One Long Thought

Like a ghost, I have wandered the hallowed halls of my youth
for years upon years since its passing.
I have pondered the meaning of figures dancing in flames,
casting stones and
divining visions of winged travelers making a pilgrimage to a crimson door.

In time I will cast away my stones, cool the fire
and with both angels and demons mourn the time that is no more.
I will weep for a life I imagined to be lost forever
behind the soaring events of my youth.

Somewhere in the tangled, cobweb-mess of memory
stands a little boy who did not move through the world as most little boys do
he was watched over by a world that gave love,
jealousy and maliciousness in equal doses.
He listened to every word spat out and cried each time he was cursed
and slowly he changed, changed so that he would not hurt so deep
the next time faced with words that were created to cut, to break,
to cause a soul-ache no balm could ease.

He changed, but by hardening that young heart, he kept it in tact
and grew another one around it.  One that knew a few things about
disappointment, dishonesty and the lingering promise of hope.
 
I have carried that little boy with me all of my life.
I tried to drown him in alcohol and
numb his pain with opium in my early twenties.
When neither of those would do the trick, I tried every chemical made by man
to induce euphoria, hoping I would reach the day
when I could place two coins over his eyes and send him on to Charon.
That day did not come, though I often forgot about him
and myself while under the affliction of all those pleasant distractions.
I sought to avert my eyes from his, hoping to avoid his gaze,
avoid his truth.
 
In this, STOP...Deep Breath and: Realization!!!

This is the season for bringing that little boy into the light,
time to describe his torture, give it a name
and forgive all those involved.
It is time to bring the past out into the open air, say my piece
and let it go.

This burden is too heavy for any one man to endure,
my wings haven't the strength to fly with so much weight bearing down on them.
It is time to set that little boy free
      time to forgive the man for hiding him away
      time to be honest with myself and to stop lying to my reflection  
and ,in the end,to be free to move on with my life.

Despite my earlier predictions and confidences
concerning certain spiritual incarnations,
I keep turning up year after year.
My life could, indeed, be a long way from over.
 
I have tried to avoid struggle, to avoid responsibility.
I have spoken poetically of honor, sacrifice and love that knows no bounds.
I have written of Agape, Eros and Comitatus;
words spoken before Jesus ever walked hand in hand with Magdalene.
And, though these ideas are wonderful and pure and perfect in and of themselves.
The hand that, in a fever, scrawled half legible epitaphs to Beowulf
in the shower of his Freshman dorm forgot to love anything himself.
Especially himself and that was the undoing of it all.
A man cannot fight for his country if he can not first stand up and fight for himself,
how was I supposed to bring 1000 year old ideas of love and brotherhood and fealty
back to this world when I could not muster the strength to get out of bed.
 
 
It is time for blood and sacrifice, it is time to fight.
To wage war, face my younger self and be renewed.
It is time to breathe deep and forgive.
It is time to understand and set to the side those things
which hold no intrinsic value
but exist only to deceive, to cripple and to distract.
It is time to take those words and don them as if they were armor and helm,
to wear them as sword and shield, and ride out to face the present day
with faith, humility, honesty, patience and courage.
 
It is time to take the idealism of youth, reforge it with hard earned wisdom
and temper it under the watchful eyes of an all knowing love.
 
It is time to stay clean, to be sober so the soul can breath.
It is time to be honest, to tell the truth no matter the circumstance.
It is time to give love, to present it as something shared; both offered and received.
It is time to forgive, to forgive the past and let it rest, from this day to the last.
 
In the name of all life which is most precious,
It is time to live.

Our Fathers

Will there be any good men left once our fathers have gone on,
with their calloused hands and faded eyes
and love that swells up like water behind a levee,
to the point where it overflows, leaving the surrounding landscape forever changed.
Men who show their emotion by putting dinner on the table,
clothes on the body and a roof over head.
Will there be another man like my father?
Could I be a man like my father?
I look in the mirror, weigh and evaluate.
I am not that man who never blinked before he pulled the trigger
but I have just as much love
only mine sits a little closer to the surface.

Integrity: I wonder if we will only read about the word
in books about our fathers
or if one of us will wear the word
tattooed on our sleeve for all the world to see.

I hope one day I can love like my father,
that I can look my children in the eyes
and remain silent with them knowing all the love
that is being shared without being spoken.

Childhood Places

Muddy water and children's laughter;
a true creek never runs deeper
than the bare feet that wade from bank to bank.
Caney Creek was my home.
It was wild, wild in the way
only a place with no adults can be.

I have heard it said we lose something
as we abandon our childhood fancy
for, what seems, a natural progression into adult responsibilities.
No one can every put a finger on what it is that was lost.
If I know anything, I know we lose those places
that were our childhood.
Because they are as much a part of us
as we are of them.
They come to us in dreams
and the echoes of our laughter
still resonate in their living rock.

Places like the creek I mentioned
or patches of woods where we could scream, cry and laugh
without embarrassment or explanation.

We have so few of those places as we get older,
places where we can be ourselves naturally and without explanation.
Too many things have to have a reason, a motive.

Seldom can we find a moment to just be and be left alone.

We take things like yoga; where we can breath and stand funny.
But, because it has a name and a following it is acceptable.
We find places like bars; where we have excuses and God forbid,
reasons.
I'm so tired of having a reason.
A reason to laugh, a reason to smile.
A reason to cry or dance or scream.

We have lost our childhood places.

I remember where all of mine are, though I seldom visit.
Whether it is out of fear, fear that I won't feel the same.
Fear that I have forgotten how to get to that place inside myself.
I am everything and everyone that I have ever been.
It is all still wrapped up somewhere inside of me,
tucked neatly behind a pile of responsibilities and conditioned responses.

Perhaps going back to those places will shake it loose
and I will drink muddy water without wondering if I'll get sick,
I'll strip off all of my clothes and not question if I'm doing something wrong.
It is a far greater wrong to stifle your spirit
than to confound on onlooker.
And much better we confound others with our actions
than to not act and ourselves be confounded.

The Gray Ghost

I often think of my family, the sprawling branches that reach out to obscurity. Some I remember through the eyes of a child. I see them as they were when we were all a little younger and before so many of the good ones lay down for the last time. In my family it was my Great-grand Mother that held everyone together. She raised several generations by rubbing to nickels together to make a quarter. She left us almost ten years ago and since then we have lost others as well. But that is life. We come and we go. Some with a bang and others like a whisper.

My uncle is digging a hole in the Smokehouse
where the floor has rotted away.
He says its going to be a cellar, or a basement,
a place to keep things
like broken farm equipment
and pieces of his memory.
He is always starting projects like this now,
since my great-grandmother went on to rest atop the hill.
It is an attempt to keep the hands busy.
At seventy-three, with no one to share a life with,
it is important for the hands to work.
It is important to keep his mind from wandering too far back,
back to a time when she was still here.
Back when all he had to do was chop wood
and make sure the eggs were gathered in time for breakfast.

All the family makes fun of the way he copes with life,
mostly behind his back.
It is therapy, what he is doing.
It is the only kind of therapy we know.

As a blood-rule our family does not express emotions.
We understand all of us have them;
the grief, sense of loss, heartache
and those feelings that are too complex to have a name.

His intentions are honest
though they may not always be practical.
He is thinking,
thinking of ways his hands can work.

The garden is tilled, the seeds are sewn.
Rain has come and washed his work away
as is the nature of rain.
But he will do it all over again tomorrow,
to keep his hands busy and the heartache
at least six feet in the ground.

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.

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.