Hold On

In breath -- breathe in.
Take account; it is time.
Summer, long over now, has left its leavings,
colored by the fall,
wet and slick - lying in cylindrical slants
and piled up
-- heaped --
clinging together now:
Shivering in the November cold.
Take account; it is time.
In breath -- breathe in:
Light the torch and blow!
Red rimmed the edges
fall; heaps sizzle, scatter helter-skelter
giving up the ghost of time, they
part in fiery disintegration --
bedding embers for the maw of winter,
for the hungry nights in December.
But take my hand and hold on.
Take account inside the crucible
daily -- season to season --
scattering embers to light
once again, for promised grace:
Safe inside the deep womb of life
we approach the
peace-kept
Christmas candle.

I'm Not 'Fraid of No Ghosts!

Should we vote? Should we care? Seriously, where IS John Galt? My telephone rings and I know it is one of the other machines calling my machine, which I won't answer because the machine will record it, and anyway I don't want to hear it: I don't believe any of the messages anymore. Did I ever? Yes, but I was 18 and that was before the assassin's bullet took Bobby down, and then again, oddly enough in a complete ideology turn, I believed in "compassionate conservatism." And now? And now I just want them to leave me alone. They have betrayed my sense of fairplay, and honor has become a word out of sync -- without meaning inside a time that allows Charlie Sheen to go scott free in the court of public opinion. No wonder the politicians are corrupt; they see society as expecting and accepting nothing more or less. We are all too old for the ad machine comic cut-out replications today. Nobody believes Ivory or anything else is 99and100% pure. So what do we do about this election Tuesday? Vote just to say we voted? There needs to be a man behind the curtain, you know. We can't in good conscience vote for the empty puppets in the magic show. Aside from all the corruption that is real, we keep picking away in our obsession with political correctness and finding faults. It is as if as a nation we are looking for Christ in our candidates, and when we find imperfections, we become one with the media as the message ... as the chants rise and the tar and feather sends a series of souls out of town, one by one..leaving only the caricatured figures like Charlie Sheen still standing, because somehow we didn't ever expect more out of people like them anyway. So where does that leave us? Atlas can't shrug; it just wouldn't do, but we don't have Christ to kick around anymore, either. Appropriate that the vote is this close to All Hallows Eve. Who ya' gonna' call?

September 10,2010

For some reason this post keeps gravitating to the top of the blog. I have been back from my writer's block for a good while now, though you would not know it from this! ;) So, I thought I would add abit here, as the date is close if not the year, and perhaps the codes that be will get all the others straightened out! Here's hoping!

Hello, blog world. I am back from my hiatus. It is an odd day to log back on -- September 10, the day before. Before. Nine years tomorrow. But we are still here, such as we are -- a little bent and wrinkled, worn down by internecine struggles, naivete exposed. People finding 15 minutes of fame with blusters over to burn or not to burn, to secede or not to secede. It is a different landscape we face, this new reality with tales of burkas and bail-outs, of tea bags and fatahs.

But we are still here, this good-at-heart America, trying to find our way. Seeing through a glass darkly, fighting over who holds the telescope and whether union labor made the lens, but we are still here -- waiting now for September 12 when we can breathe and say, "Whew."

No, we still do not really understand the why nor do we really believe in the adjusted world template. We lean on social networks and away from politicians; we lean on the Internet and away from the main stream media. We lean toward center -- toward each other, forever embedded with the internalized fact that whatever our divisions and whatever crisscrossed swords and spaces the normative world puts between us, we shared September 11, 2001 -- together as one, united. We Stood. We stand. America.

Annointing the Days

God inhales. I feel it; the blind reaction of humanity builds. I await the exhale and the resultant babel. What breath is on the wind? What tides will turn and tables topple? As above so the mirror from below reflects again distortion -- partial prisms: Ganglia twist the view and break the brilliance of lanterened time. Traces of truth, trailing love throw light inside Plato's cave. But here we sit wearing darkened lenses inside our intersected nows, alternating our shadowed views -- sharing pictographed realities. God inhales. The Alpha and the Omega images. The Comforter spreads incense essence. Humanity is lit. Time and Nature obey. There will be an exhale. So be it.

Turn

The sky, timeless and tireless, finds a slanted ray and my New England edges toward burnt umber and cinnamoned orange. The day lilies yawn. Butterflys and dragonflys laze, suckling swaddled nectar. Vigor fills the night air as mums awaken, brisk -- bounty unfurling. A soft haze falls into the day; sky-lit gold shimmers into gloaming as rolls of hay dot the fields and bands play last hurrahs at Hopkinton Fair. The vines, pumpkin filled, surround the sounds of sheep and hawkers. Labor Day, school has started, wood stacked for the burning. Brass kettles ready. New England waits for the crimson edges as summer leaves: Turn.

Herein lies the tail -- quite literally!

The last time I saw Timothy he was making about sixty mph, racing us to the cellar door. He won. What can I say? We leave the kitchen door to the deck open while we barbecue. We first noticed that we had a guest when something bigger than an ordinary spider ran beside Mark and skittered into some remote invisible niche. A frantic hunt insued, with me sighting the mouse under the dining table; he looked to be pausing to turn, and right then he split for the fireplace and the wood box. I screamed, Bob and Mark came running and carried (it's a big copper pot instead of a box)container, wood and all outside. We left it there overnight and thought we had solved the problem. Next came the garbage compactor incident. It no longer works. There has been a Timothy sighting behind and in it. We think he either has a top part jammed or he chewed through the wires. What to do. No poison here with the grandkids and Sugar around, so that was out. Then we sort of got used to having a little guest. I named him Timothy because the grandkids used to love a movie with a main character of that name. It just made the little rascal more personal, more individual, more -- tender. So, just awhile ago I went into one of my drawers for some napkins and to my surprise, there lay about 6 of Sugar's dry food pellets, or whatever you call them. A closer look and I noticed my measuring cup was filled also, as was half of a basket toward the back of the drawer that we use for miscellaneous gadgets. I thought Sugar was alot more hungry lately! Bob is expounding on how he can build Timothy a little house. I told him Timothy already has a house! I just hope he doesn't go looking for a Mrs. Timothy!!!

Today

Let your light so shine

  May your eyes shine today
     with peace that passes
     your worried planning,
    your fears for tomorrow,
    your hopes for the future --

      passing your deepest
          understanding.

May your footsteps be sure and joyful --
   your heart carrying no load
  but the singing of love's song.

May tears and sorrow flee from you --
your enemies finding softened hearts
         a renewal of trust,
        outstretched hands,
     a palm to palm re-awakening.

     In your deepest place of secrets,
whatever the shadow that makes you wince
                and cry
       by yourself, to yourself,
              'How could I?'

        Turn to Jesus and listen:
     
   He said, “I am the way, and the truth,
 and the life. No one comes to the Father
         except through me.

Then spoke Jesus again unto them, saying
       I am the light of the world: 
           He that follows me
 shall not walk in darkness, but shall have
             the light of life.

      May you forgive yourself
      as Christ forgave Peter.
      He will also forgive you.
   May you abide in the grace
 and the love of our Lord forever.