1944 (of light and love)

Truth is like light. Duration is of no consequence. A darken cave of ten times ten thousands years is just as bright of light as one continuously lit. Love is this way. I knew Virgil for just a few days, yet in the last forty years I have never known a love as true, as real, as enduring. And I think not of the loss, of his death, of that snowy December day, of all that was never to be, but rather the blessing of holding what few ever hold, for a heart once lit in love is never not lit, never not warm. And the warmness is not of memory or imagination. His life within me, decade after decade has been something eternal, forever present. So, in this way, I live alone. For who can sit across the table and not think I’m insane.

801. the holding of hands

It wasn’t till we buried Grand that I noticed. I don’t even remember the day, but I was staring at his hand, his old veined paw, fingers naturally clawed. We weren’t doing anything. Only the sun sat with us on the back porch. Each of us lost in our own thoughts. Lost without the sound of plates and glasses from the kitchen. That song of union connecting the three of us. So we sat now, just Papa and I. We rocked. We watched the ocean. And I looked at his hand as if I was seeing it new, as one sees a lion in the wild or a person behind bars. From somewhere I heard a wind chime, of a breeze gently rolling sand over the nightly crab tracks, of how nothing stands still and of his hand now, alone, solitary, sedentary. His gaze was of something else, his eyes unreadable in their unblinking silence, and I wondered if he felt what I felt, had discovered what I knew now, or whether he had always known it, always known this day would come, a part of his life shared only with Grand, a world that only the two of them inhabited. A world seen by their smiles and hugs, and above all, by the holding of hands.

Closing the Year

What is this speck of consciousness that floats on the day? I’ve been asking myself this question since the age of five. I remember clearly riding in the back of my mother’s green station wagon. We were on Monterrey Blvd heading home. My hair was short and I had bangs. Why am I me and not someone else? Why do I live now and not some time other, either past or future? And why now, this memory so clear, clearly true and not true? I remember the question, of asking it. I remember the memory of remembering myself in the back of the station wagon at the time of asking. Yet, we didn’t move to that part of town until I was ten. So age, location and memory don’t match. But as I look out my westward window now, into a sea of trees and a setting sun, I can only think of the smallness of my existence and the magnitude of (everything else.)

Happy New Year. May you hold and be held. May your dreams come true.

800. as sun and cloud

She sat on the porch and watched them walk to the lake. They walked like leaves fall and they held hands as children, arms swinging, fingers tight. They seemed to be talking from the look of heads leaning, of attention held, gyroscopic by way of centered, balanced. Their walk was not of time or destination, she thought, nor for show or presentation. They were as sun and cloud. They held that kind of endlessness about them. Moving yet eternal. An archtype. As effortless as autumn. From the distance, she could not hear them, the trail beneath their silent feet gutter worn. The lake beyond was smooth and blue in reflection, still and quiet. Tranquil. All of it. As clear as day is to night, as light to dark, as them to her.

Poet

Yellow Flag Press in conjunction with the third annual Vision/Verse exhibit has chosen one of my poems for broadside publication and display. I'm humbled and excited.

Quote: Marc Barasch

"Every now and then, I'll meet an escapee, someone who has broken free of self-centeredness and lit out for the territory of compassion. You've met them, too, those people who seem to emit a steady stream of, for want of a better word, love-vibes. As soon as you come within range, you feel embraced, accepted for who you are. For those of us who suspect that you rarely get something for nothing, such geniality can be discomfiting. Yet it feels so good to be around them. They stand there, radiating photons of goodwill, and despite yourself you beam back, and the world, in a twinkling, changes."

- Marc Barasch