Look Up Again

Look Up Again

He walks looking down 

at his timid feet shuffling through leaves,

fearing the trip, feeling for ice,

moving at the speed of caution,

jean pockets heavy

with the loose change he hopes fits the price

of his next happy meal. He does not see

the champagne clouds swirling above him,

twilight feast

with twists of blushing peach in the faded blue.

Nor does he hear the back and forth

of thrushes singing in sweetest morsels: “goodnight”

and “goodnight to you.”

Had he the vision of blind Bartimaeus,  beggar beside the dusty road,

who flung  off his silence like an old overcoat,

ignoring the Nazareth gnat-cloud host for all 

the pretense it was,

and called instead to the royal king to rend the sky

to which he might look up again at dazzling light

coming down from the clouds of heaven.

The blind will see!

The deaf will hear even the horror

of the hint of whip, the sharpening of nails,

old prophecies stirring in the tomb.

The lame will ditch 

the bargain haggling, the crossroads veto,

their feet unbound and freed to walk

ahead with dancing step and bright eyes alight

looking everywhere around.

---

NOTES

1. The opening lines picture a foil for Bartimaeus: a man so consumed with self-care that he is blind to the sumptuous evening sunset and the delectable song of the thrushes (symbols for the good outside the man’s self-centered small world).

2. Champagne as a color, though concurrently suggesting wealth and extravagance that is freely available.

3. Swainson’s Thrushes are common in the Pacific Northwest and achingly melodious in their evening duets!

4. We get the blind man’s name only from Mark’s Gospel: see Mark 10:46. Note the irony of the word vision.

5. See Mark 10:47-48: “the people tried to keep Bartimaeus silent but he cried out all the more.”

6. Mark 10:50: “And throwing off his cloak”

7. Notice how Bartimaeus rejects the nomenclature of the swarming crowd: “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by” (suggestive of the merely human prophet) and opts immediately and deliberately for “Son of David.”

8.  The title “Son of David”reflects the expectation that the Messiah would come from the royal line of David, and Bartimaeus is asserting his belief that Jesus is indeed the long-awaited Messiah of Israel.

9. An allusion to Isaiah 64:1: “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down!”

10. The Greek word here for “recovered sight” is ἀναβλέπω which literally translates “look up” (see e.g. Luke 19:5)

11. An allusion to Daniel 7:13 (Matt 26:64; Mark 14:62): the famous Son of Man prophesy that Jesus claimed for Himself during His trial before the Sanhedrin and was, as a consequence, charged with blasphemy.

12. An allusion to Jesus sending a message to John the Baptist in response to his questioning if Jesus was really the Messiah.  Jesus said to tell John of the healing of the blind, the deaf, and the lame among others: John 7:22

13.  Jesus tells His disciples for the THIRD time of His impending suffering and they still are unable to hear it. Luke says it was hidden from them.  The disciples were blind and deaf!  See Luke 18:31-34

14. “Everything  that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished.” Luke 18:31

15.  Bartimaeus follows Jesus (Luke 18:43; Mark 10:52), which means going where He goes. Bargain haggling refers to trying to make a deal with Jesus which preserves something of one’s own agenda. 

16. A crossroads veto means reserving the right to go a different direction when the path Jesus chooses doesn’t look so good.

17. An allusion to Lazarus coming out of the tomb (John 11:44), affirming that following Jesus truly sets a person free: John 8:31-36

18. Notice the double-duty workload of  the word alight .  His eyes “alight” (all lit up) and his eyes “a light” (a witness for others to see, i.e. Matthew 5:16).

19. Note the contrast with the opening line.

After the election

For the 49.6%

---

After the election

the rain falling

from the gray

blanket overhead

is knocking loose

the last resistant

stubborn leaves

who’d insisted on seeing

the winter through,

determined only that

next spring’s new

—and nothing else!—

should bid them

drop to join

the soilmakers

at their roots.

But one by one 

they succumb

to the pelting—

stems slippery,

grip gone numb,

the heartache 

of so many nodes

around them empty 

where once hung 

a boisterous crowd,

where once hummed

the sugar machinery,

eager visions

caught in sunlight,

evening flutter-song

softening each

return of night.

I watch one drop,

alight as a sigh—

a little boat tossed

on an unsettled sea—

and disappear

behind the 

waving banners

of the waiting

western sword fern.

Then another

in its turn.

And now another. 

Each resigned.

Each alone.

A woodfull of dreamers

slowly draining

into the gravid mulch below.

I am haunted by the myth of arrival

                                                                                                 Image by Frank Winkler from Pixabay. Creative Commons License.

I am haunted by the myth of arrival

in all my tiresome never arriving, 

to find this sunbreak an elixir 

that slips away before I can drink her to the dregs; 

or that sweet moment with you 

whisked briskly into the cold alley

of having just been, already longing for the next. 

How Good comes in lucious snatches, 

in rushes and batches like flocks of birds

whose instincts send them south for the winter,

crossing skies in pulsating patches.

And the wafting scent from the baker’s oven 

passing me by is not a tease, is itself the gift

among all the others, that uplifted trail

of stones breaking the surface of the creek

enough to make a way across for nimble feet.

I am Looking

          I am Looking

I wander through mist banks

that loiter among these sentry trees.

The morning is gray and sometimes green.

Particulates mingle and merge

in the osmosis that is

this early September wood.

I am looking among its shadows

for the beautiful dryad Good.

My shoes are wet with fern fall.

My breath tumbles out white and roiled

as all the rising and hanging mass

rallies for my stretched attention,

claiming her bloodline,

wearing her look.

But I will know her when I see her.

Some say she has many names.

In deserts, cities, the coral reefs,

they say she speaks in other tongues

as different as sky from stone,

and I for one believe it, though

what she sings is always the same

unaltered song the ancient stars

took up upon their violent launch

to the furthest edges of dark.

She does not hide,

nor does she come out in the open,

waiting quietly,

calm and entirely unperturbed

by the blurry borders

putting such pressure on perception.

She sings the star-song in a whisper;

her touch, the brush of a timid feather.

Even so I know that when I pass her 

slowly, or if I turn my head on chance,

a glance will be enough, 

and I will stop and say hello.

Toward Two Silences

Toward Two Silences

The thin fir trees together

stand straight and quiet

on the summit of Mt. Desert

under a silver Montana sky,

tottering silently in cold wind,

brave and uncomplaining.

Down below in the leaved valley,

an unsuspecting robin,

building her nest in the high 

branches of the maple,

is snatched from behind by a silent owl,

three piercing chirps to die.

Wind sounds the noble song

through alpine branches as well

the terror of sudden thrashing wings.

It sings itself toward two silences:

the flat exhaled despair, or that

long-held breath for a more glorious air.

Visio Dei

The house is god of the suburban street,

allowing nature play under strict law.

The trees with clipped limbs screen neighbors.

Shorn azaleas fawn the vinyl siding 

with color and line like favor done a fief lord,

all standing thin-legged in bored soil

bordering the carpet of cowering fescue—

dormant meadow deflowered by the mower’s blade.

Let me return to the cabin in the woods,

small and swallowed in a ring of wild-headed alder

shaking out violent twig-fall upon 

the trembling roof; bleeding heart closes in 

on all sides like high tide under the flag 

of unfurling ferns and the shout of the pine siskin!

There I will glimpse You, glinting in deep shadow, 

sprinting in flashes on the aching periphery of vision.

Pantoum for Coming Alive

Pantoum for Coming Alive

Good is waiting just under the surface.

Wind and water are secret agents,

layer by layer by layer: a subversive

erosion mission of mercy with patience.

Wind and water are secret agents

scrubbing the stone that keeps out the light,

erosion mission of mercy with patience

bringing the buried up into life.

Scrubbing the stone that keeps out the light

airy expanse vibrates violence.

Bringing the buried up into life

churns massive upheaval in increments.

Airy expanse vibrates violence

in lungs that have lost the muscle of breath–

churns massive upheaval in increments,

searing pain with every stretch.

In lungs that have lost the muscle of breath,

life is always shocking to what’s dead,

searing pain with every stretch.

“Leave nothing behind,”  Jesus said.

Life is always shocking to what’s dead.

“So, then, unwrap stumbling Lazarus;

leave nothing behind,” Jesus said.

Coming alive is hazardous.

So, then, unwrap stumbling Lazarus,

layer by layer by layer. A subversive

coming alive is hazardous

good, is waiting just under the surface.

In a Monastery Cemetery

Brother Adelhelm Kreuzer, strict

observer of Saint Benedict

is resting under gathered moss,

under a rough hewn concrete cross,

lichen speckled, back-lit sun;

Adelhelm rests, his work is done.

Adelhelm Kreuzer, just twenty-eight,

died in eighteen eighty-eight.

No hits on the internet.

Oldest gravestone in the set

of rows of crosses on Mt. Angel.

At once to speak of him is painful,

.

again to speak of him is peace.

How his mother must have grieved

such lost potentiality,

what could have been was not to be.

Founder Abbot Obermatt

lived to seventy-six and that

was forty-eight more winters’ snow

than Adelhelm would ever know.

The coo of the Eurasian Dove

drops gently from a branch above

me as I move from shadow to sun.

Adelhelm rests, his work is done.

Is it birdsong mixed with light

that yields this peacefulness unlike

any I have known before?

Am I sentimental or

filled with wishful thinking? I

have not the least desire to die.

Something deeper feeds this current.

I am interrupted by an urgent

Northern Flicker’s keen insistence,

brave from its unseen position

whose staccato call is drilling

into me ethereal feeling

with everyone at rest in rows.

Each plot neatly swept. The mown

grass smells sweet, its surface wet 

with stubborn dew where shadows yet

linger underneath the cedars,

home to robins with their eager

spring melodies, and on the air

bells calling brothers to prayer

ring across the morning coolness.

See the living bustle to the

sanctuary, work to do there,

laboring without Brother Kreuzer.

He rests now with Patrick Meagher,

born in nineteen O-eight. Either

Cahill or Fisher was first to be

buried under the center tree.

Josue Alejandro Bénavidez,

last to rest, lies where no stone is.

All their lives of consequence

stíll tumble down through time since

every act continues that one

domino-falling chain-reaction,

and who knows what will be the end

of the smallest acts by each of them?

Can it be, then, Adelhelm,

though his years were few and fell

short the mark of all the rest

yet released a work as blessed

as any other of longer years,

filling up the corridors

just as much, or better, than they,

and still working to this day

in far corners of the world

where we’d never guess it traveled,

perhaps to quietly sway the rod 

of empire or inspire for God

ecstasy or shouts aloud

against the tyrant’s madding crowd?

And all the while he lies in rest,

the Black-Capped Chickadee unimpressed.

The burrowing worm above his dust

forges forward oblivious

it works the soil of a holy ground

in which the living and dead are found.

Now I turn with sighs to leave

this hidden paradise that gives

a glimpse of my own destiny,

the deep rest that awaits me

as true as was for Adelhelm,

the rare peace that will overwhelm

the weak anxieties that riddle through

the living with work yet to do

as now I have, both work and worry,

but something less of each I carry

from this place in dappled sun

where Adelhelm rests, his work begun.

On the Line

I am changing by increments.

Has my kelly green inched 

toward saffron yellow? Am I

thinning into papery skin,

hint of leaf spot in the pinpricks,

sieve for coming winter wind?

Or is my green merely rising 

from its springtime jejune lime 

into a settled emerald wise, 

a thickening velvet supple skin 

bending easily in the breeze

under summer morning skies?

Trajectories are hard to see

when on the surface of the line.

That I am moving is clear as now

I look back on once upon a time

and fear, I fear, becoming Judas,

clutching my bag of thirty pieces

but hoping this yet might be Paul,

slow motion falling off my horse

running into an adamant Jesus.

O may this glare that addles sense

be Your passing by.  Your voice

the thunder in my troubled sky.

Window Smudge

I am holding the hand of a man

peering into the dark abyss

here from the sixth floor ICU,

while I peer through a window

smudged with the smears

of a lazy custodian who

clearly rushed his night routine.

Outside the sun is teeming with life,

neutralizing winter’s affect,

bouncing off car hoods in afternoon traffic;

feverish sparkles on the rippling river

through which college crew boats run.

Stripped poplars salsa in wind,

branches dancing an enchufla with

an exuberance beyond reason.

Joy wells up in me like treason,

only to sheepishly ebb away 

at the sound of his labored breathing, 

at the sight of his matted hair.

Life and death circle with swords, 

touching tips in posturing challenge

as sun-shafts sweep the heart monitor, 

waxed floors mirror wide-sky clouds,

seagulls mock the urostomy pouch.

And the window smudge is referee.

This failed attempt at clarity

stands in the middle of the stalling spar,

witnessing in, witnessing out,

hopelessly swirled like a van Gogh star.

View fullsize

The Pepper Tree

The Pepper Tree

For Patti Beiden

---

She dreams again of being carried in wide

arms, leaning over the hillside,

unafraid of storms,

of anything at all, wrapped in sweeping 

leaves of green and warm 

red-berry kisses, the King keeping 

His whispered word to hold His daughter high.

Swaddled

I slow to a crawl among small things,

pausing between steps across the sun-slivered meadow

checking for lupine, protecting lady’s slippers.

I coo when the ladybug crosses my finger

and sing her a lullaby as soft as the wood dove’s.

I am made of statue as I inch toward the bird nest

hidden nearby in the Cork Pine branches,

straining to glimpse the hatchlings I hear.

And this I think must be You among us,

Consuming Fire restrained to a flicker,

Voice that fathered and flung constellations

flattened and swaddled into a whisper.

Even Your tenderest sigh is a gale

force wind among Lilliputians with arrows

frantically nocking and drawing and firing

into a gentleness they cannot see.

At a Baseball Game

At a Baseball Game

Leaning forward in my seat, 

swallowed in a sea

of raucous fans, I vaguely 

feel but do not hear the

organ adrenaline amping up

the festive frenzy, nor do I, 

in the curious eye of this swirl, 

even see the hurl and swing 

that sends the ball over the wall 

unleashing fresh pandemonium.  

For I am lonely and alone

in this crowd, my eyes fixed on 

the heavenly lawn, that

great grassy verdant arc

stretching away before me, 

thick spread of perfection, 

sharply split this midday into 

luscious shade and sunny plane, 

as if a forest meadow by spell

had lost its way to end up here,

calling me now to come lie down

upon its bed, alone or, better,

with a lover, where stands

a stoic umpire oblivious

to the magic underneath his feet, 

staring off away toward home plate, 

hands deep in his pockets.

Were birdsong filling the air 

instead of manic music, and

if the groomed red dirt 

between second and third

were rather a gentle shallow stream, 

this would be my fairyland,

book in my hands, head on

your lap, running my bare 

toes through the grass, 

warm spine shivers 

and your backlit hair, 

hidden out in the center of a field

that no one here even knows is there.