Looking Forward

To my children


Forward is the chance to see my
daughter and my son grow older.

Forward is the order of the seasons:
winter, spring and summer.

Forward wakes before the dawn, and
forward makes its way back home.

Forward sees the setting sun
and looks beyond.


----

Dawn gently breaks,
    not as a sudden thing:
the sun
    of a day’s ontogeny
        does not surprise,
nor does it sound
    a loud awakening
or slap
    the first breath out of me
or shine
    hard light accusingly
        into my naked eyes.
Dawn is the dark’s
    slow unraveling,
        the day’s revealing rise.

Time dawns on me:
I am inclined
    to set alarms at night
and run
    cold showers when I wake.
        I want to face the day
before it faces me.
    I need light
to put
    my clothes on properly,
but usually long
    before the break
        of dawn I’m on my way,
letting dawn
    distinguish those who work
        from those with time
            to play.

I am determined to beat the day,
though dawn,
    and in dawn’s easy pace,
is when
    and how I ought to rise,
        letting nature have its say
instead of doing
    it my own way, chasing
shadows
    to the next horizon,
courting ghosts
    of healthy, wealthy, wise
        to my dying day;
despite the dawn,
    I keep on facing
        life the other way.

But dawn keeps on
and on
    that day of final rest,
if I
    should wake before I die
        I pray the rising sun
will shake
    me from my sleepiness
and let
    me see the morning sky
wash over me
    once more before
        my daily dawns are done,
before
    my final east to west
        and the pull of a setting sun.

----

Forward is the chance to see my
daughter and my son grow older.

Forward is the order of the seasons:
winter, spring and summer.

Forward wakes before the dawn, and
forward makes its way back home.

Forward sees the setting sun
and looks beyond.

And I Shall Broadcast, Saying Nothing, The Starry Echoes Of The Wave...

Y yo transmitiré sin decir nada

los ecos estrellados de la ola...

  - Pablo Neruda, from Deber del Poeta

Social creatures of the neighborhood gather,
one by one, to sit and watch the waves roll in.
There will be another time to jump into the water,
to splash, to play,
to catch fish and work the waves.
There will be a time, too, for leaving this place,
riding the winds and
finding inland treasures.
But for now, and here, they are content
to gather, to pause,
to gaze and ponder.
They take their place on the sand,
a few yards away from the water’s edge,
a few feet one from another,
And quietly converse without words:

There will be a time, soon enough,
to engage in raucous
playground laughter,
And there will be a time as well
to broadcast complaints
and call neighborhoods together,
But for now, and here, they are satisfied
to stop, to compose,
to start to consider.
They take their place under the sun,
pulling up one leg
in restful balance,
This is their moment of peace;
this is their poem to remember.

And there will be a time for recitations,
as there will be places without peace,
But it is enough,
here and now,
to sit and watch the waves roll in.

Week 2: Thirty Birds

Thirty Birds, my first published tributary, offers poetry devoted to thirty different bird species. The book includes names and photographs, but I’ve decided to keep it to the poetry this time.

Moleskin Memoir 1.1: A Preface

This is a memoir, if it's not too late ...for a backward documentary, a journal reconstructed on whims and maybes making up for years of forgetting to take notes: whims for what and how much I choose to remember, maybes for all that cannot be said with certainty, which is, respectively, nothing (whims) and everything (maybes). Certainly there is purpose in whims and maybes, the never chosen and ever qualified. But it's not for me to say. There will be, anyway, an attempt at order and veracity, as there is, after all, a desire to be read and remembered. So, Chapter One: I was born. And in the end, I will simply stop writing. Which is what we all progress towards. Inkless we are born, and inkless we shall be in our final moment, but what stories there are to be told, what whims and maybes to be written inbetween! So let me begin.

Translations

We tried reasoning our way to Him:

it did not work...

Reason took us as far as the door;

but it was his presence that let us in.

- Sanai, tr. David Pendlebury

Reason started writing.

Self became the paper.

Matter took form and

Form took shape.

Love, be encouraged;

Trembling, be reserved.

Reason, be instructed,

Self, become aware:

As long as you are here

Your portion is your tomb,

Your home is distraction

And you live in deceit,

But set your eyes on the willow,

Let your soul see paradise;

Let your lips pronounce the letters

And perceive their deeper meaning

With your soul.

While your pleasure is desire

And desire is your treasure

You remain a little child:

Carry on, play away,

But you return with nothing

From the ocean but foam

And empty possessions

Scattered all around you

Like oyster shells

Marking your obsession

But missing the essence

Of the treasures left behind

At the bottom of the ocean.

Return to that place:

Beyond the mud, within the shells

Lies the purity of pearls,

But you must go to the depths

Of your soul.

Let this arrow be an arrow,

The reason I am writing.

The letters are written

And the work is framed,

But these words have no meaning;

They remain on the page

Until the reader starts reading

Past impurities, beyond

The mud and the shell

And the self’s own veil,

Past the blur of good and evil

To the truth in every scripture:

Open up your Quran

Crack the spine of your Bible,

But you’ll never grow fat

On the shepherd’s call.

The holiest of words

Is itself no panacea

For the soul.

Beginning, Continued

In the beginning was the Word...
                            - John 1:1

See, and listen, this is my premise:
There is a light that gives
Its light to everyone,
A light coming into our world of darkness,
And light changes everything,
And everything changes with this:

God, Word, light, shining upon us.
Living in our world, walking with us, 
Lighting our paths,
Then stepping into our flesh 
And setting fire to our souls,
Shining Immanuel!

And anyone who recognizes receives,
And anyone who receives the light believes
That God is with us and we are living
In God’s world: IN God’s world.

Anyone who sees the glory of this,
The grace and truth and fullness
Of God, the one and only Word
In the world, this is our privilege.
No one can see God, but anyone 
Can see what God makes known,

And by seeing, we are privileged
To be born of God, children of God,
Willed and determined by God alone.

I begin with this premise.

So in the beginning was the Word,
And what a beautiful word,
Capitalized and turned into poetry,
Written by Moses, thank you,
And John, thank you,
And God, thank you that every word
I write down, every word I hear and read
Is so wonderfully preceded.

And the word was with God,
And the word was God.
May the words of my mouth be pleasing,
And they will be, of course,
As long as I remember where they came from,
As long as we return with this respect:
We give thee but thine own.

This is my premise:
God is the word, my word,
The being in the beginning,
The presence of I AM, through which 
All other beings began:
Without God there is nothing;
God is always and everything,
Life over emptiness, light over darkness,
The life and light of every being,
The beginning of us all.

As sunlight pours into a darkened room
And changes everything,
So does the light and life of God
Shine into the universe: the darkness cannot win.
In the beginning, God said,
Let there be light,
And there was, and it was good.
God was in the beginning, 
Pouring light into the void and giving life
Now and ever after.  

In The Beginning The Poet Wrote

In the beginning the Poet wrote
  the tangibles and the intangibles.
But the lines were formless and empty
  and it was too dark to see the Poem’s depth.
So the Poet breathed life into the Poem,
  a breeze across the surface of the deep.
This Poem needs light, the Poet said,
  and there it was, and the Poet could see
     that it was good,

Is now and ever shall be, when
night changes into day.

Poetry precedes religion, said an editor,
and religion dims its energy.
Inevitably.  But renouncing religion
is renouncing that which would see
the life within the poetry.
I’m paraphrasing, of course,
looking for the words to see,
looking beyond complacency
and wanting to believe in more
than an old catastrophe,

And past the old dependency
of day and night and day.

In the beginning, said someone else,
  trying to make more sense of it,
  turning the phrase of an older testament,
was the Poem. And the Poem was with
  the Poet, was the Poet, and the Poet,
  who wrote everything, was the Poem.
And the Poet breathed life into the Poem,
  and in this life was the light for all to see.
But the darkness could not comprehend this light,
  so the Poet sent a man out into the world,
  someone named Religion,
and Religion came as the Poet’s witness
  to speak of the Poem’s light
  with words for all to believe,

But Religion’s words were never
meant to be the Poem itself.

Religion, the editor said, is a bit crude,
encrusting.  And yet it persists,
asserting and assenting to
the force that moves through the verse,
not with vanity but vulnerability
nor with idolatry but humility,
opening eyes to a power
that can never be owned,

And it rejoices at the sunrise,
even as its purpose fades away.

Simple Prayers, Each Beginning The Same

  For the sparrow reluctant to sing (an introduction to Melodia):
      Thank you God for all that you give us.
      Thank you God for everyone among us.
      Thank you God for being here with us.

  For the daily song discovered (an introduction to My Walking Song):
      Thank you God for walking with me --- teach me to pray.
      Thank you God for talking with me --- teach me to listen.
      Thank you God for telling me what I need to hear --- help me to remember.

  For untangling our lives (an introduction to Denouement):
      Thank you God for the fields around us.
      Thank you God for the winds that lift us.
      Thank you God for letting us go.

  For sanity beyond suffering (an introduction to A Starry Night):
      Thank you God for the ground and the sky.
      Thank you God for lights familiar.
      Thank you God for places beneath the stars.

  For the sun that rises over us all (an introduction to An Open Field):
      Thank you God for languages and perspectives.
      Thank you God for place and time,
      Thank you God for poetry and possibility.

  For unexpected moments (an introduction to The Pecatonica):
      Thank you God for the winding river.
      Thank you God for times together.
      Thank you God for the banks that rise above us.

  For all that we have to learn (an introduction to Montrose Harbor):
      Thank you God for small sanctuaries.
      Thank you God for lakefront dawns.
      Thank you God for everywhere our journey leads us.

  For hope beyond the grave (an introduction to Mimus Polyglottus):
      Thank you God for chances to smile.
      Thank you God for lives to celebrate.
      Thank you God for songs to keep singing.

...life is good

...life is good:
the breath and the beat of it,
the wake and the feel of it,
the wonder and the find of it,
the pose and the prose of it,
the challenge and the dare
and the fight of it and then
hoping it might never end
even as light touches the horizon,
the seeing and the saying
   that it is good...

It’s what I have to give to you,
all you will ever need,
what you will struggle to accept
and learn to look beyond,
the season and the turn of it,
the give and the take,
the light past every sunset,
all that cannot be seen
and the saying, seeing still,
   that life is good.

Beginning

The voice of the Lord is over the waters
                               - Psalm 29:3


I begin with the challenging premise of God.

In the beginning: we start all over,
Where every good book must begin,
Not “at” or “from” or “once upon,” but IN.

This is the story, the truth of our challenge,
And here is the first thing we ought to know:
There is no moment where God did not exist.
 
Here is the beginning, the action, the whole creation;
There can be no single point at which or from which
The great I AM began to be.  God is 

In the beginning, and in the present 
And in the ever after, God begins
Not “to,” “until” or “of a time,” but IN.

And notice: as it was in the beginning
Is in our premise now; God is, and we are,
In the days of Adam and in the days of Jesus;

Now is the spark of our creation,
And now the start of our salvation: 
God is in our birth and in our redemption,

The beginning of being and the stretch of eternity,
The breath of our formation and our resurrection,
All at once, our first day and our seventh day.
 
Evolutionists may stumble over the number of days,
Skeptics might question the progression of things,
But believers believe in the beginning,

And those who believe will know
The same beginning can continue
From chapter to chapter, can be on every page:

God, who is, can be in our every hour,
Can breathe and beat with us forever,
Part of the conversation and in our endless prayer.
 
This is the premise I begin with:
And God said, and God saw what God created, 
And it was good.  Another day.

May good be in your days, every day,
In your challenges and in your prayers;
May this be your premise now,
In the beginning and throughout the year.

Week 1: Moleskin Memoir

Moleskin Memoir, a notepad tributary from my first thirteen years, will be presented in weekly installments at the end of each week throughout the year.  But first, an invocation...

Retrospect

There will be great poetry in this
     after a while,
However long it takes to figure out
What happened, but not long enough to let
It be forgotten.  Maybe time will heal
Our wounds before we find the words to say
But the words will be there, waiting
     to be spoken,
Hidden behind whatever scars remain,
Forming themselves within our shaken souls
Like a slow forgiveness.


from Calendrums

The End Of A Year

A Reflection of 2013

It was a year of days,
of memories encapsuled
by frames of wake and fall asleep,
of moments made precious
by being relived,
of stories waiting to be told.

It was a year of big stories
and everyday stories:
the day of the bear
and the day of the fish,
days of paddling
on rivers and lakes,
through easy currents
and rolling waves,

days of driving
into Appalachia,
up to the Iron Range,
across Indiana
and all over Chicago,
and trips up to the folk's farm,

days of running
through the heat and
in the cold,
on the treadmill
and on marked courses,
at my own pace
and alongside others,

days of beer and Scrabble,
days of PADS, Habitat
and Feed My Starving Children,
days of work and working together,
days of rest and play

days I stood up to speak
and days I stood by to watch and listen,
days of tears
and days of hugging
and a few of loneliness,

teh day I fixed a fence gate,
the days I finished a floor,
days of cooking,
days of restaurants,
days of poetry
and days of Ravinia,

a day or two for my daughter,
a day or two from my son,
days of airports and days of hotels,
days of family in North Dakota,
in Wisconsin, Minnesota
and Illinois.

days caught up in news cycles,
days of getting news of our own,
days of great. distant tragedies
and days of a great, fallen hero,
days of meditation,
peace and quiet,

a day of reading with the
world spinning around me,
the days of Blackhawk victories
and days of baseball games,
a day at PNC Park,
another at Busch Stadium,

days of council meetings
and fencing tournaments
and talent shows,
homework days, deadline days,
overtime days
and blessed days off,

days of living together
and days of needing to be apart,
days of looking into the future,
days appreciating the present
and days, like today,
looking back,

days, not often enough,
I took time to pray,
days, every day in its own way,
I celebrated,

a life of days
with time marked
by anniversaries
and calendar moments,
and now is the time
to mark this year of days

and to give thanks
for each new wake and fall asleep.


not previously published

The Point of Life

1 looks to the stars
turns to the east
leans on the powers
of reason & truth.
1 pays for the view
waits for the feast
contemplates beauty
& holds on to youth.
1 bows to the throne
flees from the beast
stands off alone
while one sets up 
a booth.
1 searches within
struggles for peace
sees time begin
to grow long 
in the tooth.
1 takes up the cross
suffers the sentence
‘s less where he is now
than where he 
is going.
1 ‘s done what he’s done
comes to his senses
turns to the one
hanging next to him,
knowing
1 speaks of a presence
lives for today
lifts up the other
and shows him 
the way.


from Stillwater Symposia

My Doxology

Yes, I will praise God from whom all blessings flow 
and by whose strength my every song is sung.  

And yes, I think there’s nothing wrong 
with letting my convictions show 
or testifying to the things I know.  

And yes, I’ll sing, and though I’ve learned 
the lesson long ago that God is (always) singing 
greater songs than I will ever sing, 

I will no less keep singing 
to the music God has given me 
and by the truest notes I know,

and with a voice as providence bestows
I’ll raise my earthly spirit up to heaven
as loudly as the wind allows, 

And yes, I will praise God from whom all blessings flow!


from Turning the Metaphor

Sabbath

December is the Sabbath of the year,
Or should be so: We need a month of rest
After eleven months of business,
Before the year ahead of us no less
And more: we need this restful moment here
To bless the coming year.

I wonder if it wasn’t by design,
If God’s own resting was a matter more
Of looking forward, getting ready for
The days to come, the challenges in store
And less of looking backwards and behind,
No matter how divine.

Thus, when in God’s own image we look back
We ought to simply say how good it was
And turn toward tomorrow —with a pause,
Of course, for all it’s worth and what it does:
This holi-month allows us to reflect,
Compels us to project.

As every end ignites a new beginning,
As every prayer concerns continuation,
As silent nights turn into celebration,
As cheers turn into wishes, as ovations
Build to the encore, as the show is ending
The Sabbath world keeps spinning.


from Calendrums