Lingering Forever

 Her fingers worked the needles and yarn

like she was kneading bread dough blind.

Looking up to gauge my response to what

she had said, she’d knit and knit without pause.

It was not long before I realized that my

mother used to do the same.  And somehow

as I sat with this hospice patient, listening

to her tell her tales, one by one I saw the 

women of my life enter the room.  Mom,

Mom-mom, Mimi, Nanna, Mertz, Karen and

Ruth, Aunt Pat, Aunt Norma, Aunt Betty, Dawn 

and Pat joined her, knee to knee, needles tapping out 

their cloth.  It was then I first knew - deep down -

I carry those women with me - EVERYWHERE.

Those first and powerful women of my life, 

they have knitted themselves an endless

blanket of my days even as they were 

nowhere in view, just always under the

chatter of knitting, behind the threading of

a needle, or beyond the cutting of their

cloth.  Somehow connecting me to

who I would become.  Really, no words.

Just their ghostly appearance doing what 

they did, all the while as I listened to this

woman slowly dying.  And the others.

All the others.  Slowly leaving through the years.

They are all in there, in me, lingering forever.

our stories

 our stories are what 

feed our souls - deep

and on the inside.

in our story we 

eat the broken one;

we throw him up on

the table first, divide

his flesh from his blood

and we eat him - after of

course we mumble a few

words.  we grind him up

and swallow him and then 

he is ours.  and then we, we

become the broken ones.

this is to remind us that

we are broken ones and

not worthy to judge 

anyone else - we are

unworthy and we are

as I said before and up

above: broken ones.

the end 

the hands of time

 sometimes

when i look at

my hands

a weeping wells up

within me

a hoard of hands of

those long gone

display themselves

across the corners

of my mind

sometimes

the hoard of hands 

are mine, all mine 

from across the sands

of my own time

has the remembering 

of my mind left go of 

all the countless hours

of joy held near by all

the hands i have known

or, is it just 

that all that joy contains 

each o’ their meanings

as grains in an endless

hourglass of feeling

so much, so full,

so tenderly eternal

that all the emotions

well up as water across 

the lids of my life

 sometimes

when i look at

my hands

a weeping wells up

within me

the beauty

the glory of it all

at once

here 

and yet not here

 

Slow Pulling of Air

  The slow pulling of air

into the still small space

of the heart, brings a

dropping of all the world

save breathing.  Let it fall

to the wayside, to the path

of our own existence.  In.

Out.  In, again.  Mark your

life in inhalations, count

your joy in the departure

of what you just brought

in.  Let it go, let it go,

again, just let it go.  Ahhh.

Birch-Song

 I have seen the birches

just over the hill, as they

line themselves up to

talk among the copse.

They whisper a song on

the morning, and one 

again on the setting of

the sun.  A song that we

would do well to learn.

Listen closely and you may

pick up the cadence, strain 

to make out the meaning

of their lullaby.  The secret 

of our own future may be

woven within the words.

Listen. Listen. Listen.

Bathed In Words

 I’ve been bathed in words.

Surrounded and covered

with all their meaning,

fed and nourished on sound.

From my earliest days

I have escaped into pages

which have led me out of

the chaos and turmoil of

what we called home.

Words have always lifted

me above the fray of human

suffering and angst and into

a world of adventure and 

delight.  The Scholastic

Book Fairs and the Weekly

Readers were in league 

with the library to form

the essential cartographic

tools I would need to craft

the maps and take to flight.

Words are the key for any

one individual to gain the 

understanding to be set free;

if not in truth than in point

of fact for their own self.

I am broken by the cheapening

of words I see afoot these days.

Words use to malign and destroy

and not to open us to grandeur.

The silence of the Meetinghouse

has burned the worth of words

into the cells I bear each day.  “I

hear an echo in my soul, how can

I keep from singing”, or speaking,

signing, or gesturing to those near

by who need a word of comfort

and repair.  Words.  Words.  Words.

Such a cascade of loveliness and

kismet is possible on opening each

new book; such a hope and exhilaration 

with each new journal.  “Moby Dick”

the first novel I read in third grade still

portends the rise of hairs on my neck

at the sound of “Call me Ishmael.”

The names De Soto, De Leon, Crockett, 

and Boone presage a richness of desire 

for new lands and exploration.

I’ve been bathed in words and “THAT 

HAS MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE.”

I Saw It

 I saw it 

in your eyes,

mostly.

That you didn’t 

understand

exactly what 

I was saying.

And then,

all of the sudden

you emerged again,

like you were all

those years ago.

The silent tear

running down

your cheek

let me see

you remembered.