As I age,
My vision fades.
Yet I’m sure
I’m seeing more.
My experience fills in
views I’m seeing again.
And colors even more
scenes I’ve not seen before.
It’s frustrating to me,
this hazed fogginess I see;
but my sight was always poor,
so I accept the gaps and endure.
For even blurred pictures I now have at hand
Time lets me more clearly see and understand.
Upon reading Calming the Wilderness, riffing.
It feels strange to,
at last, again,
peel back the flap of another
large, manilla envelope.
Departure
Decades past,
the first one from her
contained guidance,
wisdom,
and introduction
to an unfamiliar,
yet exciting and welcome,
urban life.
I was brought in,
feted,
playing with the Big D
boys and girls now,
uncertain,
wrapped in a glass and steel
citadel
along a Northwest Expressway,
(long before I settled in a
specific Northwest expressway.)
She, always smiling,
eyes shining,
always kind,
giving wisdom,
guiding me through
the intracacies of even higher
las places I yearned to be.
Voyage
Then, I left.
What a long, strange trip!
Touching base with her
actually rarely,
yet constantly mentally,
as though she were
some reality Ebenezer,
not the man,
but the touch stone.
Return
Now we reconnect,
after our journeys took us
far and away,
and we each escaped
that cold urbanity
(once more, she teaches!),
to find our home,
our rest,
our real core sacred selves.
From the second envelope
slides black and white wisdom
about She who I love
so dearly,
and who she now,
clearly,
loves
and understands
at least as equally
as I.
Thumbing the pages,
gazing at letters, symbols:
A strange feeling
of recognition,
joy,
and gratitude.
The voice is so familiar,
with sense of connection.
My heart!
My soul!
My spirit!
swells,
and tears well
up and out
as I read of
Nature observations
and insights,
and wisdom,
and feelings,
hersyetmine.
Thousands of miles
and dozens of years
apart,
we’re even using
the same words,
receiving the same
inspiration,
talking to messengers
sent from the sky,
forests,
plains,
mountains:
Birds,
plants,
animals,
stars,
water,
wind,
Earth,
Heaven.
I’m curious if she,
as once,
is now again as connected
to Saint Francis
as I am.
All creatures….
I shake my head
in wonder
and amazement.
Such similarites!
I yearn to see
her portal,
Sangre de Cristo
and Land of Enchantment,
and hope to let her
experience ours,
Spirit Tree
and vortex folds
along the Chickamauga.
Thought:
Perhaps,
through words,
we are connecting
and connected.
The Source is the same,
whether in desert,
on mountain or plain,
through creeks and fields,
grasslands, forests,
or places I can’t yet pronounce.
I’m grateful
and moved beyond words
(and yet, here they are!)
for the truths
and her gift(s)
that this manilla envelope
revealed.
==========
For your own copy of the book of Nature observation poetry that prompted this piece, click: Annemarie Marek’s Calming the Wilderness.
As he wearily made his way
to his king size empty bed
alone
it was a song better left unsaid,
unsung.
He heavily breathing
from sinus infection
and midwinter cold
and allergies
and dust,
from cleaning up messes
that were not his own,
yet were,
taking the green pill,
medicine that would cure
his cough
or at least let him sleep,
(although he must be woken up later to take the medicine that would keep his heart beating.)
And he just watched a movie
about lunch
that reminded him of a film
about dinner,
and why has never anyone made one
about breakfast,
the most important meal of the day,
because after breakfast no one can write.
Don’t wait up.
And the movies and the poems that spawn them,
he wonders if he could write such,
that perhaps some obscure
Art House actor and actress could make them come to life
and seem more real
and less pretentious than they are.
Then, in the midst of his rambling,
the door opens
and she who was once
the author and finisher
of his life and salvation
interrupts
and he doesn’t know if it’s about
old men’s diapers
or the ice cream mess
he had to clean up from the floor
because she,
unaware,
left it there.
Will the House burn down someday?
Is he the only one who can see?
And the art house films
remind him of his daughter,
cosmopolitan
(though not in a cosmo girl type of way,)
but living in the Queen City
or the Big Apple,
and now he is out
in rural deplorable land
and he wonders if his lack of connection
to the arts,
to music,
and to Passion
is robbing him?
Or is it feeding his soul
with something much deeper,
much more mature,
something that Nature can bring
only to those who are immersed
deep
within her.
He shuts his eyes
and picks his toenails
and slowly moves
back
and
forth,
wondering if he will fall
while reaching for
the box of Kleenex
rescued from the back
of a non-functioning SUV,
at first covered with mouse feces,
but then underneath functional enough
to capture
the dregs of his draining brain
as he pushes
and pushes
and pushes
so hard that
his ears pop.
A half a century ago
my character yelled:
“I’m responsible!”
on stage.
I’m not certain that,
back then,
I knew what the phrase meant:
“I’m responsible!”
Now, decades past,
I understand that,
at my core,
I’m responsible.
It’s silly to blame
anyone else
for anything bad
in my life,
because it’s all good,
as long as
I think it is
and want it to be.
I’m responsilbe
for that.
You blame me,
us,
them,
for stealing your dreams.
“How Dare You!”
you shout,
face twisted, contorted
into emotion.
Sadly, no one told you,
no one guided you,
to know,
no one can steal your dreams.
Just you,
and only you,
can let your dreams,
hopes,
desires,
visions,
slip away.
You can blame others
all you want,
as loud as you want,
but the truth is this:
You’ve lost your dreams?
That’s on you.
My soul is yearning/
to be returning/
to grounding/
and earth-connecting.
Big change is comin’.
Big changes comin’ real soon?
I can’t tell fo sho.
Every time I say/
goodnight, I’m one step closer/
to saying hello.
You’re the dreams
I didn’t know I had.