Parents (Prayer) Promise

As we breathe, as we live,

we walk in the shelter

of His wings.

How many times can we tell you we Love You?

And how Many times can we say

You are a part of our God?

Every prayer we send to our Creator,

has a gracious acknowledgement

of His gift, of you, to us.

Our Children

is His acknowledgement

of our praise.

How Many times can we tell you we Love You?

now and

 Forever .

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Last night’s lover

She deferred her last glass of wine, to the glass topped “coffee” table. as she got up going to the bathroom and went to bed before passing out, in her summer evening night gown.

            Waking before sunrise, with a stirring and murmuring as I was falling back to sleep, I could hear her looking and finding her car keys that she had illegal parked on the curb between two maple trees.

            Leaving her underwear  between the sheets and without a parking ticket, she smiled and blew me a kiss, as her tires chirped with a happy squeal and went south for the winter.

spring rain on lush green

drips on dandelion leaf

sprouting an outlaw

 

~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..

 

 

 

a rose on snow

fall vapor catches and thaws the last standing rose;

on dew turning into a frost greeting –

 

caught in my last breath of summer,

i linger in between that space

understanding the rose —seen

slipping gracefully into winter.

 

oh, how could i have embraced you?

knowing, i must let you go!

 

with that said, i sigh a good-bye

with ego and pride; 

windy hair and your bright blue eyes.

 

Romeo, Juliet, and those perfect Bob Dylan lines

that created a pause in time to hear the tide

of changing times.

 

now, i also must go. but, instead of leading

—i must follow the petals fall.

 

a peeling self in love,

always blossoms anew in the soul

that never touches the  ground

 

Hermit Island

Happy Birthday Abe, Dylan and the rest of you : )

 

I smell the sweet wind over the dunes

in a warm Maine summer morn.

Papa said it’s fine to dive into the Sea

between breaking waves and sky.

I took his advice.

I surface out of breath, with a smile.

Dusk faded into flickering flashing lights.

Chocolate milk and sparkling stars

captured in growing eyes.

Mama said, “Let them go,

There is no room in the car.”

We left them on the shore of the Sea

closing our eyes

as they were saved in memory;

with sparks of lightening in echoes of light.

It was time to go home.

But, she added “not until dawn”.

 

A Sonnet For My Solstice Child

Oh, shadow upon me as a steel gate

Keeps a fountain frozen; longing for spring.

In darkness, with the light’s promise, I wait

for the rising sun on new mornings’ wings.

 

Seeds beneath ice reject deaths history;

In a mind’s aging place of well-tilled soil.

Hands cold and crossed, holding joy’s poverty

In prayer, for passing summer’s last spoils.

 

Each day in lengthy dour to silver night, 

A child, my youth, an ember in my heart

Awakens in warmth beyond blackened light;

I await creation’s surprising spark;

 

I welcome the ‘morrow’s guest to arrive,

With gate left unlocked, for my solstice child.

 

The wind sends messages

     

      The wind sends messages through pine wood doors, around skyscrapers and street lights. Through the matrix of the suburbs, over the mountains, across the pastures, sown fields, and vineyards; repeating her message to the sea.

      I heard one night as the wind passed through, that the moon is made of cheese. I smiled and snickered when suddenly my hat blew off my head, hearing very distinctly “oh pull-eeez”.

Winds play limbs at night

Moon dances in their shadows

Winter snow smiles

 

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.

 

The Bell Without A Clangor

Note: clapper rings a bell while clangor is a continuous loud banging or ringing sound.

“Searching for the truth

through words and speech

is like sticking your head

in a bowl of glue.”

                                    Yuan-Wu

I left my house this morning in anger and confusion; about a life that has become greater in my mind than who I am.

Looming in illusions, I am unable to crack the barrier between the mirror of interior love and that of external desire.

I took a foggy path on wet dew grass, pushing dripping ferns on a dreary cloudy day, leading me into the dark forest green. Entering, I brushed aside pine branches, crushing small pinecones as I passed on a carpet of fallen pine needles. Unknowingly, I arrived in a small misty clearing.

I sat on a large old timbered oak stump. I put my head in my hands, placing my elbows on my knees, my mind and senses still frantic and frenzied in complete clamor, when in a moment of silence, I heard a distinct thud. Then I heard, a very pronounced, with authority, a very loud but distant thump!

I quickly looked north, south, east, and west. I found nothing but myself, placing my head back in my hands I spied a small clay bell rolling, settling between my feet. With one foot, I pushed it aside thoughtlessly, across the flat ground into a divot of soil.

As quickly as I had pushed it aside, it rolled back at my feet with a very pronounced upright thump. “Good morning, kind sir.” I heard in a hollow tone. Startled, I again looked around to see who was approaching me. There was no one to be found and now I was questioning if there was even a sound. “Excuse me, good sir!” I heard again. Was I losing my mind, hearing voices I could not see?  “Ahem, gracious sir, I am, at your feet!”

 I looked down to see a small white and bluish gray clay bell speak. I said a small prayer and blessed myself. I said good-bye to the mind I had, and hoped somewhere along the line, in time, this conscious brain and I would somehow meet again.

Mind gone blank, losing all common sense and scattering my gloomy personal burden, I spoke without thinking. “And a good morning to you too, and may I ask, what in heaven’s name are you doing here by yourself? In nowhere!”  She answered, “I have lost my clangor and without a sound, I have been disregarded. Now, I wait in silence for a sound, waiting to be found.

 I heard you coming, but, my first impression was disappointment. You are so much taller and bigger than I am. And you walk like a banger and a bonger and I am much too fragile for that tone asunder!”

         Suddenly my heart sank— swallowing my mind; I shrank to the size of nothing —when mystically we seemed to both hear a tone. I picked up the clay bell and walked back down the path I came. The sun began to shine and my path opened wide.

Ever since that morning, I seemed to have escaped the illusions of being bigger, or taller, or even smaller than I am. Smiling I walk without clangor and without confusion or anger; as my white and bluish gray clay bell sits on my dresser, dusted and ringing a silent tone together.

(Without the hearts sound of clamor,

humbled and silenced,

 I have learned to quiet my mind

and to speak with a voice

in the tone —of my own bell).

This clay bell was gifted to me by Judy Ann Kline, a very gifted potter. [Wilmington Vt.,/ N. Hampton NH.] And I re-gifted it to the parents of my sixth grand child, a grand-daughter due in January 2919

 

 

rev8:2018 ZQ/RKG

 

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.)