Poem for Glenn Francis Walsh from His Final email to Me in July 2020 (his words in BOLD)

Your words arrived early that July morning, 

well before they had found the tumors

that had planted themselves in your body.

The doctors had found; not your words had found.

“I have this ongoing thought about catching up with 

God's voice out in the universe.”

I was startled by their sound and glad

we could still surmise this and that about

the universe and her birth in space and time.

Presuming we could know where others

had surely failed - all things GOD and so on.

The word’s sound; not the universe’s sound.

“Scientist's have launched satellites to send out signals 

that have supposedly caught up to the sounds and temperatures  

of what was happening at 300,000 million years after the Big Bang.”

I wondered who had first thought that sounds and

temperatures to-be-caught-up-to were actually a thing.

And did he or she or they know that they were

simply the sounds and temperatures on this side

of the Big Bang by 300,000 million years.

And what is 300,000 million years like, anyway.

"They have even mapped pictures of it that they have

said proves the big bang happened."

I hope the pictures show a little leg or maybe a hint of

embarrassment after all that time of being intimate

with the universe’s glory and birthing; with the wonders

of God and God's ways.

Something to make us smile coyly at our familiarity 

with the old gal or guy; or the whatness of WHO-IS.

“(https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/C/Cosmic+Microwave+Background)”

But this says 300,000 years after the Big Bang,

which is clearly a different matter. Mostly because

I think I might have a better chance understanding

300,000 without it being a measure of the

number of years in millions.

But, I still really don’t, anyhow.

Besides, what is a tilde between good friends?

“I have this idea that when God spoke to Moses,

for example, that we could send up equipment to

catch up with the sound waves from that event,

since light travels so much faster than sound.”

Well duh. I mean, that is after all what you started out

saying that the scientists were doing. Launching those

satellites to catch up to the sounds. And, given the

looseness of your tight syllogism, I must simply just agree.

“What do you think?”

It’s not, my dear and departed friend, a case of what I

think. For, the days have lost their luster after your

departure and I fear that feelings are now more at the heart

of what is so very important and not thinkings. And, those

feelings are of missing you and gratitude for our years of

musings and sarcasm about God and his/her universe -

whatever pronoun the divine chooses to use.

I was not prepared for you to be able to see my house

from there; or, for you to climb the ladder to the roof and

not come down. Damn it, I was not ready for this sorrow.

But, I suppose you were not either.

And here I am, left. Left not knowing the sound of God’s

voice speaking wonder to Moses. Left not hearing your voice

in sounds outside the memories of my heart.

But, this I know - and wonder if you somehow did as well -

your ongoing thought about catching up with God's voice

out in the universe, is now a reality. A reality woven into

the soupy layers of dreamlike ponderings that have always been

your way. And still, I wonder if you knew, then.

I think you knew.

Could you whisper something to us all about the sound of God's

voice; it may make the days pass a little less roughly. Maybe something

about whether he/she rolls his/her "r's" or some such. Something that

allows us to just look over there - for an instant - to hide the sting

of your absence. Like you did in life and on the stage you came to love.

Like you did with humor.

The absurd non-sequitur seems so very loud without you here.

But we will try to hold together the tattered ends of life’s thread,

hoping to hear your messages in the early morning dew on the

tractor, or in the smell of engine grease as it rises softly on the

mid-day wind. Let us know what you find out when you catch

up with God's precious and lovely voice out in the universe.

Please?!  

Or, maybe just the answer to the cosmic koan of all

time, "Does God drive a John Deere, a Farmall, or a Ford?

Having to Find Myself

(This poem is written from the perspective of a young soldier in the Civil War.  The constant changing of tent-mates a stark reminder of death at every turn).


I am having to
find myself;
trying
to remember
who
it was that
stood at my side
only just

this morning –

as we struggled toward
the main of the fighting –

amid the dark,
dreamlike fog
of trying to swim past
the un-sureness in
my soul –
in all our souls and
across every living
thing that is standing
on this our present
battlefield.

You have seen this,
Walt,
a thousand, thousand times
you have seen this
in your ambling wander
through the great
stretches of the war that
we set ourselves to –

amid the trickling
flood of the chaoses
of the skirmish
and all the mismatch
of impressions and
intentions.

He was a young
man – that I know –
not unlike myself;
but,
his name,
his name is not
close upon my lips –

not anywhere in the air
about the me
that I have become.

He had only just
moved into my tent –
but
a
day ago
or so –

and his name,
his name
I do not know.

He took the bed
of my earlier
friend,

that friend that
only just fell

himself to
his death;
his lonely
solitary death on
the bloody gravel
just beyond
our morning fire.

One day,
a bed belongs
to a friend,
and the next
a stranger finds
his way into it –

a placeholder against
the clouds of purpling,
black powder and lead
of shot.

Walt, O Walt,
peripatetic sage
of these democratic
shores and flowers,
how have you written
this anguish into
parchment with
your pen?

How have you shared
this desperate, ragged, and
suffering condition with the
mothers and the fathers
of the fallen?

We saw you here,
tending
the lads
who were dying.
We saw you
take to pen
to share a son’s
last words with
his ma and with
his pa.

I wonder where
the souls come from
that inhabit all of
these constantly
changing
bodies –

constantly
changing
forms
of God.

Is there some dank
emotion that a land must
feel, that a land
must envelope

at the exact moment
of each death or
whisper of decay;

as the youth which
grew upon it
fall down
in a lifeless heap?
Or does it
pass unnoticed?

Which the worse?
Does some act of love
or whimsy encourage
a dour mood in a man
that marches him
thus off to war –

off toward the grave
when he ages toward
his manhood –

toward his own final
independence?

Is there some
turn of the face – away
from the direction of
the eyes –

that does instill
a calamitous decline
at just that moment?

His step was furtive
and unsure that morning
as we left the campfire.

He turned anxiously
from one side to the
other; looking for some
veiled hint of approval
from those who stood
at his boot – those he
called friend.
Sentinels at his
left and
at his right.

It was that instance of
doubt that made him
hesitate –
just where
to point his gun,
just where to thrust
his bayonet.

It was then,
Walt,
in that instant
of the instance
of his hesitation
that he fell to the
ground – the ground
on which we both stood –

dead. Just and only
dead.

Write him, Walt,
write them all
an elegy that
will keep us
from doing this
all again –
from doing this
even one more day.

Write him, Walt,
in a way that will help
me remember who
he was and who it
was who took his bed.

For, I am undone
and cannot find
my way

April 1865. "Cold Harbor, Virginia. Collecting remains of dead on the battlefield after the war."Memento mori. Wet plate by John Reekie.

For The Boatman

I have two coins - 

two old coins

for the boatman.

They are in my 

pocket this day.

They will be there

for the day I

stop drawing 

breath on this earth.

I would like

to think he would

barge me over

even without the fare,

but, just the same

take the coins,

take them from my

pocket and lay them

on my eyes -

for Charon.

It is the least

I can offer him.

 

His work is hard

and still so very

misunderstood.

He languishes

at the end of the 

thread of this human

strand, alone and 

still so very 

misunderstood.

As I said.

His patience

is so very ongoing

and without pause.

Aside his wooden vessel

he stands, and waits - 

the sand and stones between

his toes until a lifeless

corpse is dropped

on the gunwale plank

of pine become a bed.

And then, pushing off

from the edges of our lives

he is knee deep in the

death we thought we had

escaped. His toes now clean

of the gritty debris that lay

strewn all about our living.

He is giving us one

final honor, one more moment

of respite before the 

disolution of all we had;

of all we were.

Take them, friend -

whoever shall be there

at my end.

Take the coins from my pocket 

and gently lay them on my

eyes now closed in death.

They will be

for Charon and all

he has done to

carry me across.

For, when his work is

done, they are his.  I

have no more need of them;

I carried them, all my life,

for him; for the one

who shall set me down

upon the other shores -

on the farside banks

of the Jordan, or of the

Styx or Delaware.  The coins

are for the boatman

who is - as I have repeatedly said -

so alone and so very

misunderstood.

Mingled

It is coming up through me
from the ground.
My feet are pulling it
out of the earth -
tearing it
from the dirt.

It is dark,
silvery,
heavy and full
of power.

My heart beats with it
these days.
It courses through
all my veins -
ivory growing from bone
and iron deposits in the
hot and cooling core.
It bubbles.

There is no joy
in this grief
that comes from
the dirt,
that comes from
the ground
and from death.
There is rest
sometimes,
but there is no joy.

It mingles with me
and falls down again.
Trying to pull me
back in to its depths.
I pull to keep myself
from going in,
from going under.

My pulling
and its
pulling get
lost and mixed
together and
unclear. Who is
pulling which and
which whom?

Traces of silvery pools
mix with blood and seep
into the crevices of
the cracked dirt.
No tree will grow here,
no blade of grass.
Only the buzzards
will come
and peck at the soil;
tasting for death
between the broken
earth and the pieces
of bloodied gravel.

Ciao!

+Tom

A Thousand Years of Staring

The smell of wood
burning in the fireplace
dances in the air
mixing with the
sound of the river.

Today, I am sure
we learned about motion
by watching the water.

Thousands of years of staring,
daily staring,
heavy staring,
into the flowing
wetness –

driven moisture –

made them sure they
could float a log
or turn a wheel.

I have come here for
the sound of her movement,
for the peace of
her traveling – to hide from
Zoe’s death.

The geese come here.
They move at sunset..
as the glow disappears,
a chorus swells.

One goose
carries the point of
the song;
pounding home the call
to make music.
“Sing. Sing,” she calls.
And, they do.

A lovely song.
It grows and deepens
as they approach.
And, as they are overhead,
I close my eyes, and
with Rumi, I raise my
hand and drink in
the secret nectar.

I dance.
Twirl,
pause,
slide, whirl.
I have come here
for the geese.

I have come here
for them to sing
the song for me.
This past week
our little girl died.

Zoe Alexander,
laden with cysts on
her head and spine,
died inside her mother.

We saw her on the
screen. Little hands and feet.
A chord, and cysts. Before
they could take her from us,
she died.

I came to the river to
stare. My numbness screams
out to listen. I came here to
hear the geese. Here
there are no words of consolation,
no words of hope; but,
the pounding of the silence
and the movement.

I came to the river
That the one goose might carry
The point of the song for me.
For now, I must stare, and feel
the pounding rhythm of darkling flow
within my arches, within my chest.

Ciao,

+Tom

Tear Clouds

The clouds held rain

like our tears -
heavy beyond holding.
For days they spilled
out of our eyes,
over our lids,
down our cheeks
in unending streams of warmth.

O God,
how,
even when we had stopped
crying, how they did run
out, slopping over the sides
of our bucketed hearts.
Never-ending.

I cannot
form the questions.

The mind has ceased
and the heart has
joined forces with
the body.

The mind’s grief is confusion.

Its grief is not the grief of
the rest of the body -
those wrenching, twisted
knotted aches.

It is more
a still grief. Unsure and childish.

The body mourns and mourns
and mourns, becoming empty
and endlessly full,
changing the course
of life -

Never to be the same again.

The mind grieves confusion.

The heart holds hands with the
body and pours out its grief
onto the rutted
earth that is grooved
by the soul of time forever.

Weather changing deeply,
clouds moving endlessly to the
rhythm of drenching and drying;
digging trenches in soft feeling
that screams in pain.

Ciao!

+Tom

The Other Side

There is another side
to every snowbank.
The place the wind
could not touch,
did not reach and
pile snow in
random patterns of cold.

It is quiet there.
There is little noise
and the muffled
stillness sings warmly
to the heart.

There is an underside
to the surface of the lake -
to the surface of the pond.
The duck and goose
paddle under all that come
from above

paddle it down to
that place on the
water's bottom where

there is little noise
and the muffled
stillness sing darkly
to the heart.

This inward thing -
this other side to
the snowbank,
this underside of
the surface of
things

this is a place
so close that it
is far, far away.

Our heart is
just below the
skin,
just below the
bone,
but it takes
a journey to
Byzantium to unlock
the final membrane
of remembrance.

It is that other side,
it is that under side
where all the empty
fullness dances and swirls
like a flake in a
whirlwind
and a speck on the
current.

A sparrow flits
and breaks the concentration,
an acorn falls
and the attention
is brought back
to now. And the stillness
awaits a traveler from
another day.

Emptiness

There is an emptiness in me
that cannot form words

or even hear them.

A crack in the macadam
with not even a weed -
unwanted thing -
poking through to the sun.

It may be because our
child is now dead;

or because this is the
time in the mottled and damp
green-brown world
for no stirrings.

Nothing moves but birds
on the top, scouring
the moist earth for worms
to pull up from the dirt.

Scabs from the skin.

Pre-spring death just hangs
dank,

blends with silhouettes
and with the ground
and just stays there.

Slowly. Slowly the birds
will bring back the daffodil’s
yellow, the tulip’s red, and
the skies lion blue.

Slowly
the crocus will push up,
burst and fade to milky
white. When this has come,
perhaps by then, words
will return. Words that feel
as if they have meaning.

Elixir

I know what the silver
elixir was.

The drink I stole and
consumed to slake
my thirst.

It was grief;
and O how it
burned out my soul
and ran through my body,
out of my toes,
onto my sandals.

It came to me
A week ago in a dream
posing as a drink
I was told I should not
drink.

O mercurial elixir,
O burning change.

I know what the silver elixir was.
It was Zoe and the alchemy of
hellish change that has begun.

In the Waiting

In the waiting
when the mouth can only
open to the throat
and croak curses -

the heart prays in silence.

Her frail thin,
dandelion-stem limbs
turn and pull.

Clutching her head
she wriggles, trapped
in the tunnel of my
wife’s flesh,

unable to know
the mass hanging
on her skull
keeping her a freak on
her way to choking.

What will be?

One Second

It only takes one second
for the soul to leave the body.

A flicker on the screen,
a tightening of the face
and it drains right out.

From the head-
through the heart-
out of the feet-
onto the highly polished
gray flecked white
linoleum floor.

The pathways of ecstasy
become vacant,

the heart becomes hollow,
and the mind numbed
becomes one-pointedly empty.

Gone; hope,
joy, elation.

It only takes one second
for the soul to leave the body.

Into the Earth

Snow melts
into the earth,

and dirt swells
gladly

holding it
for the sun’s passing.

Drinking from
these

fresh streams

can only come
by dying.

As Humans Grieve - for Robert Bly

I did not know
what he meant
when he said,
“he has not grieved
as humans grieve.”


But now, I feel
his meaning all throughout me,
all over the place.

Grief has a cadence;
a beating of the wing
with honk,
as the flock moves,

slowly,

a line in the distance,

over the nearby pond.

This character that grieves,
This one inside, he has
his back against the
Stucco wall and his ass
is seated on the marble bench.

The brown leaves blow loudly
about his feet, in the crow-cold
winds and purpling-gray skies.

Only just now has he learned
he will not fall forever into
the pit at his side.

The walls of the pit
fly by him - up, always up -
he grieves.

This one inside has only
Just begun to grieve. In his
Beginning he grieves like
an animal. A howling dog.

Twisting, twirling,
Unleashed, undone
he has no other
place to go but to the den
of tears and ash,
of sweat and blood, down,
down, down
at the bottom of the pit.

In his howling and falling he changes.
Passing through silence into anguish
He emerges someone new.

He is a man now. He has recovered
a bit from the tortured side. He has some
silence in the night. He has some loss.

His eyes, sore from
sobbing, are covered by dark glasses;
his appearance is disheveled and unkempt.

But he sits there, on his bench.
An animal, become a man.

He is different. But he does not say
wiser. He does not believe, anymore,
that the answer is in his hand, or in his
reach, or even out there - at all. He knows
it is a matter of time before the bench
slides over, and again he falls into the pit, and
again he becomes an animal. A man no more.

For now,
until then,
he is a god.
Gods sit in silence,
on their benches,
and they wait.
Gods are what
we are when
we are not animals.
Gods feel and know
something about
the crazy cycles
that keep pushing us
to the edge and
over the edge.

He sits there,
on his ass,
with his sore eyes,
and is a god. For just
a little bit. A god who
wept there, in confusion -
somewhere between
compost and glory.

That is how
a human grieves.

Daffodils

If there must be 

pain in our lives,

let it be amid the
delicate, and tender,

yellow folds
of flower flesh 

of spring.

 
Let it be amid
the smell of beauty

and the sight of
new sprung

blossoms.

A Man's Grief

A man’s grief is
somehow different.
It starts from separation.

He is not the same as
all other things. He really
does not feel like an ocean
or a great body of water.

There is a difference.

He is not the same as the
mother who gave
him all that he became. From
the start he knows he is the
OTHER.

He is not the same
as all other things. This makes
a man stand one step back.
This is his grieving. Not as close
to it, to anything, as he
might imagine he could be.

There is a hole in him,
in man. It is there to
mimic the womb. But it
is bottomless.

This hole drops endlessly down.
A man falls into this hole – this
hole of his - at some point.

When he is
not really looking.

Maybe he can fill the hole,
by screwing everything
in sight, by taking control
over all that he can touch.
Maybe if he fills other things
with himself, he will somehow
fill the emptiness of the hole.

Standing,
one step back,
he can only approach
the edge
so far.

There he stands,
feet firmly planted on the
ground, staring into the sea.

The endless sea.

Grieving.

And that day
is the day the hole is filled
the day that he is
able to move forward.

And,
stand apart no more.

Gathering

I have been away for a while;
out gathering in the fields.
I have pulled up lots of good
stuff, by the roots, and have
put them in my basket over
my shoulder - the basket at my side.

I have been away from myself
collecting new foods, new stuff for
the journey. Having just gotten
back, I now know I was gone.

I am happy to be back, because now
I can begin again to bake the bread,
and light the candles, to drawl the
bath and to work the poems, to be
about the things I laid aside so I
could gather new foods; bring in new
stuff. This feeling is as refreshing and
surrounding as the two feet of snow,
drifting this way and that outside of
my home, outside of me.

Zoe

That she was born to us in
mottled hues is known.
We did not want to have
her sucked out of the womb
into disparate death. But, the
cry came over the mountain,
and it spoke of war and bloodshed.

We had set ourselves to killing
God. We wanted to route Him out;
for, He had shammed us; toyed with
all that we had done that had been
good. We fought Him hard. But He
was everywhere and we lost strength.

The tolls could not be
measured accurately.
How much damage
had we done? How many
limbs had He lost?
Mist settled into our days
and the battling ceased
to the haunting sound of
the loons on the water.

We had only one casualty.
When she left, she took our
souls. She held them like
parcels, or books under
her arms as she swam in
the vast and forever blue sea.

She has sent back pieces of
them. For us. She pulls off
something from here, something
from there, and floats it in on
the surface of the cold
churning waves. It will come
in as a petal, or a moss. It
will come in as a tear, or the
sound of the pipes over the
Highlands.

Was there not some deep
settling as I crossed the path
exposed by the tide, to touch the
heather at the castle ruin. Was there
not a settling of green, and brown, and
purple bells. A settling of pounding
waves and cool mist breezes.

She has not left us. Yet,
she has left us. And, there is
the heather. There is the heather.

Another Hospice Death

You are slipping away
again.
You, the countless shifter
of faces and lives.
You are ebbing out of
consciousness again.
Going to that place
inside your form,
that place of quiet rest
and stillness.

Your face is becoming
the same again.
On yet another body,
it looks remarkably the same.
Your eyes roll up inside
their sockets.
Your mouth hangs open,
breathing from the chest -
almost gasping.

Your skin gets cold
and then hot
again and again and again.
And, it looks and feels
like tallow again.

And them, all of them
that have come to hold
your hand and
tell you that they love you,
they are all in pain
and so unsure, again.
You have pulled so inside
yourself
that you are unfamiliar
to them
and they are scared.

I have seen you pull
inside and leave
a thousand, thousand
times and it is always
the same.

Again, and again, and
again.

And yet,
you will appear anew
again and again and again
in the unfolding of yellow
daffodil flesh
in the spring
and in the
rattling cry of the
newborn child.