Home on the Rain

most Portland days

this mossy yard stays sodden

feeding cold rivers

Between Two Mirrors

 

Time. Its name is whispered, scrawled, and mumbled in so many ways. Its face reflected in countless mirrors and dissolved into the many waters of the world.

Seasons of growth and learning, dead leaves and then new. Wrinkles, stooped height, growth rings, wisdom, minutes then inches, infirmity, rotting wood and patinas of every hue.

The flow from tide to yet another tide, months, calendars, addresses and anniversaries, cakes and cards, greying hair, the muting of senses, the cutting of young curls, births and mistakes, victories, and death.

We measure people with small pencil marks on door frames or by clothes that no longer fit. From seed to stem then leaf, to cone and broken limb. Then a harvested trunk with some of it as sawdust scattered on the floor. Hair changes color and fades in color and vitality.

Christmas, survival, recovery, mountains fading slowly to hills, the dimming of stars, first impressions and then urns and good byes, the resolutions, the dreams and trophies and the long kept dresses and jackets and the glory of what was then.

Time brings it all to bear with only the quiet whisper from the sands that continue their steady fall

 

from the top,

 

down to the bottom

 

of the glass.

Rejoice

  

Tear down that sculpted,

perfect mountain that lives in your head.

Its intimidation is not for all,

and most certainly not for you.

It won’t tell you of its jagged faults

and glacier-scoured rock, and will

surely not whisper of the legions of fallen snags

and centuries of eroded pebbles and sand

that are now missing. All lost to gravity,

drawn somewhere downhill.

 

Scores of acres lie scorched and bared by fires.

Scarred firs still trying to fully breathe, tremble

in winter winds up past the scree slopes

on its southeast side.

Legions of beetles chew into the bark

of its sheltering forests, killing the branched

beings with a million tiny torturous bites.

Delivered daily in unison

 

That perfect mountain’s stone heart once flowed.

Growing upward from the depths as molten

magma, its heart did finally stop. It cooled

and lay hardened for eons

and grew no more.

 

It casts a mighty silhouette.

Impressive and prominent, sometimes snow-topped

with orange and red hues in, “the golden hours of the day.”

But it is succumbing to earth’s eternal pull.

 

Your seemingly mighty and tall mountain is far from perfect.

2020

 

In one hand I hold

The wetness of tears, the rain that falls upon the robes

of people and hopes everywhere.  Lost hopes, lost jobs,

hunger, sickness, death, isolation and loneliness, protests and pain,

frustration, hoarding, politicization of the scenario,

pot-stirring, personal and national debts that tower above us all.

Beliefs, not news nor facts.

To fill the other hand, I have to find

the awareness, to look for and see the light.

In the other-worldly quiet nights, long walks, a flowering spring

that dazzles because I have the time to see it unfold

before me with clearing air from less used machines,

the working of jig saw puzzles with my family

and listening as my daughter discovers the quiet satisfaction

of the NYT crossword and rediscovers here love of the piano,

experiencing spring like I had not done in 50 years or more.

 

Friendliness and courtesy and communal help

for those in need seems to be also blossoming around me

 in the small and not so small parts of the world I bump in to

But If I squint my eyes just right, I can see the good, the hope and care

wearing a shirt of fear and worry.

This time has blessed us with a flaneur’s world, while it has cursed us with an anger,

a dread and divide that may not ever subside, or so I fear

as I hold my breath and wait.

Paid

 

my work is for a salary,

but when I capture the right words,

then mine is the golden pay.

Falling Down the Hill

 

We moved a lot.

Over many blurry years while growing up,

I didn’t really think much about the world passing around me.

Only the merest of plans would float through my thoughts.

Little was permanent. We just followed the moving truck.

 

Along the way, a low-grade shame slowly crept into me,

like a fever of 99.4. I felt a little off from not having enough of something,

but not quite sure exactly what that something was.

Maybe it was not getting that other half stick of gum from mother,

or the skipped lunches replaced by a coke and a packet of peanuts. 

Sometimes I still dream about whole sticks of gum, hamburgers, or a real Schwinn bike.

My friends, thunder and lightning storms,

did manage to follow me to each new house. I still love them so.

They, like the moves and cardboard boxes, were the constants in my life.

Sequential memories seemed to start for me in Houston.

We finally ate hamburgers the day we moved in.

They were served on waxy paper set on moving box tables, and it felt special.

Then Kennedy was shot, Kindergarten, smallpox and sugar-cubed polio vaccines all happened, and I even decided to call myself Alan for a while in first grade.

No one else was named Greg. It felt safer.

 

Dad found an old, discarded cheese barrel one day. It became a table

in each new living room after that. Once the furniture was in place, I would crawl

over to it and sniff the round hole in its side.

Always checking if it still reeked of its original occupant.

I got a belt with a buckle and then went to my first rodeo.

That Christmas, Santa brought me a used Wards bike that had belonged to a neighbor girl.

Never was quite sure how that worked out.

 

After Houston came L.A, then second grade back to TX, then third in LA.

Caddo Parish was home till Thanksgiving of sixth grade,

then it was off to Dallas.

 

In each new school I was introduced as

the new kid from somewhere else, standing in front of a room

full of eyes and faces that I didn’t know.

From one handhold to the next. Some safer than others.

Some friendlier, some not.

Roll the dice.

 

Towns faded in the rearview mirror. Around four I waved

goodbye to my first dog that we left in Wyoming.

On to the next sunrise ahead.

During sixth grade, and seven states

later, my next dog Charlie got hit by a car while we walked one afternoon.

 

That constant move from town to town set a rhythm in my head.

I heard it in the background.

I felt it in my stomach.

It was my soundtrack.

Playing over and over. Time to go.

 

As a younger version of me, the art of imagining, of planning or projecting

forward more than three steps down the path, was thrown out,

all from lack of use.

 

There were always new faces but not the real joy of knowing any of their secrets

or that hidden place that folks born there knew about, nor my place

in any one’s history very long.

I was just passing through.

A couple of thousand suns set, and I seldom wept for any of them.

 

That implanted, learned impatience lived in me for so long, demanding me

to hurry up, on to some vague Eden elsewhere over the horizon.

But it never told me where that was. Impatience still hangs around.

So many new address', classrooms, introductions,

moving boxes, Welcome Wagons, and expendable new names to learn

at the next new house. It was the thrill of anticipation more than

anything that seemed to get me through, that got me to buy in and move on.

 

Birthdays brought me weariness and settling for whatever

my arms could gather instead

of what could be.

My head had told me my plans didn’t change where I was going.

Just take what is there. Settle. The final option.

I forgot the taste of what I had wanted

and kept licking the same old thing, That thing left in my head.

Living and eating what was in my hands,

not my hopes or what I wanted from the menu.  

 

Till it was tasteless,

colorless, threadbare.

Suite 256

 

Oncology.

The referral had been to see a blood specialist. She said,” blood.” The sign

plainly     reads     Oncology. The door, that belongs to the sign, leads in to

a waiting room, half full of sallow faces. A dozen

un-asked for words now crowd their way into our heads to wait with us.

As we enter, the receptionist speaks on the phone with

a funeral home in full earshot of all. Everyone hears

the details she blandly discusses. We sit down

as her words sink in. We hadn’t thought past the word, anemia.

 

Lots of coughs,

some wear masks but not many.

It’s the lottery. We all will be returning for new. The weight

is so real and so enormous, breathing is hard.

It’s agreed: tricked is how we feel. Misled or un-led. Oncology was

not the word used by the doctor. Perhaps

in kindness, to not cause worry, stress or simply panic.

 

I can now see

two presenters at an awards show on TV. They seem to be fondling the envelope

while bantering a bit to stretch the time. Finally, one of them slides their finger

into the sealed flap

and withdraws the card from inside and begins to read the determination for

all to hear. The camera cuts away and the announcers reveal

there is nothing until next time. See

you next month.