Monday, December 25, 2017

Harvard-Christmas Day

Journal
Dec. 25

Late afternoon, Christmas Day, I trudged through new fallen snow
toward a secret place within the confines of the Harvard campus.
A regal iron lion standing guard demands “what is your business?”
I answer, I’ve come to find meaning in desolation and hear the
whispers from the ghosts of American giants.” He stands aside
allowing me to pass. It is breathlessly beautiful as a peaceful
loneliness prevails. A late December flurry blankets the campus
weighing down ancient trees, living beings bearing witness to the
intellectual and spiritual seeds of the American nation and the values
of its founders. Here, in a private courtyard, the now is as pure as
snow falling on a billion year-old mountain at the end f the world,
one that has never known a human presence. That purity will remain
another 11 days with the exception of an occasional foraging squirrel
and until the students return to campus. The students and faculty
have flown with the geese to warmer climes for the holidays and to
the familiar cheerfulness of home, leaving me alone a million miles
from nowhere in the solitude of my own thoughts.

Everything is quietly muffled gray and white with occasional gusts swirling
snow into corners of windows, decorating wrought iron gates, and
capping Reverend Harvard in a crown of white as he tries to stand in the
way of mendacity, ignorance, and materialism. My only three-dimensional
companion, a foraging squirrel, who like myself is trying to find sustenance
in a place of isolation. In the distance over the yard, I see feathery
temperamental clouds drifting over Greco-Roman temples, smoke bellowing
from chimneys whose furnaces struggle to keep empty Dickens era
65
buildings warm and where an occasional, forgotten Christmas light blinks
through a frosty window in hopes of being seen.
As I watch the squirrel carry a nut, I wonder as I always have, how people
find meaning and beauty in lonely, forsaken places. Although how they
find it is not as important as seeing the light myself in people and places
where it’s assumed only darkness exists.

The setting sun darkens the yard, further chilling the air, prompting me to
seek a more hospitable place to continue ruminating—hopefully in a
room cast in rosy firelight whose sparks throw bobbing shadows on a tea
pot and a reading lamp attached to a padded chair facing a large window
that looks-out onto the falling snow.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Sad Ballerinas



Sad ballerinas dance
in burning fields
all night long,
trying to forget
the people they love.

Writhing in ecstatic trance,
they move in perfect sync,
 a gift attained,
from endless nights
of unwanted practice.

All night, all night
they dance…
exposing wounds,
revealing hearts
and provoking
the disembodied souls
who weep at humanness.

Although no ever sees,
they dance, sensually,
beautifully,
all night long
performing to music
of forsaken dreamers.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Meditation By Candlelight


The stillness of darkened shadows

created of candle’s blaze

burn the sun’s core,

on an ordinary wall,

illuminating unspeakable truths,

shattering the shroud,     

attaining the sacred space,

 a sanctuary from the world

confined to ordinary senses.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

The Cranes ©

One by one,
baffled mourners
drifted back

toward fragile sanctuaries,
leaving her alone
to gaze the abyss
of freshly churned earth –
where the once beautiful body lay
beginning the slow passage
back to dust.

As she knelt
craving his presence,
Apollo blazed West
meandering to destiny
threatening to leave her alone
in the land of night,
where nocturnal creatures
dwell ominously therein.

But she remained faithful,
still at one with him,
her humanness
causing signs
in the heavenly places,
provoking the servants
to summon the cranes—
to break the veil,
their startling appearance
and poetic laments
letting her know
she was not alone,
giving her strength,
to rise from her knees.

As she drove off
into night –
the cranes followed,,
flying around and around—
until the cemetery’s gates
clung shut behind;
but now, she knew
he would be with her,
all the days of her life.