On the backs of seahorses' eyes
Page 19
Hope is...
that we can stay up after midnight,
and let it all hang out,
and not fall down on our faces.
Hope is...
that the girl you fell in love with on the city bus—
you never said a word,
only a glance between you—
will get off at the same stop you get off.
Hope is...
that the ripening strawberries in your patch
won't rot on the vine
or be devoured by slimy slugs;
that the garden irises in your garden,
their heavy blooms bent to the earth,
will somehow...someway...survive this rain,
this rain that keeps falling day and night,
this rain that keeps falling in my dreams
and in my thoughts.
Hope is...
that the philosopher Hume—
Remember him from your university days?—
will look you straight in the eye,
from the grave,
and assure you that the rain, this rain,
will stop...eventually,
and the sun will shine tomorrow.
(For sure! Wait and see!)
Until then: hold on...carry on.
Hope is that that the next poem you write—
if you write poems—
will, finally,
at last,
hallelujah!
capture the essence of Truth and Beauty.
Or, at least, cast a spell on that pretty girl
you saw on the city bus,
a spell that will open her eyes
to the wonders of who she is .
Hope is...
that, by traveling light,
you will catch up with the light within you,
the light you see in your dreams,
the forever light within each of us.
Hope is...
that you're not chasing your own tail,
that the wheels you're spinning belong to the Sun's chariot,
as you race through darkness and into your destiny.
(If you believe in destiny.)
Hope is faith in the Unknown.
*****
What can you do?
As another prisoner in a Greek jail,
a man falsely imprisoned,
would later, in a moment of resignation,
say to his fellow prisoners.
What can you do?
I throw in the towel. I give up.
I surrender to the Unknown.
I let go.
Come what may!
And then, with no effort on my part,
just like that,
here comes the sun.
*****
A wedding in the Washington woods,
a marriage in a sunny meadow,
a marriage "Made in Heaven"—an August event.
Dark clouds, and my own self doubts,
vanish in obedience to the sun and a gentle wind,
breathtaking as a shooting star,
from the Unknown.
Honeymooning, the two of us,
backpacking in a foreign land.
Ah, those were the days,
we thought they'd go on and on;
not counting on hostile laws, religion,
and a Greek prison.
What was I thinking?
Lamentations upon lamentations!
Two years in prison for growing hashish,
"the black smoke."
What, those ten scrawny weeds?
I evoke the words of Walt Whitman:
"All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with lamentations,
(What have I to do with lamentations?)"
I begin my novel on the fly, so to speak.
Thirty years later I'm still writing,
Enough! Or too much!
I am not a brave man. Defiant, yes.
I question authority, including my own,
as I question the validity of any premise
not borne out by experience or reason,
especially if it comes from fear,
especially if it has no room for laughter
that vibrates from heart and belly,
and surely your perceptions of the world
differ from mine, and that's your truth,
and I honor the God within you.
The restless years, you called them,
as I watched you spellbound in the Grecian light.
I could not take my eyes from your beauty,
your spirit an endless curving road,
free and lovely as spring in an ever-changing
field of wildflowers,
like woodland fairies dancing on the banks
of Sunflower River.
Home again...
land of tall evergreens, Oregon rain...
going our separate ways...
(Thomas Wolfe, you were right.
Home, like Odysseus' horizon,
shimmers ever beyond our reach).
A cold wind on the beach at night biting my ears,
as I listen and witness the origin of the universe
roaring into manifestation with stars, planets,
this earth that I love.
A vision? A dream? An hallucination?
I am glad, I am so glad for the warm fire at my back
and friends with a bottle of wine.
*****
The tide always comes back in.
My heart run amuck… again.
Husband and wife, home and hearth,
a child to raise,
steady work at a day job,
counting the hours, the minutes, till I'm in your arms
and we're knocking on heaven's door,
two awakening souls, looking for what?
Liberation? Wholeness?
If only we knew how to heal the pain inside.
Oh, god, you are so beautiful, dancing,
dancing naked in the mirror.
*****
"Love without freedom
is like a fire without air.
A fire without air goes out."
—Mma Ramotswe
The Double Comfort Safari Club,
Alexander McCall Smith
But we're both afraid...
afraid of losing each other.
And that's exactly what happens.
Does the fear itself manifest what we dread?
Or do we know, somewhere deep within,
that what we most fear is, indeed,
a portion of our destiny?
Do what scares you the most.
A wise man once said to me.
There's no way out.
No way to sidestep the fear.
No way to deny.
We must experience the origin of the fear.
We must acknowledge this fear.
To reach the other side,
we must go through this fear.
*****
An ideal, twisted and broken as a tree limb
in an ice storm, this marriage,
ash spewing in the air,
Mt. St Helens raining down on our lives…
humiliation, separation, betrayal...
this 1910 house for sale…
drinking and dancing, running on fear and despair
and a knowledge that somewhere, somehow, someday,
this will all make sense...or else it won't.
*****
A woman, light as a hawk's feather, subtle
as flower essence, powerful as the reach
of ancient myths, symbols, and civilizations,
taking my hand in a never-ending spiral,
guiding me to a Teacher, psyche eyes
through loving waves penetrating my soul,
shattering my defenses, cracking my shell—
my brilliant coat of false colors—pushing
me to the very edge of existence,
&n
bsp; my rage spewing out at all that we call holy:
Mother, God, this body—
my hands wanting to rip out this heart of mine;
then stillness, silence...
the circle spiraling inward on itself.
A 30,000 year old warrior breathing new life
into this forever road, allowing me, forgiving
me my errors, my indulgences, blasting me
with runners of such truth and beauty
I could only weep as if these tears
would never end.
Years of solitude...a meditation on the Source
(the Source of all that I am and all that is).
A reckoning, a lesson, nothing is lost,
a doctor's touch, a kiss vanishing on the lips,
all is grist for the mill: rain that pours down,
that soaks the ground and floods the land,
a river that returns to its source and begins the trip
homeward, all over again.
*****
Endless all that I am
and endless this journey to you...
A companion, true and steady as my own soul,
now settled in place, a home overlooking the city,
a city that witnessed so much pain in each of us.
You are beautiful, my dear, so contrary, a healing tonic
to my defeated romanticism and ravaging self-doubts,
my folly, frenzy, and ignorance.
"Kind and respectable," as one of her Spanish pupils,
a second-grade boy, a troubled-student,
writes in a valentine to her.
A story book about time and love and destiny,
this passing world....
This time in my own voice,
with a little help from my friends.
Grandkids playing and squabbling in the living room.
My own private garden...a simple life.
As cars and cycles swish by on the road,
the road between our house and the cemetery…
the road in a nut shell.
We're not here, then we're here,
then we're not...again.
And all that remains will be what we give each other.
It's Your Birthday: November 30, 2009…….. for Don
It's your birthday raise the flag make the sun come out raise those puny little plants covered in mud and soaked in sky flooded vapors
It's your birthday are you sitting in silence drinking some latte laced liquid wishing for a pastry cream oozing out the side of your mouth imagining a young sweet thing lavishing her soft skin her subtle form along your long leg curling slinking slowly her eyes falling swiftly to meet your own as a glance involves only a hint a tender second of longing for the body remembered from time past
It's your birthday raise those roof beams you carpenters you rug layers or was that layers of bugs from years past when cockroaches were the craze in the haze and Florida sun swept the rain-soaked winds to collide lazily and crazily with palm trees swaying and praying and old Anne Pfeiffer never had it so good in that Chapel as socialized protestants gazed into the eyes of one very large Dr. Eckleberg peering down through glasses on high trying to avoid the lines of mind imprisonment
It's your birthday did you know it then when reading and underlining and following a French student's breasts around the old campus pavements finding translations a bit too existential and delirious even then for the sixties
And so it's your birthday old man not really such an old man but yes an old friend that I love and cherish the words uttered and muttered for so many years and days and hours upon this daylit computer toy
Indeed it is your day of birth today some sixty-eight years ago in the back roads of Georgia where spiritual substance and lazy day sunshine were your strength your survival your way to grab that light that would shed the slight fragrance of life along your path
Indeed it was an Autumn day that brought you to this world of form and woods and books with stories and fantasy forms to help you walk along the stretch ahead holding out your hand through storms of words and pages and hours that let time pass to this day yet another in the gentle cloth of truth
Always in my heart
Always
11.30.2009
Birthday poem by Lo Caudle
Returning to the future
We are the Ancient Ones,
you and I.
We speak the Old Language.
These words; just this.
Look around you.
The New Language has little meaning
to us, to you and I,
for we have stumbled—or discovered?
or returned?—into the deep silence:
that sound beneath all spoken words.
Our voices, long ago singing, singing,
all, all, breaking ground that's now
turned into a graveyard—monuments,
sea stones, rounded and smoothed,
till our voices only whisper to us,
telling us what we knew and loved and lost,
what we've forgotten, left behind,
what no longer concerns us.
For we belong to the Ancients,
you and I,
our voices muffled by waves,
torn by wind and tossed in the fire.
We speak no more in tongues
like the wonderful and terrifying machines
they've invented to enslave and free us,
like all machines eventually do.
We, the Ancient Ones, wrap ourselves
in ultimate silence, like grass seed
in the darkness of rich soil,
and we shall come again, bearing gifts.
We shall appear as voices in your dreams,
in your secret thoughts, your desires,
in the space between heart beats,
in the quietness, in the silence,
in the night.
What will you take with you?
What will you take with you
as you leave this earth,
this glorious blue planet swirling in space?
What will you take with you
when you go?
The hands on my desk clock
point to six in the evening.
Will you take time?
Will you take the memory of this moment,
the memory of every moment,
with you?
Lily Poo, still a puppy,
shows no interest in poetry or metaphysics,
as she gnaws on a bone on my favorite rug
and looks to me for directions,
whirling her piebald tail like a helicopter.
Will you take the love I feel
for this impish dachshund with you?
The love I feel for my friends and family?
Will you take the nocturnes
of Chopin? The wind in spring
leafing trees outside my window?
The lovely days of May,
the dancing butterflies in my Mother's garden;
the scent of pine trees;
October's return
and November transformations?
Will you take my anticipation
as I wait for the woman I love to return home,
after teaching immigrant children all day
to speak and write a new language?
Will you take this glass of red wine,
the taste in my mouth,
the grape, the earth, the sun, the soil, the rain?
Will you take this,
all that I see and feel and think
and all that I hold close to my heart?
Will you take me with you?
June 2010
Some people think
Some people
think that
hobbling around on
frail legs
with a
smile on
your face
is dying
with dignity.<
br />
—John Bennett
"Dying with Dignity"
And some people
think,
I suppose
they think,
the world is flat,
like stale beer.
And some people
think,
I suppose
they think,
The moon is made
of green cheese,
moldy...
to boot.
And some people
think,
I suppose
they think,
Crazy John Bennett
is crazy
as 100 mph
on a hair-pin curve
just under a blonde's
left eye.
On the mother of all roads
Each man's life represents a road toward himself,
an attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path.
—Hermann Hesse, Demian
We travel a pathway of stone,
a road that appears to be light,
a road that soon turns into a flowing river,
a river that leads us onward into a dark woods,
and, then, before our enchanted eyes,
the river vanishes altogether
into deep shadows,
self-doubts,
and etheric mists,
dreams that terrify us,
dreams that carry intimations of a truth
behind the Light—
behind the metaphor and the symbol,
behind the teachings and the mythology,
behind the experiences and the vision,
behind all these illusions,
a truth that points like a Zen koan
to the source of all that is,
and I am one with this source,
and I am becoming one with this source,
as surely as the gods, our brothers and sisters,
as surely as you are.
Falling in love
Ah, youth and old age,