Easter Sunday, 2009

"Can a bird make sense of a tree?"

April echoes of vibrant cardinal song
turns me around and around, looking
from branch to branch and all along
each limb to its winding ending.
I hear, but cannot see the bird
whose voice seems everywhere around
until, like seeking a hidden word,
a spot of red turns into what I've found.
Cardinal himself, unmistakable when turned
tufted head and stable tail behind;
so obvious once seen, you've just discerned
how you're looking at what you'll soon find.
Now the blue black muddled field of view
is all revolving around a speck of red,
into a turning whirl of growth twining through
a searching thought, mulling on 'til you have said
"I've got it!" There the source of jubilant song
leaps out of invisibility to sight.
Tomorrow morning, our voices singing strong,
we'll take our joy as dawn takes over night;
the sight of an empty tomb opening up
the turning of all around, like clouds in a cup,
the song of Easter a clarifying word,
like the flash of red reveals a singing bird.

Movement, Slowly

The moon got caught this morning
between a chimney and angled roofline,
wedged tight from my kitchen window.
As i filled my coffee pot,
I could see the motion of the moon,
sinking to the right, the gauge
of angles fitting so close
that the movement of the moon
was actually perceptible.
Long ago in German class, the shadow
of the sun and window across
the floor before me, and
the slowness of time
conjugating verbs
meant i realized that i could see
the movement of the sun
(if not by looking right at it).
It's a funny thing, because i knew
that the heavens turn,
or rather the earth,
but either way the sun did not stay still.
I knew this, but i did not
Know It.
And then i did, slowing myself down
(with the help of those verbs)
to feel the motion of something so slow.
I've watched many sunrises and sunsets
since then, and caught the motion
of the skies at work, steady and sure;
more strangely, i've watched moonrises
and seen it rise further,
looking more directly and safely.
But moonsets never that I can recall
across some fifty years, until this am.
There is an insightful thrill
even still
to actually perceive that motion from the sky,
to see the slowness,
and realize their speed has been and is and shall be
so the only thing slowing down
is me . . .
and it's about time.

Fri., Apr. 10

There are more crosses each year
to carry up the hill
they come out into the open
being carried all the months before
without finding expression in wood and nails.
The fact of the heavy, central cross
the knowledge it will be brought out
and carried through the streets,
put up on display, sung around
as its story is told --
frees up the choice to hammer out
other crosses into sight and life,
to scrabble together scrap wood
or roughened timbers
as you pull the raw materials out
of your aching, bleeding days
and boldly intersect your sorrow
and your hope, shouldering
that weight out in front of all,
whether friendly fellow burden bearers,
or mystified onlookers, the sort
you've carried your cross past
for so long.
More crosses, unexpected, unplanned,
but multiplying into visibility
so we all can think about the many crosses
not yet seen, but no less carried,
up hills like this
and along longer roads
than even Broadway or Main.

Thur., Apr. 9

Set the table
pour the wine
open the doors
sing beyond them
a greeting song
a welcoming tale
inviting in all;
some are able
others may not,
but do not judge
their walking past
their fearful looks
their regrets pushing
their paths away.
Why don't all enter?
So many reasons
enough for each
waiting to hear
words of welcome
that light upon
their flinching heart
which may require
three, five, seven times
delivered with love
to accept as theirs.
Set the table
pour the wine
open the doors
truly welcome in
those you've called
and learn what that offer
really means
when it's really made.

Wed., Apr. 8

Creation begins again here today
that's what some traditions will say;
all i know is that light continues to play
on a stretch of wall where it will not long stay.

From bed, the mornings grow all the more bright
and trying to sleep well, the ending of night
presses sunrise into my squeezed tightly closed sight
with dawn moving northwards, expanding the light.

If the world began on a day just like this
you feel the rightness of sweet springtime bliss
with beginning and starting and a quiet morning kiss,
a dawning renewal i'd not want to miss.

April Can't Quite Conquer

Willows explode and spray down in yellow
while blossoms reach up in white cupped splashes.
Snow slants across the field of view, from where
to when we do not know, and cannot see
the source or destination. Just a screen
beyond which the slow motion spread of life
fills the frame, where our eyes seek out the light
of dawn, development, and hints of death,
left over from the winter kills now past.
Falling snowflakes still are water, soaking
the soil now frozen, now sodden, then mud,
where sudden growth squirts up as moisture drops,
moss and mucky shoots and starts, oozing green
under late spring lowering skies, darkly
surging from western storms into eastern
sunrises that come earlier each day.

Tues., Apr. 7

It's the idea of an earthquake
the shakes your world,
more so when it happens.
If the ground beneath your feet can move,
what is solid, then?
What is secure?
The buildings answer,
shaking down the unquestioned ceilings,
collapsing assumed walls,
heaving the certain floors
up as much as down,
mostly sideways.
After an earthquake, the shaking stops
but the world still turns,
leaving the spot it should have stayed
passing the point of perspective
and keeping going past the place
where you could count on holding strongly
to a secure position.
Clouds pass east while the sun goes west,
and if you watch closely enough,
they shred and whisper away in your sight,
unless the air itself is shaking,
rumbling away the most peaceful silence
into a sky shattering thunderclap,
an earthquake of the heavens.
Then night falls (or rises)
and the clouds shred away
and the fixed stars slowly turn --
those that don't flare
into sudden collapse themselves.
So the earth's as solid as it gets,
except when it isn't,
and that's certainly how it is.

Mon., Apr. 6

Snow and blossoms
storms and green
are the usual contrasts
each spring are seen.

Growth and breakdown
rot and hope
joined this season
to make us cope

with appearances
that seem to clash
though they partner now
like treasure and trash.

Gold can't buy life
shoots have no worth
the riches of new life
the poverty of birth.

Sun., Apr. 5

My palm branch is on the wall, now;
a sheathed sword over the mantle,
so to speak,
a musket above the door.
It looks a bit like a rib cage,
a row of pews,
a length of track,
but also pleasantly green
wedged behind the wood of the cross
up on our wall.

The original palms would have been vast,
wide, heavy, almost a weapon.
Torn from trunks and laid
along the dusty road,
they kept the clouds from rising,
blocking and obstructing
a view of the person
at the heart of the parade.

You couldn't do that very often,
stripping down the palm trees.
Only for a great occasion,
a sufficient cause, would you
expend the community supply
of acclamation and praise,
made real by green fronds
trodden into the dust:
soon to dry, and crack, and break,
and crumble into the dust of the road.

The dust that the next palm pathway
would keep down, so the crowd could see
their next candidate for celebration.
For there is always another one.

This palm will dry up on my wall,
and the ones in the altar guild closet
will crack and crumble, drying to powder
that will be burnt and mixed next year
with olive oil, and smudged
on foreheads in a cross,
which will mark a pathway for a time
and then be washed away.

The palm trees grow their fresh branches again,
the harvest for Holy Week will come around,
the year will turn and they will be ashes,
and the path stays clear,
allowing us a view of the way ahead,
to the cross, and beyond.

Sat., Apr. 4

Fire cracked rock -
it's called FCR
in archaeological notes.

Fields near my house,
a tumble downslope
from an archaeological site
now a subdivision itself,
are tilled and recently scrubbed by rain.
I walk the furrows, eyes down,
scanning back and forth
as if on survey.

Just at the bend of the straight
to the tilted, walking up towards
the fenceline and swingset beyond,
a scatter punctuated broadly
among last year's cornstalks
and rounded glacial cobbles.

Chunky, irregular, reddened as much
as blackened, heat treated chunks
mostly of granite
(sandstone just crumbles in a fire).
They do not fit the frame,
if you know the picture you're looking at.
Gathered from the creek yards and yards away,
thousands and thousands of years ago,
walked back up this slope
after glaciers rolled them down from Canada
unimaginably longer ago than that.

Hold them up, and crackled quartz gleams crazily,
speckling the surface, rounded hard edges,
still squarish, all about a fist in size.
These held the heat from a fire,
lining a pit, making an oven,
cooking food, and pushed aside by hungry eaters,
but kicked into a pile by cautious cooks,
who know they'll need them again.

They are not gold, not even copper,
and related but the unglamorous cousins
to the worked flint for which
walkers search these fields,
arrowheads and spearpoints.
Yet the value of these darkened,
weighty, heat-holding stones
might have been much more than any
flint found or projectile point made
in the days when these were used.
Now, as symbols, the shape holds all the value.

In my hand, this feels priceless,
speaks volumes, brightens my day,
right now.
But i still toss it gently aside.

Fri., Apr. 3

If I can't make the same soup twice,
it hasn't been for lack of trying.
Measuring would help,
or any decent standard for
parceling out the ingredients.

Pinches and cupped handfuls are only part of it.
Sometimes I'm just in a basil and spinach mood,
other times oregano and crushed red pepper
drive my mental taste buds to pull down
off the shelf a couple canisters,
and shake with vigor.

I've cooked with wine,
made my stock, bought it, too;
sometimes it's just the leftovers
and their sauces and gravies
that drive the blend from salt to cumin
and beyond.

When it tastes just right,
I think: "I'd like to do that again."
I never do. Each soup is made up
of the occasions of the moment,
the temperature outside as much as the burner setting,
the flavors of the day more than the tastes tonight.

Each time I try to make a wonderful pot of soup,
what I'm trying to make is a potful
of Grandma's bean soup,
or the great aunts' chicken and dumplings,
or that restaurants warming bowl of something.
I can't, quite, but I keep trying,
chasing those remembered tastes around
and along the shelf of spices,
dash by pinch by pour,
simmered long.

Thurs., Apr. 2

To see spring, you have to get on your hands and knees.
It doesn't show as well standing, upright and on your feet.
Looking out and around the world is still greyish
and only a little greenish, dimly.
The sprouts and shoots and tiny blossoms
will only open up their glory
if you put your face up close, nose to nose,
damp soil staining your pants slowly
up through your knees, denting down the turf.
Arise, and see the further trees
anew, with the wisp
of buds and sap vibrating a green glow
up through the browns and tans and gravelly crisps
of bark about to burst away
showing a tenderer skin beneath,
and as cool breezes nudge you in,
to the house where
you have to change your clothes,
mud on your cuffs, your elbows, your nose.

Wed., Apr. 1

There's never been a rumble like the freight that travels past
as a rush of memory goes by, and the images don't last;
you try to fix the sight of change and hold this present "when,"
but occasions keep colliding from the now into the "then."
A growing child plows through life as if they're on a track;
it seems to wind and wander but it never does go back.
Each stage or phase recalls to mind a parent's own lost days
when they themselves were following what seems exact same ways;
it isn't true, which is so hard, to keep in your own mind
when feeling like you know just what they're just about to find.
But even coming to a place, a spot you knew yourself before
looks to their eyes another way, reached through a different door.
So you recall as now you watch the moments in their life,
and try to not relive again the insides of your strife;
their fears and doubts may not at all repeat how 'twas for you,
and this your task, step back and let them do what they must do.