Monday, December 27, 2010

Midnight Tree

The midnight tree stands waiting in time folds where our better selves run naked and laugh, unashamed.
Its leaves collect star dew and drip down on young, unafraid faces like mana, like love before the fall.
The midnight tree is just a memory, a waiting for times to come, times to come again.
The midnight tree blossoms in the grey-grey eyes of newborn babes, haunting remembrance...loving embrace.

Monday, December 20, 2010

I keep running into couples going to Florida for the season

Now that the heavy snows have blown across the Northeastern part of the country I keep running into couples that are heading to their seasonal homes in Florida. They travel like migratory birds, flying south for the winter. This all seems well and good but I started thinking about what the subtext of their circumstances were. The theoretical picture that began to coalesce in my mind went as such: I presume these people had worked, either hard or easy, for a good portion of their lives and now had the means to afford multiple homes. They hadn't yet made the final move to Florida as, according to tradition, retirees whom have the funds do. Somewhere inside me a cord was struck. Is this what we work for? Is the goal in life to churn away, a cog in the great machine, only to retire to a life of ease in some terribly cheerful retirement village in Florida. Do we pedal hard and fast only to coast during the final stretch to the grave?

Don’t take me to Florida in the Winter if that is all I have to live for.
Leave me out in the cold in some deep hollow in Kentucky.
Let my bones and flesh go back to that earth that bore me into this world.
Lie me on a bed of moss and cover me with ferns and dead leaves.
Sprinkle pine needles over my face so that I may smell her as the end approaches.
Love me in memory and remember me in song.
Let strong drink take you back to my spirit
but don't lay me out on some beach to mummify in the sand.
Let my soul linger among the fog gathering
in between the rolling hills of my homeland
and ask only a Whippoorwill and a Hoot Owl to read my eulogy.

God and Heartache

There is a thought, and it is hard to keep a finger on it.
Difficult,
like counting the beating humming bird wings.
You can see it as a blur,
like childhood out of the corner of your eye
Reaching for it only frustrates, trying to hold on...hold on to heartache.
There is love and then there is love
and God lives somewhere in between,
in a place where I can lie with her under an old oak tree
and God is there as the tree,
as my fingers sliding down her back.
God is there as the stiffness growing in my pants,
God is there like electricity and the slow growth of trees.