hmmm…

 Remember when we

Had justice in this country —

No? — you don’t? —  how come?

over kitchen table, his gift

 He died six years gone

In prison hospice after

White dog lay in bed

With him, their final snuggle —

Cross he carved hangs in window

the side look without words

 It still seems cute, some

Think Donald Trump is a hoot

Bad boy ruling roost —

Ask inmates about guys like

Him, they don’t bother talking

why I am not married to amanda palmer

 She is so busy

And I have nothing to do

Who could bridge that gap

Every time she phones it

Clicks empty to voice message

whatever may follow

 This poem occupied Friday Evening Conversation:

A Poem On Hope

                       by Wendell Berry

It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,

for hope must not depend on feeling good

and there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.

You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality

of the future, which surely will surprise us,

and hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction

any more than by wishing. But stop dithering.

The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?

Tell them at least what you say to yourself. 

 

Because we have not made our lives to fit

our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,

the streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope

then to belong to your place by your own knowledge

of what it is that no other place is, and by

your caring for it as you care for no other place, this

place that you belong to though it is not yours,

for it was from the beginning and will be to the end. 

 

Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are

your neighbors in it: the old man, sick and poor,

who comes like a heron to fish in the creek,

and the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike

fishes for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing

in the trees in the silence of the fisherman

and the heron, and the trees that keep the land

they stand upon as we too must keep it, or die. 

 

This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power

or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful

when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy

when they ask for your land and your work.

Answer with knowledge of the others who are here

and how to be here with them. By this knowledge

make the sense you need to make. By it stand

in the dignity of good sense, whatever may follow.

 

contrarian farmer

 In prison today

Three poems by Wendell Berry

Spins room with wonder

stand-within what-is being-said.

Perhaps it’s no longer about “understanding.”

Rather, it’s a matter of “standing-within.”

Willing is the sober resolution of that existential self- transcendence which exposes itself to the openness of beings as it is set into the work. In this way, standing-within is brought under law. Preserving the work, as knowing, is a sober standing-within the extraordinary awesomeness of the truth that is happening in the work. 

(—p.65, Poetry, Language,Thought, Martin Heidegger, 1971)

I don’t understand.

But I’m willing to stand-within.

Stand-within what-is being-said.

affinity

 This season of death

resurrection, ascension — 

like dropping ego, 

becoming empty, morphing

into universal sight

when you need a friend

 April thunderstorm

St. Bernard/Border Collie

Finds way to my room

don’t think of your self, think of chocolate peanut butter cups

 Don’t suicide

You’d only leave the rest of us wondering

The rest of our lives what we could have done

To dissuade you

Never finding a satisfactory answer.

Don’t do it.

Save our lives.

off somewhere else

Sitting staring at Bald Mountain.

Thinking about life.

Thinking about my death.

A red Cardinal appears, time to time, on branches across road.

This cool April afternoon. 

4 Look and see, there is no one at my right hand;
    no one is concerned for me.
I have no refuge;
    no one cares for my life.   (Ps.142: 4 NIV)

Dog snores by sofa on rug. Cat curls on cushion near red embroidered pillow.

Tea cools.

Mountain stays where it is. Yellow school bus climbs hill.

Cardinal off somewhere else. 

let’s hear it for what is not here to appear but everywhere in waiting

 Let’s look at it this way — there’s no belief with god

There’s either god, or not god  -- Belief is temporizing

A tap dance onstage whiling time as backstage scampering

Looks frantically for absconded guest — empty costume room

Beliefs are the running monologue of warmup comedians

Knowing no one will appear, no one will replace them

Stuck in applause and laughter with deadening jokes

Body parts humor anatomical yuks and innuendo

While, elsewhere, untheatered, on vacant roads, in quiet rooms

That which has no name, cannot be seen, makes no sound

Lingers in obscurity presides empty and complete as itself

In itself

when you ain’t got god you got beliefs

Battle of beliefs —

Whether to mock and tear down

Or with compassion

Recognize core connection —

With courage, kindness, deep faith

and their words unto the ends of the world

Everything speaks.

Today, a conversation between raindrops and opening buds at ends of each branch.

18:3 Dies diéi erúctat verbum, * et nox nocti índicat sciéntiam.

18:4 Non sunt loquélæ, neque sermónes, * quorum non audiántur voces eórum.

18:5 In omnem terram exívit sonus eórum: * et in fines orbis terræ verba eórum.   

Psalmus 18 [1]

 

18:3 Day to day uttereth speech, * and night to night sheweth knowledge.

18:4 There are no speeches nor languages, * where their voices are not heard.

18:5 Their sound hath gone forth into all the earth: * and their words unto the ends of the world.  

Psalm 18 [1]

There is no place that does not hear you.

You must attend to the sound your life sonates.

Listening to echoing resonance through enticing silence.

the sound of raindrop while falling

Inside out, try to

separate outside in — it

can’t be done — no birth no death

it was earth day

 

γνώθι σεαυτόν (gnothi seauton), nosce te ipsum, know yourself

 In prison today

Considering the prospect

When you take a life

That life is now yours, within

You — yours to live through — en-trance

something from sunday evening practice

Quote:

It’s also a secret longing because if you walk down the street and look carefully, you can see it in everybody’s eyes. And if we stop anybody and say, “Are you okay?” and if they could really trust the question, they would say, “No, my heart is breaking. I’m utterly lost. I don’t know what to do. But thank you for asking.”

1.

THE DEEP ECOLOGY OF THE SACRED

BY ERIN GEESAMAN RABKE

Francis Weller on the five gates of grief, and the joy that lies beyond

https://catalystmagazine.net/the-deep-ecology-of-the-sacred/

closing windows to cooling porch

 April turns chilly

It will rain, clouds hide sun — have 

You thought about nap

the gods of once are gone

 When magic and sorcery end, something else begins. 

Perhaps the cunning and ambiguity of human moral ambivalence.

Arthur: Do you still have the Sight, Merlin? Are they together? 

Merlin: Yes. 

Arthur: You warned me of this, all those years ago. What must I do now... Kill them? 

Merlin: I can tell you nothing. My days are ended. The gods of once are gone... forever. It's a time for men. It's your time, Arthur. 

Arthur: I need you now... more than ever. 

Merlin: No. This is the moment that you must face at last. To be King, alone. 

Arthur: And you, old friend? Will I see you again? 

Merlin: No. There are other worlds. This one is done with me. 

Merlin: [Arthur embraces Merlin, then walks away; Merlin stares off into the twilit sky then quietly says] That's it.

(—from film, Excalibur, 1981) 

This loneliness of singular perception.

The contrasting antipathy of mental dichotomy.

While . . . There . . . Off in the aperspecitval mist and lowering song of waking birds, a hint of something less dense and devastating, a cool morning freshness of transparency and spirit, arising out of the nothing that is and the nothing that is not.

Yes . . .

That, too —

Sight — through and throughout —

That’s it!