Living the Dream

Dark night’s journey is a fierce battle
and I am famished for words, priceless
phrases pulse their last and I am lost
in the crumbling walls of my heart.

Oh, God, have it be said, I wrote
like a dancer dances, unable to stop
fragile flutter of toes that remember
beat and movements required.  Let
my poems pulse like forgotten stars
pinned back by morning and dropped
down over the eyes of a house at night.

Oh, daughter, take my words to libraries,
give them to women who were born late,
trade them for peace in the pathos of political
parties, if they have that kind of worth.
Set them on the coffee tables in hospitals
and let the wounded read them and heal.

Oh, tomes and stones I have carved,
I leave behind a moment of respite
for that one, simply, that one, who may need
the breath of hope, from a heart full of longing
for something others may need to write.

Dark night’s journey is moved to, like solace
that I have bent and vented on paper.  Send out
the hum of a soulful of seeds I have scattered,
My Creator, let them blossom and bear fruit
that bursts in the garden of those I have loved.
Grow fine trees of them that my grandchildren
can swing on and catch the rhythm needed
for their own poems.  Let the petals drop
at the altar your Eternal promise.  I shall live
to love and hurt and to write again. 

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Oh, the Wind, she blew, and the Wind, she knew
the tempt and the taste of sting,
for in pain we are borne, to another morn
where the wild wind whispers anew.

Oh, the Water, it rises as old man surmises,
the ebb and angst of receding,
for adrift on this shift in stone and sand
uncovered a season’s surprises.

Oh, the Earth, she knows, and the Earth she grows
in the bluster and fluster of weather,
for she is aware, in the ice’s glare
that a promise is kept ‘neath the snows.

Oh the Fire, it heats in North’s cold defeat
in his warm will he charm with delight,
for under the cover, is the root of the mother
and survival is ever so sweet.

In silence we dance and give forth the chance
to the thrum and the drum of our god,
for our faith in the chaff of a Mighty Plan
happens not in sad circumstance.

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My love came up out of water, moving
like mist that weaves low to the ground
to weave silently up the cliffs, kissing
the tips of brush cut grass as it wanders
with one purpose in mind:  to leave its ghost
deep in the garden as evidence of that love.

My love came from the ground, pale
in its confinement and wait to rise.
Brushing away the grit and grout,
it uncurled like a ballet dancer’s
swan-rising, open-armed gathering
of sunlight that will hold it through
until the next cracked smile of daylight.

My love is a fire, doused, smoldering
against a hard dark bed of drowned sorrow.
It waits, glowing and inviting, tempting,
teasing, to draw me near enough
to add more stiff sticks of belief
that things can appear done and yet, flare again.

My love is wind that rattles cattails,
that sighs through the treetops, that carries
sounds of the sweetest voice through nodding
blossoms in the garden who agree
with visitations that leave the garden
dancing in the dark and dithering in the day.

My love leaves me glittering with its mark,
making midnight moves that will leave green
promises reaching out to hold beauty.
It is a flare in deep night in need of warming
and the sounds of solace sifting on a breeze
that he is coming, however he comes, he comes.

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At the root of it, once reaching almost all the way to heaven,
lie bones and stones of beloveds and beliefs
that living should be twice, not once, no end
but simply a holding until such powers that do such things
call to rise.  Not this long wait, not this continual patience
while willow saplings, yellow straw stems, dragonflies’
perpetual pirouette as they wave goodbye and I am left
where the fog shrouds the sunlight on a crashing shore
to simply hear the sad howl of a thousand wolves, one at a time
that say there is movement but is so slow it leaves the last
grip on heavy earth  sighing with a moan.  It sits,
holding hard, while wild winds whip what’s left of faith
into a frenzied dance and fracturing fall to feed itself.
I can wait no longer.  I need more than a promise.

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Chocolate melts in your eyes,
rolls on your tongue and rises
with the lift and tenor of your voice,
reading through dim lights
from printed and poignant words.
Stone has waited forever
for the sound of your voice
and holds it for a moment longer
before flinging it to heaven with the spray
of tide’s crawl towards you.
Blessed are the beasts you quieten;
those with cracked clench of shoulder blades,
those with hard nuts for hearts,
those prone to lying in wait
for a phrase to pull them
surely to safety.  Surely.
What words are left become etched
in the still faces of a thousand ancestors
after the best has been given.
You have given flavor to the wind,
new timbre to the song that hums
here, where the ocean authors hymns.

*For Richard Doiron at the Chocolate River Festival

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