The Grand Risk

And I said that if they don't
then you will
leave...
but I knew that the truth doesn't
break
down so simply,
because there
at the breaking
and in the moment of
retreat
the tale of the steps you took
and the hearts that
meet
are lost in the blur of the 
momentary.


Before the smudging
of present sufferings
there was love and
hope
smiles and
laughs
and eventually
those things that will last on
into life and memory. 
And we look back
and see
and know
it was worth it to
go past this 
flickering hesitation. 


Go past this and don't
build those comfort walls
of fluffy cells
in the cold institute of your 
self-embracing solitude. 
Go past this into that
grand risk
of a heart open to 
greater loves than this.

The Wreck

The waves of the sea flow unknowingly

Where graceful ships once sailed

Where swimming backs glistened in setting sun

Where dolphins and turtles swam

            And still the waves come.

The waves have no memories

Not like the land and the sea-floor

Memories can’t be written in the waves -

Like they are in the rock -

Or strewn across the water

Like they are in the sandy bed of the ocean

            And still the waves come.

The ocean keeps her secrets below the surface

Men get caught up in their reflections

While beneath lies something greater

In the shallows or the depths

More mysteries are hidden

Than the ever-undulating surface tells

            And still the waves come.

Near the white sand shallows
Of a palm speckled beach

Lies a secret there for any to see

Anyone who looks deeper

And has an aluminum lung

            And still the waves come.

Past a carpet of timid garden eels

And schools of shimmering jacks

And flashing barracuda

Is the waves’ hulking secret

Weighed down by bright orange fans of coral

And the black, yellow and green of feather stars

It is the wreck

            And still the waves come.

What was once a ship, now a secret garden

Flowing soft corals and multicoloured hard corals

Darting gobies and ponderous groupers

Fish of every colour on a painter’s pallet

Grazing turtles

And slowly patrolling sharks

Tired out from a night’s hunting.

And still the waves come.

This secret garden

This Atlantis beneath forgetful waves

Is hardly touched by man and rarely seen

An oasis in the underwater desert

            And still the waves come.

But if you go where the waves can’t remember

And where the storms have long passed

Where the turtles and the white-tips roam

You will see a slice of Eden

Buried from man forever

Beneath waves with no memory

            And still they come. 

At the End of Their Conquest

The conquerors looked around
At all their ashen mess
They stood there all quite silently
Not one to call them blessed

And from the ashes came the wail:
"We conquered our brothers, our sisters, our selves
We conquered our conscience and in our hearts delved
A dark little ship without oar or sail

For Acheron, Phlegethon, Cocytus and Styx
And most of all Lethe!
To memories nix."

The History of a Book

I love used books

with their crackling spines

and musky scent

their easily turned pages

and caressingly rough texture.

But most of all I love it

when there’s a name

written with care on the front inside cover.

Or when some handwritten note or dedication

remains like a precious artefact

speaking of another place, another time

some memory of a person I never met

some legacy of one I may never know.

I wonder where they are now

What kind of life do they live?

Do they have children?

Do they have a warm place to call their own?

Do their friends call them often?

I wonder what caused them to get rid of the book

Did it get accidently thrown in with garage sale items?

Did they grow tired of the words?

Or did it simply mock them from the shelf?

—Saying, You’ll never read me again

you never have the time to read anymore.

I wonder if perhaps they died

and the book was sold or given away

and passed from hand to hand

until it found its way into mine

to share with me some piece of that person’s life.

What influence did the book have on them?

Did it make them cry?

Did it make them angry?

Did it make them want to share it with the world?

I write my name

right below theirs

never crossing out the history of a book.

The book is mine now

but it will not always be.

It could pass down generations

leaving only the fading list of handwritten names

the yellowing pages

and the creases in the spine

as memories.

I hope that one day someone will pick up an old book

see my name

and wonder who I am.

His Legacy

They say he took his own life

Like she once tried to do

But where she was saved

By miracle or luck

(I’ll take the former)

He succumbed

To leave that everlasting question:

Why...

He passed on

Like we all must one day

Leaving too soon it seems, too young

Leaving children behind

Children old enough to have given him grandkids

But too young to have tried.

He passed on before that empty-nest-hope for grandkids could sneak in.

Yet she

Who once tried to take her own life—

She who got a second chance—

She lives and begins to feel that empty-nest-hope stir.

She lives and dreams and hopes and plans.

She works and suffers and fails and cries.

She calls her son at 1 a.m.
                                 With tears in her voice
                                                               Asking if he heard the news

He, who was close by after she met those bright unblinking eyes

                                           On top that unforgiving asphalt

He, who came on that horrible task to pick up her car

                                           Abandoned at the side of the highway

He, who came to talk to a baffled husband wondering
                                           What did he do wrong?—What signs did he miss?

He, who came to talk to a father with no way of explaining impossibilities

                                           To children confused and afraid

He, who offered to help in a situation most would flee from,

He, who waded into the incomprehensible mess of it all

And offered a warm hand,

Is gone.

His hand is cold and sapped of strength

He has left his family and this world behind
                                            But he is not dead.

For he was there for a man at the height of a freefall

A husband who had left all he understood behind

A father falling through thin air grasping for something that makes sense.

He was there for a family in the disarray of impossible chaos—

The impossible that somehow was

He reached out and was there.

And there he remains.

His legacy lives on

In the warmth of a father’s hands

In the tears of a mother’s eyes

In a son’s trust

In a daughter’s love

In the family he helped to heal

He lives on.

His death is still a heavy thing to bear

A weight too large to understand.

So shed your healing tears

And wail out your confusion—

The whys that heave out your chest—

But after the rawness passes

When the memories still remain

Remember he still lives in my family

And in all who he touched in their pain.

Ne Me Quitte Pas

I was walking through a blasted grove

Of figs and berries burnt to ash

This land once full of green and growth

Now brought that memory down to crash.

And in that land of blackened pillars

That seemed a Hades temple cold

I saw a flash of white above me

Too bright for prematurely old

Eyes that squint against the gleaming

Inside a world that has gone grey

Oft miss a beacon’s guiding

When from the path their feet do stray.

And here despite my squinting wonder

I saw alight upon a tree

A dove as bright as morning’s splendour

And brighter still than memories.

And there I froze awake in awe

To see so near such beauty live.

Why his pause and hesitation

Where life so long had ceased to give

Its hope and splendour at its being

It seems now just a heavy weight

But yet that bird came down alighting

As if defying seems of fate.

And here he stays nearby beside me

Though he seems so out of place

He should for every ’visioned reason

Take flight from this our burning race

Perhaps because he came to meet me

In this unholy blasted waste

He may remain right here beside me

To guide me to a better place.

(Ne me quitte pas)

You’re all the hope that I could find.

(Ne me quitte pas)

Without you I’ll just wander blind.

Shadows Lit and Fled

The shadows lit and fled within the cave-

The hole of past iniquities piled high

And packed closer than stacked Parisian ’combs

Of bones on bones; mixed neighbours friends and foes

Till numbers disappear with all the names.

Yet when the crack of earthquake, pain and trial

Broke through the granite roof of strong facades

And split the cave in two down to the roots

The sunlight shone on bones in milling piles

Where darkness once held uncontested sway.

And in those dry and dusty bones within

That cold Platonic cave new life begins

To spark a fire in marrow stiff and old.

Life from death; a life renewed as phoenix

Wings and lasting beneath the phoenix star.

For now a valley is where once a cave

Held its crowded prisoners beneath dark,

Heavy earth and rock to dry out and wait

For what they did not know. These bones they have

Memories but no knowledge and hoping

Not much for futures, they forgot the hopes

In pasts. Before the end they grew as they

Now appear: cynical and hard and lone.

They saw only I’s and me’s and not we’s

But each a king, each a queen in their own

Reckoning, till parched and lost they became

All indistinguishable pale, dry bones.

The names and titles and wealth and everything

They once were and thought and fought over was

Forgotten; nameless heaps in an arid

Valley. There they should remain, forever,

A hidden mystery of death and woe.

Yet despite everything that lives and seems

And all that had ever lived a whisper,

A voice, a word arose beneath the sun

To light the still burning fire in these bones.

Ode to the Soldiers

The bells! The bells, they toll for victory

Hard fought and won upon the heaping fields

Of mud scorched black by emptied armories

And blood of bodies brave who would not yield.

To them, to them they toll for all but naught

Who fought and died there in the worst of hell

Those dead; the brightest of the hope-lit souls

To walk the twilight of ’shrined progress fraught

With blinding pride and hubris great to knell

The gongs of war: the bells, the bells, they toll.

And throbbing now upon November air

A cry goes up and mingles with their sound

A scream of joy, perhaps, or bold fanfare

To ’nounce the end of war and loud expound

Relief for lengthy tension snapped at last.

Yet there among the joyous clamor bright

A sorrow note clashes ’gainst glad revel

Dragged slow through sky, its wake: a silence vast

Just broken by a wailing wordless fright

Of dreaded news now brought long to level

A heavy blow upon the grief-bent head

Of one lone mother who long wrote and hoped

To see her son return from war to wed

The girl who short would find her throat tight groped

By wracking tears and strangled falling moans.

The bells toll hollowly for past-known sons

When war yet won is lost when best is burned

On pyres of pride and greed that flaming groans

Beneath the weight of sacrifice in tons:

The lives not lived and futures never learned.

The bells! The bells, will ring for something bright

When men and sons will die for more than naught

They go forth bravely who for others fight

And stand upon freed lands that their blood wrought

Where peace will spread across a land once bound

In fears, despair and mercy lacked by those

Who led for gain to self and not the whole.

Those men who died in wars some base, some sound

By duty called decisive they arose

To fellows guard and reach the crucial goal.

The bells! The bells, still toll for mothers' sons

And daughters brave who gave their essence all

Against the threat and thund’ring of the guns

And raging death where they did lastly fall.

So lift the mothers and the dead sons high

And Daughters, fathers we remember too

Write fading names upon your mournful soul

Lest we forget the past in last goodbyes;

Do not erase that bleak November view

Of fallen souls for whom the bells, the bells,

They toll.

(On this Remembrance Day I dedicate this poem to all those who serve, or have served, in the military. Also, I dedicate this to all those who have relatives who serve or have served. Your sacrifices will not be forgotten.)

She of the Rainbow

I dreamed of her in shades of grey

Mixed jet and pearl and slate and cream

Upon my canvass her to stay

My rainbow shade; my eye’s fair gleam

I dreamed of her in black and white

Mixed paint to stain false memory

And thought I painted all that’s bright

Not seeing my poor mimicry

I dreamed she was all framed but free

In lands not green and blue alive

Imprisoned there alone was she

In my dark head I thought she’d thrive

I dreamed in sunsets of her grace

In reds and yellows that did fade

And did not catch upon her face

That gift of glory there was laid

I dreamed in palettes overbright

But never finding the right tone

Violet, orange, pink weren’t right

They all became a monochrome

I painted dreams and nightmares too

To try and find her somewhere there

To mirror that one and only who

That did my bleary eyes ensnare

But when she walked across my way

And broke the image in my view

I saw that all my shades of grey

Were not the rainbow’s truest hues

She lived more vivid than my dream

And glittered far against my clouds

And all I brushed to me did seem

Deluding ashen shadowed shrouds

Reality is where I’ll go

To see and draw just what I know

I will not try to bring down low

The hues above in the rainbow

A Smiling Face (Leavetakings IV)

The green wall of the mountains hums

Silently with life under the grey-veiled sunlight.

I see the joy-valley of my youth rushing to greet me

The pinnacles in staggered rows to either side

Stand like an honor-guard for a returning monarch;

Their heads lost in the smoke

Of greedy clouds who stretch ravenous jaws

To devour the entire sky.

I see the falls that rush down past ferns and spruce

Down bounding grass hills and leaping grey cliffs

To meet the highway and pour their libations at my feet.

I see that mountain with the folds of stone

Like a discarded blanket

Or some ancient sea frozen in its undulation

And thrust up victoriously into the grey waves of the air;

Sea meeting sea

I go on to that dry valley where

Green irrigated fields form a stark patchwork

Against the thirsty straw-coloured hills

And then on to the lake that stretches its lazy legs

Down, down the valley

Tickling its distant toes in some forgotten river

Leaving its sleepy mass in the floor of the vale.

I enter into that city like one entering a forgotten dream

Still lost in the echoing well of the past

I drink deeply its draught but it brings no memory of the city;

Only the breeze of the dry air,

The smell of freshly picked sage

And a smiling face.

Her face

The one I came through all these meanderings of my past to reach

But not to touch

Only to see and to listen and to speak.

But the words and the time have been spent

And the ever-flowing inescapable waterfall of my journey

Has led me back to this city of exiles

Spread in a land with no peaks to watch over us

No falls splash and babble their welcome

No hints of the distant ocean reach this stagnant air

Diminutive parks form a stark patchwork

Against the cold iron and faceless sprawl of concrete

And the steel pinnacles here have too many unseeing eyes.

Yet I strove into past-lands

I spoke careful words and listened to subdued responses

I saw and heard beauty
Only to turn away again

Leaving that glorious sun-blessed, moon-kissed vale

Back in the shimmering fadings of memory

Unaware if I should be drawn there again

By a smiling face.