturtium must ramble freely
over carefully chaotic, mossy patio.
Cardinal Richelieu finally gave up the ghost
after five uprootings to aptly pair
his wine purple rose with more heathen hosts.

I strove to capture kairos*, embed its seething flair.
This chimera dwindled with thousands of hours
of pushing days in a stubborn wheelbarrow,
driving my load to pattern and style this living
sculpture into rank and file soldiers of my lair.
Time ground me down with its meticulous power.

As I feared, things went wild. They flattened
and ruptured and cheated my rules.
The Lungwort blasted forth, had its own way
and colonized insouciantly with its spotted tribe.
Autumn Clematis scrambled over trellises
and basked in the sun, surveying the fool’s
game down below, laughing at all the fun.

Then, tough rubric knots let loose their tether
as my life became twinned by other urgent events.
Watching from afar, the garden seemed closer than before.
And Plumbago’s happy scurry beneath
pink Asters fence seemed their own private
dispute, their outcome to pass sentence.

Five years have passed since I relinquished power.
Ten years before that I clutched at this stream
while its crumbled message sifted through my fingers.
From my rough hubris sprouted this quiet lesson:
The constancy of change remains new for the ages.
I come away sage, having learned not to confuse
dreams of perfection with nature’s carnival muse.

*From Wikipedia- Kairos is an ancient Greek word meaning the "right or opportune moment". It is now used in theology to describe the qualitative form of time. In rhetoric kairos is "a passing instant when an opening appears which must be driven through with force if success is to be achieved." (E. C. White, Kaironomia p. 13)