To the Family of Joy

Sam said on Facebook she was terminally restless
And I thought - the story of my life
But of course, it was a medical term
Describing her state of mind

She went to Florida looking for treatment
But they said her heart couldn’t take it
So, she said, look on the bright side
I’m in sunny Florida
While you guys are stuck in the cold

I don’t want to make too much of it
But Joy was strong and beautiful
And did what only a few will do
Teach others in life
And in death

I am studying your lesson
Taking notes to prepare for
My own test
Thank you teacher Joy
May you rest in peace

Inner Me and Outer Me

Some of me is outside and some in
The in parts do not always agree with the out
What you see is not always what I am getting
The iceberg in me sometimes nicks my big boat
I can see a thing with this inside eye
And never quite name what I saw
Inner me meet outer me
Now play nice

I wanna live where they love people

Do you live where they love people?
Where they want everybody to get a fair shake?
Where they bring in cooked food when a neighbor is sick?
Promise to pray for each other?
Pound them with cards?
Talk for hours on the phone about how they are doing?
Jump for joy when Johnny hits a jumper?
Hold up traffic for a friend’s cat hurt in the middle of the road?
Joke in the middle of hell breaking loose - to help out?
Flirt with one another to pick up spirits more than anything?
Cuss fate, then ask for quick forgiveness?
Carry pictures of one another’s children?
Hurt deeply when Jim loses his job?
Give money when Jenny gets hitched?
If you do…
Stay put.

So many Saturdays and Sundays

So many Saturdays and Sundays
Strung together
Reading my books
Wondering what is best
Which is best for me?
How much of how I live did I choose?
And how much was chosen for me?
Is being chosen.

Holidays are indeed
So many Saturdays and Sundays
Strung together
And they make me wonder
Where was I when my happiness
Was being decided?

Let’s grow from this
Let’s imagine futures
That’s what these days are for
For shrugging off the coats of dry wit
For donning jackets of the joyful
Show me what I have not thought before
And you can have the rest

Thanksgiving

Let’s think on Thanksgiving,
one holiday where we gang up on cool indifference
no matter our religious persuasion.
The original givers of thanks did not place much stipulation on the day.
All we need do, they said, is check our ungratefulness at the door,
then do what comes naturally.
The only eligibility requirements are a pulse and a thought.

Those who commercialize holidays
have found the going tougher with this tradition.
The notion of giving thanks for what we have
is quite opposed to the one of wishing for what we have not.
The Pilgrims were poor materially but they had a wealth of community
and they tried to get their arms around it in commemoration.
You might say Thanksgiving is a surcease of the economic struggle.

There is nothing sexy about giving thanks.
So when you bow your head to pray, to weep even,
over how much bounty has come your way,
get it over with quickly,
for tomorrow when the sun comes up, it’s off to the mall
for the busiest shopping day of the year.
Thanks so much, we mumble,
for the blessings,
and now where’s that credit card,
it’s time to start accumulating a few more things
for which to be even more grateful.
If the year were a clock wound by the hand of finance,
Thanksgiving would be the eleventh hour.

For those who have trouble enumerating what has gone well,
there is always the alternative
to list all that has not gone wrong.
As sure as you start down this path,
our old friend cynicism locks his arm around our shoulder,
bends over at the waist and says walk this way.

Let’s see. My head has not fallen off this year.
No crazy teen attacked my loved ones
with an automatic weapon.
The sun did not burn out.
I did not become totally lazy and
start backing up to the pay window.
An automobile did not send me to my death.

I think of the folks in Haiti
Do you suppose they are thankful to survive?
Doesn’t so much grief give death stiff competition?
You can look at it that way,
but then as time lets light back in the picture,
might it not be said that joy is a formidable rival for life itself?

As the days slide past I see no greater challenge
than to face the passage of time with courage of spirit.
Sure I have fewer days left on earth than I had last Thanksgiving,
but then I also have a year’s more understanding
of what the living’s for.
I must replace hate for lost opportunity,
with love for a wiser tomorrow.
Anxious moments only serve to remind me of that Seattle vacation
when for a while I bumped the steering wheel
to sweet little diddies on the rental car radio,
and we lost ourselves in the Cascade mountains.
Somewhere out there, back in the West,
horizons still fall away like a burnt orange sky
on an artist’s wistful canvas.

Back here in the present moment let me just say
I am going home for Thanksgiving
and I am only taking comfortable clothes.
I mean renewal
I mean a little for you too
Happy Thanksgiving

Profounding a Friend

We are creatures of mind
nothing human surpasses understanding
We have two requirements this way
to understand and be understood

If I behold a sunrise
the effect on my senses depends
on my reason for looking
If I am driving my car toward it
I may see it as a nuisance

In my rearview mirror
I may find it attractive
As an artist, I may put it on canvas
As a scientist, see activity on its surface

A mind seeks to know sensory input
In evening light, Spanish moss is a ghoul
In delusion, a friend’s good intentions evil
I cannot grieve over all my errors
They are too many and time moves on

Time can make discernment better
I learn and even learn to learn

Life is fraught with paradox, contradiction,
transition, -- forms of contrast
Most of what I know
I learned in the first four years of living
For from age zero to four
the contrast is nothing to something

But it doesn’t stop there
If I visit a friend at work
and hear her talking business
it might sound as gibberish

As a foreign language
I’m not stupid, she’s not super smart
but she’s in another field from me
I’m a baby to her world

Which leads to the mystery at hand

I profounded a friend
And profounding is contrast time

Profounding goes this way—

You’ve seen the gesture before
But it is done for the first time
You might have been dropped on the moon
You’re so weak in the knees
This person is brand new
Now everything done is for the first time
And the wonder of new experience
Is how it gets new attention

Understanding rarely precedes wonder
There is no way to know how to be
With this entirely new old friend
You drive in the dark
Knowing roads go somewhere

You trust your instincts
If the wheels keep rolling
And the road winding
Insight and not just a friend
May be profound

We cannot possess another
Only meaning

And surely that is enough

Finding you

River flow
Winding Road
Dusty windshield
Coming home
Broad hills
Stunning valleys
Easy memories
Slow days
Settle down
Sit awhile
Talk long
Those eyes
Fresh words
That’s it
Past gone
New day
Join hands
Walk away
Look ahead
Another view
Finally me
Finding you