A Journal
When you’re 27
and your friends
are 78, or 82 –
you either
Accept your fate:
Your friends are
going to die, or
What Else?
This is the only Truth
that persists:
You are young
and people die.
And your death doesn’t
matter, so much.
It’s not that – it’s this:
It will never make sense.
When it’s my time
I want to know:
what it feels like
There are opportunities
for second chances, but
this isn’t one.
I want to know
what it was like,
before the morphine
drip, dripping
And the rockabye
easing
out
I woke up in the
world screaming
What is it like
to end?
And everyone who searches
finds – maybe not
the missing button, maybe
an old note, yellowed photo
with a missing corner.
And you realize
what you find is
good enough,
or better
And the cardigan can
do without mending –
its gapping filled
for now with a memory
of summertime,
or last year’s loss
– you never lost at all.
It was hiding under the bed,
stirred awake,
an answer. The question
never mattered.
———
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” – Rilke
The earth moves
Did you know?
It pulses with intention.
Birds free fall in aerial feats
The hive hums
The dry leaves whisper
their ancient chant
And we,
We move, too
Building, working,
fighting, dreaming –
not always with intention.
But noise, always noise.
The earth knows –
do you?
Our performative toiling
is Being,
a loud inhalation,
a boisterous sigh
We tangle fingers
and join
the chant “We are alive”
Do not bring the silence.
Do not take.
The earth, though
It Takes.
This is the one truth
we were born knowing.
We move – before
it’s too late.
In memory of Judy Neumeyer
Let me die
in the summertime
by a window, with
the warmth, pushing
through the fragile skin
of my eyelids
Let me die
in a quiet
room; with the
tea kettle on
in the kitchen and
the laundry spinning,
pulsing like
blood through beating hearts.
Let me die
with a cat
at my feet and
a hand holding mine and
a smile tracing
my lips
And the sunshine –
Oh, please let me
die in the sunshine.
A smile between strangers.
Watching the robin hunt
for insects,
folding three loads of laundry, dropping
boiling water
into the teapot.
Writing in your journal, listening
to your spouse, sharing:
a meal, a ride,
Your load.
A cool breeze that cuts
through humid air.
The clack of boots
on asphalt. Going,
and leaving.
Habit and impulse.
Pray without ceasing –
Let this journey be
Your Prayer.
Contentment looks like
a sleeping mouse and
an old oak tree
Contentment
feels like
a knit wool blanket
in grass green sprawled
out on your
unmade bed.
Contentment tastes like
mashed potatoes
and buttered
whole grain toast
Contentment sounds
like crickets
and summer rain
Contentment smells
like a warm
cup of earl gray
at 4 or 4:15.
Each minute doesn’t
have to count
but it has to matter
Each waking eye
Each phase of the moon
Each dawn and
rain
it’s bound to come again
but never with
just the same flourish
or shape or pattern.
It doesn’t have to count
but it must be
acknowledged
Each hair brushed
just so, each sizzle
in the pan and
coffee ground and
alarm sounded
it’s the dance and
melody of normalcy
but not mediocrity.
It doesn’t have to count
but it should be appreciated
Each sigh
Each staring at the
wall and
backache and
hangnail and chore
forgotten
it strikes in the cheek
like a sinus headache
but it dissipates.
It doesn’t have to count
but of course it matters
Each daily ritual
Each daily error
it’s a rhythm, cycle,
slow creek in an often
parched wood
but it persists
It isn’t a counted forward march –
It is a sinewy, strengthening web
of rich matter.
