clay slapped on the wheel shaped from spinning motion with the control of hands form, substance given before the heat of the kiln then give years of care secured from breaking ends in sharp edged shards broken: mosaic in form
In the early morning hours of January 3rd, 2015 my wife, Karen passed away from ovarian cancer. On this day, the eighth anniversary of her passing, I decided to repost this poem. While no relationship may be perfect, I’ve come to realize perfection is found in the things people share. Karen and I shared our love of dogs, so of course, in a dream, I met her as I walked the dogs, and one day I’ll meet her again, but when that happens, she’ll be the one walking all the dogs.
I thought to find you on the path between the heather patches. You were not there. I thought to find you along the roads from here to other places I traveled, but there were no traces. I thought to find you along the routes where I walked the dogs. Of course, there you were, ready to laugh and say they loved you best-- as you always did. Taking treats from your pocket, you fed and petted them. Looking up at me, you said I had more grey than last you saw, but it didn’t look bad. Your idea of a compliment, I know. I killed the weeds of anger over things like that. Now I must learn to trim back the hedges of grief. Get electric hedge trimmers, you laughingly said. Then whispered I should learn from the dogs and you’d meet me along the path between the heather one day. And that was all. You were gone.
As if you erupted from an eternal spring, an immortal thing, I gave you away when last I prayed here at Chimayo. When kneeling I scooped the healing dirt as I spoke silent prayers of thanks for my heart bravely facing shocks of resuscitation after years spent barely beating in stuttering grief. Upon return today, I kneel to scoop the healing dirt, asking in silent prayer a blessing of forgiveness for giving you away too easily— thus, killing you, bleeding you of all hope, beyond resurrection, beyond resuscitation. In the dirt of Chimayo, this healing earth, from this place of faith, sifted through my hands, I bury you, a mortal thing, I gave away too easily to an undeserving faith, in this dirt of Chimayo.
There exists no lexicon
For the echoes of emptiness here–
Where the azaleas bloom
Purple, pink, and white,
While dusty looking
Lavender sends up
Multiple spikes,
As roses yield up
Open, thirsting mouths
To the sky.
Though the soil here
Nourishes color and green
Growing things,
While life appears
Apparently abundant,
Although neighbors smile and wave,
The soil remains absent of truth, of meaning,
Of love—of a spirit—of a soul.
No lexicon exists for the emptiness
Echoing throughout the soil
In this place.
Caught in the evening downpour, I am washed clean of summer. Summer’s red rock, red dirt dreams Sluiced from me with this autumnal drenching. Morning greets me with a cool hand Of sunshine upon my brow. Autumn whispers of a harvest Under skies of bluest topaz. A clear, clean, honest reaping In days yet to be had.
With ramshackle shards Of heart, soul, self Falling away like the browned petals Of a long-wilted bouquet, We create a riotous noise In ramshackle attempts To find some connection. Lumbering, awkward attempts At reaching out to touch once again, To replace, to freshen The brown wilted and missing parts With new bouquets of spring Whose stems sit in eternally Fresh, clean waters. We dream of a life lived No longer ramshackle, With no long-wilted bouquets Of a past to haunt with falling petals, But a life returning whole, To move without noise Through the world once again.
Haunting seen In darkening clouds Of chrysalis dreams Where wanting, Where desiring, Haunt seen Cease existing-- In this capturing No ring pierced through Butterfly wings Dripping still From newly emerging Dreams not tended.
Walking in fractured twilight
Is the smoothest time of light and mind–
A wish made–
To braid reality, this curve of light, with sweetest memory
Thus, so entwined
One begins to hope,
Believing in miracles once again
To spite all fractures made of years.
In the long ago
Youth’s armor
Stripping down fates
In acknowledgements
Of ruined selves
Where someplace we lost
The spare threads
To stitch everything back together
And could never touch another
As we once touched the other,
Letting go dreams
Sprinkled with desires
That only served to choke
The future we swallowed
In gulped decades
While watching dreams
Drift and float like the blown off
Heads of dandelions
Until settling into the
Drudgery of what must be done
In the day to day—
No answers exist when
The only answer is
There be no magic here,
No fairytales, no giants,
No forever’s or an eternity
Yet there be no lies,
No castles built on air,
No innocent beings with wings to rip away
In devilish delight,
No trust found broken
In garbage cans.
And so it goes.
And so it goes,
In essence,
Neither was what
The other really wanted
Resentments the wooden
Puzzle pieces of a child’s game
Tumbled down over us
In crushing weight
Until only the dust
Of us was left
To be swept away.
( An older poem written in 2015 while in Provincetown, MA. Revised for this week’s writephoto challenge.)
At sunrise over water,
Remembering as if in a dream
The child and you and me
As we stood by a sea
Half a world away.
Both of you now baptized differently by my tears.
And for and from you,
I am left with things neither given
Nor felt in years,
Linked by all the fears
To form over a decade of a life
Lived like a stranger
In my own shrinking skin.
I have stood
Since the dawn
At this ocean’s edge
Waiting, waiting.
And now at noon
The rain begins.
Fierce pelting blows
Washing me clean
Of all I know
Or dare to dream.
For living continues
Within my own skin
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