~Pine Cone Diary~ March 2020

     **********

There is a sickness in the air

Tree tops are passing the news

To the stones and the soil

To prepare the paths

Through the forest

And into the valleys

To the villages of compassion;

To be cured .

 

     **********

 

Above darkening gray clouds

The dim glowing sun

Caught my eye.

I started to hum,

“Everything’s gonna’ be alright.”

As dusk, settled on my chair.

I silenced it with a sigh.

 

 **********

 

From ground to empty stoneware pottery,

my soul poured out my life

into my morning’s coffee cup;

existence to non-existence.

Oh, then to remembrance;

of knowledge, when I first held out my hand

—holding, the first summer’s rose.

I emptied my cup

holding empty stoneware pottery

waiting in anticipation for tomorrow’s coffee..

 

 

 

Ever-Changing Tide

       Under slow shrinking shadows of a receding August sun, squatting near a dribbling tidal pool, four children stare attentively to a small snail; as it furrows and squiggles through the sand, racing to meet the outgoing tide.  They were sent there to “think”. To work out the “argument” they had among themselves.

         They were told to go to the cove; “to seriously think about what each other had said and what they shouted to each other”.

          All four, ignoring each other, watched quietly as the small snail furrowed and scrunched up little piles of sand behind it. The trail squiggled slightly left, then slightly right. It was heading towards the trickling edge of an out-going tidal stream.

Like corrected mistakes,

Never straight with their curves and bends;

Listening to instinct, racing the tide, the snail

Made steady headway towards the sea.

          The children glanced up occasionally to see what the other was doing. They could see the tide ebbing away in a methodical hush. The sun sinking, shed its soft orange and crimson color glistening on the expanded beach sand.

          No one was talkin’. All of them, were still trying to remember what the stupid argument was all about anyway? It wasn’t a fight! Hey! None of us cried! We didn’t tell anybody to shut up! That’s for sure. we just had… an aah, aah, a disagreement!…as their minds ping-ponged in thoughts and rattled on.

With purpose, the snail inched on

Ignoring the circling birds and their potential grip

 For an eventual fatal drop to the flats;

Between shallow tidal pools

And, dry jagged rocks.

          It was getting cooler. They hardly took their eyes off the steady movement of the snail. Except of course, to sneak a peek; checking on each other. They began inching themselves closer together to keep warm and hoping the others “weren’t still mad at them” for whatever they said, or for  whatever they got wrong.

Never dawdling, clinging to its direction

Pushing the sand aside, racing to catch the tide,

The snail forged on.

          Tide water was slipping into drying sand with each forward push and receding splash. The children, realizing it was getting late, were looking up at each other more frequently. They could smell supper on the camp grill. They were ready to go back.

Approaching the last rolling ripple of retreating tide

The snail stopped, as if out of breath.

But, only for the moment.

          Suddenly, the ocean swelled and peaked into a fast rushing froth, it grabbed and pulled the snail. It slid, tumbled, snapped up in surf and foam, flipped, and swallowed into the bubbling, boiling sea.

          All four children, now on their feet watching, caught sight of the snail scooped up in retreating swirling sand and glittering pebbles of a retreating wave.  “There!” The children shouted to each other, pointing to a distant crescent wave pulling away from the shore, “There” on the surface, sitting tall, proud and smiling, was the snail. He looked back at them, waved and shouted an exhausted but jubilant, “Tally Ho!”

          They simultaneously faced each other, eye to eye. “Huh?” Then, pumping their fists, all exclaimed, “It made it! YES!” Then grabbed each other’s hands with a burst of laughter; apologies were unanimously accepted. They skipped and dragged their feet making their own squiggly trail, left then right  along the warm drying beach.

          Supper on the grill, chocolate milk, and stories of a “swooshed up snail they ‘FOREVER’ followed,” were animated in the evenings’ bright open fire light of flaming marshmallows, burning, blown out, and squished on chocolate squares between graham crackers and pushed into sticky lips with anticipated delight.

          I heard it all slide into the clapping sound of incoming waves announcing the tides transition from low to high. It was bedtime, clean up, and evening prayer. Kissing me on the cheek and with a blessing, they all took their day in stride, sharing in the applause of the snail’s completed race and an encore for the ever-changing tide.

  Listening to the tide, as we watched the children disappear into the tent, I on one knee poke the dying fire. Good thoughts were sent to the children; forgetting their disagreement without anger, melancholy, or disappointment. And, a mindful poke from Katie’s marshmallow stick, smiling at each other, as she spread the dimming embers, for a happy jubilant snail.

 

Draft 12: Pine Cone Diary… Hermit Island, Me.

 

Page 97 of 122 ~Pine Cone Diary~

[1st. Draft Dec,2017 rev: Sept,2018 ] 

A weathered Sundial

 

When we are young,

We can tolerate physical pain,

 emotional blizzards and blinding rain.

      We seek recognition, fortune, and elusive fame.

We chase glittering stars on summer nights

and keep sentry for sunrise to celebrate dawn with life.

 

We even can cry without forcing a fight.

     We can talk, discuss, and compromise.

We recognize beauty in a surprise.

We are able to light a candle when the fire dies.

 

When we are young,

we can laugh at ourselves. We believe in pennies

flipped fluttering to the bottom of wishing wells.

We become Peter Pan and Wendy

ignoring pouting Tinkerbelle.

 

We watch directions flow through heart than through mind.

     We travel distances immeasurably fast;

roadways, highways, and paths. We float

above chipped concrete, soft tar, and beaches

with ankle-deep sand.

     Even paths that are crook and twisted

in shallow water or on solid land.

     We are each other’s map.

 

We frolic in spaces where time never exists;

     along with places, where sadness, is just a visit.

When we are young,

eventually those days, I suppose, age eclipses.

 

**********

When we are old,

we sit with aches and pain. Confused and misunderstanding, we complain.

     Our clothes begin to slip or do not fit.

Along with our acceptance of expected fortune

 and absence of fame.

     We wear sweaters and warm cotton hats on cool summer nights

watching the sunset fade into rising moonlight.

 

(Having bitten Eve’s apple, once forbidden

     We become stubborn —guilt ridden with indigestion

and slow in healing. We sleep uneasily on thin frayed

but forgiving linen. We forget ourselves in mixed memories,

forgetting our birthday in evaporating wishing wells).

 

 

The sound of muted Tocks

Tick off the clock, like muffled thunder

under the hoofs of approaching mercenaries;

Angels from heaven and perhaps one or two

from hell’s monastery.

 

We shed a small tear, becoming a prism, a glitter

     in the sliver of a waning moon. We let it fall with joy

on another evenings shadow,

cast upon a weathered sundial, praying for the ‘morrow;

     when we are old.

(It all subsides from youth to age.

From steel to rust, from rock to gravel.

From coal to diamond and back to dust.)

 

Understanding Love [Haibun]*

     The screech of a bird on a nearby tree alerted me, that their prey was at my feet. I saw nothing but my heart beating, which through my shirt, slipped and fell at my feet, among the weeds.

     The bird screeched louder, followed by small chirps before landing on a branch next to me. I could see its eyes focused on my eyes.  

     I reached down and picked up my heart, tried to force it into my wallet, but it would not fit. So, I tried to stuff it into my pockets. Naw, that wasn’t it! I had no choice but to reconnect to my body, speech and mind. By the time, it was done…

summer bird is gone

leaving me with fall’s bright colors

quilt for winter snow

 

 

*Haibun (俳文, literally, haikai writings) is a prosimetric literary form originating in Japan, combining prose and haiku.

 

 

The Legend of the Last Tribe at Little Pond (Center Sandwich, NH)

An angel flying closer to land and seeing, from its view, a better direction

for completing their mission —continued with more traveling

for the possibility to land in the space of extinction,

where new growth can sprout.

 

The tribe, now down to only the chiefs, children, and wives,

trudged in complete innocence, as in birth,

towards ZoralinQ. Carrying with them this incredible link.

 

When suddenly, they found on the path, their feet on an edge

holding the link at arm’s length above an abyss.

Questioned among them, received no answers.

 

Nothing new, What possible course?

So, they all decided to grab the existing link

To become the angel landing,

 

for the possibility to land in the space of extinction,

where new growth can sprout.

 

“To this day, I often hear their chant,” an old fisherman says,

“usually in the twilight of a waning moon”.

photo and wood carving R.K. Garon

 

An Autumn’s Rush

Dripping trees from an autumn rain

shake off summer leaves to cushion my path.

Some circle and drift, falling softly in my hair.

They, accompanying their colors,

bright orange, reds, and yellow-green,

crown me —with a passing season’s wreath.

 

 

A northern New Hampshire wind threads steadily through the pines.

I continue to exhale gray smoke from my cigarette.

With your memory, I slide through Franconia Notch a step above slow

—soaking wet, cigarette still lit, chasing a summer’s love

before my path and its pine scent, are covered by snow.

*****

*Originally written in Sept. 2014 with several edits since

 

Love’s Illusion~ rev:71a

     

Yes, Love, I was born with the first waxing moon.

Bald, without a thought for a tea’s afternoon;

—we embraced, dancing in every crook and cranny of my mind,

only to find myself as no one, and finding no place there.

~~~~

Oh failing heart, why did you forgo me?

To enter space where I would thirst?

Then, drowned me in a sea of deserts bleached sand.

Perhaps, in the essence of  moonlight and sunlight

—I will find You, where their lights both meet, and see

 what I have never lost nor have ever found.

 

Offspring’s

I watched:

Fall leaves flutter and swirl —raised to dance in the arms of a Spring wind;

settling them down at the base of the trees, where they were born.

Father Winter has gone.

 

I saw:

His summer’s mistress awaken in moist dawn, not giving a damn.

Cuddling her offspring’s with sunshine –she sang them lullabies.

Coloring them with a promising  growing up, with their Father’s pride.

photo: R.K. Garon

 

Full Moon Depression

Sweet seductive depression, she puts you slowly in bed

unable to get up.

She holds you in her grip until your mind cries

—with the empty feeling of a heart abandoned;

she bites you with illusions of guilt

and buries you with all your sins

in her embrace of despair

                                                                                       Edward Munch vampire II 1895

 

The Gift Of Free Will At Sunrise

      I shall not seek Thee —in a stiff collar of white or colorless turbine. Or, robes of wool…covering skin dark or light over bones disguised in cloaks of Yellow, Orange, Brown, and lest not we forget Cremora White!

      —You have no need to convince me of the fig leaf on my soul! I have acknowledged its presence. I will find its place in the empty void.

      I shall find You —by going forward and leaving me alone.

In valley below

winter thaws upcoming spring

On Holderness Road