Thoughts on the last days of a good man and close friend whose life ended in suffering because of a degenerative disease

As I stepped on the downward stair

I reached for a railing that wasn't there.

Precarious, precarious!

But that was not the scariest.

As I got to the bottom floor

I opened what was not a door

into a space of dark and gloom

that wasn't anything like a room.

Disorient, disorient!

I wonder where my prayers went.

It's dark and silent, this I know;

but silent dark may be friend or foe.

 

 

I regretted I regretted

But that did not change my featherness.

If I'm blowed and blown away

I may end up in such as this.

The breath I'm on has brought me here

To lose perhaps what I hold dear.

No turning back from doom or glory;

mine only to live out the story.

Gone my faith. I'm left with trust

until I give back spirit and dust.

If I could love more than could God

I would myself become a god.

No goddess I, I know that's true.

I trust to someday meet with You.

 

 Death is a clap.

Are there echoes?

I have heard in the night

how the sound goes

into the dark unknown

fading but on it goes

into the blur unseen

as if it has always been

as if I will meet it again

and know it an old good friend.

 

I don't want to join the world

I want to keep apart

So I stay under my blanket listening to my beating heart

Wishing I could sleep

Until the day ends

But my brain starts to think so I get up in self defence

There's no hiding from

And there is no escape

Whatever will get dished out that is what you have to take

So I will face the day

That is confronting me

Because it is, and I am, though I don't know how to be

 

 

Highbush Cranberry in the woods

I ate a berry that no hand had touched.

No one had planted here this shrub to grow,

None watered; and its place no one could know

But I myself. (So red, so tasting much.)

The only harvest needed was, reach up,

Bring near the branch as though unto a kiss

(What sweeter lips can there be than this)

And strip from stem to mouth the holy cup

Then with the trees come willingly, partake,

In company of leaves and birds, who also fly

As my soul will and does unto the sky,

Of this most holy time. Your spirit wake

To see the world your sister, brother, friend,

Whose heart you break and help again to mend.

I like the sky when dark with glowering cloud
For how it makes the autumn trees shine loud.
Perhaps some inner glow through veins bestowed
By days of summer sun in-poured, restored;
Perhaps the wisdom of the trees turned gold,
Distilled the patience, the wealth of age untold;
Perhaps some artist wandered here along
These fields I love and painted visual song,
Bold strokes of blaze and glow and flashing note,
A many-chorded harmony from nature's throat.

I hold the leaf up which upholds the light
Though dark surrounds, and bless me, oh this sight.
However came this magic alchemy,
In sun or cloud, may something shine through me.





And another...
 
If leaves have souls
when they die
how many bright and fragile spirits fly
in autumn when the cold hard breeze
takes the living off the trees
The air must surely fill with wraith-
like filmy figures dancing high
on their way in sweet release
to come to grow on other,
bright eternal tree.

 

I love
therefore God is

Faith may falter
Hope may die
But love remains
under every sky
Love will linger
Love will stay
And when the earth
has passed away
the cooling stars
will sigh and say
Love outlasts
Love is the infinite and only way

I dreamt I was walking beneath the bridge, upside down on the underside.
It arched high over the city scape, with a topside where cars could ride.
And I alone walked across the city turned over and on the same road,
but knowing that I was meant to walk here for it was paved as it flowed.
Others could not see where I walked but there was comfort to me
in the fact that my road had painted lines: I walk where I'm meant to be.
For out of place is a place, though not on a map to be found
And nobody knows where any road goes: tomorrow is unknown ground.

My numb stare out the window
lands my eye on a distant branch.
Near the top of a cottonwood across the farmyard
Beside a dry dead limb
I can see the roundish rippling form
Of one leaf in its winded dance.
It swings from its stem erratically
As it's tossed in the fitful air
And my seeing the stem and the leaf
Though far off, somehow TAKES me there.
And I know the leaf glossy, and how rough the bark
And it's real though it's far and far.
So my thoughts of you take me distance and worlds
Away. Though you're gone from me, there you are.
Though you're gone,
there we are.

I glimpsed a pitch black butterfly
Out of the corner of my life
I think it's flown round here before
Its wings a cold dark knife

I know I've seen pure light shine through
The flaming dying leaf
Its shine my only sanctuary
In the raging battle of grief.

The light the dark I see them yes
With eyes that are not clear
But will not close to black butterflies
Or to the light that is always near.

I dreamt they invented a new solution for pain

and called it sleep.

I said I want a double dose, want it full and peaceful and deep.

I don't want to wake again I said for an age

and rolled into bed.

I drifted and dozed and floated free

but could only live in my head.

A quiet place with the lights turned down but not

a thing I could see,

nor touch with my empty but reaching hands,

this new unfeeling me.

Not good enough! I cried to the cosmos, the uni

verse, the world.

And for my dreaming ingratitude back
into wakeful pain I was hurled.

Into Canna

Before the heat of the summer day
I walk to my garden, the breeze being cool.
Pick just a few cucumbers, beans and zucchini.
Lift onions and carrots that cling to the soil.
The mourning doves sound like the voice of omniscience,
Singing serenity from opposite sides.
One east, just occasional, distant but soothing.
One west, more persistent, and nearer to me.
There may be more doves in the distance sweet-singing,
Bringing their message for ears that can hear.
I tether tomato vines, brush off mosquitoes,
Then walk to the house with my harvest of peace.

 

Morning Glory

 

 

 

 

Longer Boats Are Coming To Win Us

My thoughts:

For so long I've held onto the shore
waiting for the tide to recede
my muscles are aching my fingers bleed.
For so long I've waited in silence and dark
imagining the blessing of just one small spark.
So long I have carried the stabbing pain

hoping  for ease, but the wound remains.

The tide still pulls, the dark surrounds,

and still I listen for one small sound.

I do not know what it will be,

perhaps a trumpet tuned just to me.

For so long I've only said honest words,

the deepest wish is just to be heard.

Must You really demolish completely my faith?

Until You answer I will wait.

This week I read Margaret Frazer's The Maiden's Tale. P. 89: "She did not say the rest: her deep  longing  to go beyond the world's illusions and passing pleasures into pure reality, beyond all pretences into knowing things as they truly were."
And then, on the last page, I read this, p. 244-5: "Know that not with corruptible gold or silver were you ransomed. Not with worldly gold or silver or any of the things they bought, but with Love...Love strong enough beyond the world's uses...she herself would go gladly back...Go back to prayers at the proper hours and nunnery matters to worry over and chance to draw quiet into her soul again out of the great silence of God. A silence more rich to her than all the noise and flailings of the world. The silence of Love."

I will think about God's silence as being the silence of Love...as something I can draw on...