Take my hand

Take my hand

Comments 0 Comment

(After watching two adults and a child walking down the spit of sand off the Deer Isle Causeway exposed by the receding tide)

Take my hand
as we walk the sandy strand
left behind by ebbing tide
tickling toes with mussel shells
while licking the salt off our lips
wholly enveloped in the unspeakable wonder
of this holy moment

Take my hand
as we stand transfixed
beneath the moonless sky
silently counting the countless stars
while casting our spirits into the night
utterly gobsmacked by the trackless void
of an overwhelming emptiness

Take my hand
as we sit enraptured
attent the twirling dancer
improbably poised on pointed toe
her hand making heart-rending entreaty
transported therewith to a rapturous haven
of ineffable grace

Take my hand
as we come to the table
praying our thanks and desires
bearing the burden of unabated dismay
over multiplied evils and calumnies
holding fast to the solitary hope
of an unwavering faith

Take my hand
as I lie in my bed
shadows slowly subsuming
remembering an awe-filled existence
all of it vouchsafed to you
wanting nothing now but the touch
of your tender hand

Post Views: 224
Joel’s Hole

Joel’s Hole

Comments 4 comments

Wisps of airy white vapor float over restless waters. From behind a undulating green wall of spruce and cedar., the orange crescent of the rising sun makes its morning appearance haloed by diaphanous clouds bathed in iridescent light. The lingering echoes of a lone loon’s preternatural cry hang suspended in air and in time.

Behind me, a single sentinel spruce towers over the rest of the tiny sparsely-treed island, grey granite boulders tumbling into the shallows at its feet. Sitting half a dozen yards offshore, I lean over the gelid gunwale of the boat and dip my hand into the boreal waters of the lake, wanting to join my spirit to its spirit.

There will be time yet to pin a slimy and wriggling leech to the hook of my tungsten jig, time yet to cast my fluorocarbon line out over the cobalt waters, time yet to drag the baited pink and yellow lure slowly along the graveled bottom, ever alert for the slightest resistance, the subtlest change in line pressure, time yet to jerk the rod, set the hook, and experience once again, but always as if for the first time, the exhilarating rush of a dance with an exuberant walleye.

But now, I am subsumed in this moment, in this place, emptied of care and ego and desire, the boundaries between water and loon and rock and spruce and sun and cloud and me blurred and meaningless. And yet, in this hallowed place, sitting in a boat at Joel’s’ Hole on Dog Lake, I feel most assuredly, most authentically, most happily, myself.

Land of the silver birch
Home of the beaver
Where still the mighty moose
Wanders at will
Blue lake and rocky shore
I will return once more
Boom didi boom boom
Boom didi boom boom
Boom didi boom boom boom

Post Views: 893
Cassandra

Cassandra

Comments 1 comment

O Cassandra, Cassandra
You speak only the truth
But no one believes you
Preferring instead the
Balm of our ignorance

Unheeding your warnings
Only sycophants esteeming
We turn a blind eye while
Clinging to the lie
That flatters

The sky is falling the
Little chicken said
But what if it were true
Falling sky
Rising ocean

We paint our prophets as
Little chickens whose
Strident squawking so
Rudely intrudes on
Contented lives

Our soothsayers we judge as
Silly women spouting
Nonsense while good sense
Cries out as if in the wilderness
Unheard

O Cassandra, Cassandra
You speak only the truth
But no one believes you
Preferring instead the
Balm of our ignorance

Post Views: 2,351
Nuance

Nuance

Comments 0 Comment

When I was a boy, my father took me hiking.
When I was a boy, my father took me bird-watching.
When I was a boy, my father took me swimming.
When I was a boy, my father took me sailing.
When I was a boy, my father took me canoeing.
When I was a boy, my father took me to church.

I am who I am — a lover of mountains and birds and water, a sailor, a canoeist, a Christian — because my father took me. Because my father took me. Because my father.

Because my father took me hiking. Just my father and me.
Because my father took me bird-watching. Just my father and me.
Because my father took me swimming. Just my father and me.
Because my father took me sailing. Just my father and me.
Because my father took me canoeing. Just my father and me.
Because my father took me to church.
        But not just my father and me. Much bigger than that.
        And not just church. Much bigger than that.

My father’s life revealed a passion for something inscrutable, but deeply personal, something worthy to be desired, to be pursued, with all of one’s heart and mind and strength, the heartbeat at the center of the universe, the artist from whose hand all beauty derives, the tender teacher who reveals what is treasure and what is dross, the generous giver whose life is a pouring out and who calls us to a life of pouring out, a pouring out that leaves us, not empty, but overflowing.

Post Views: 693
Credo

Credo

Comments 0 Comment

I believe that America does not have to be great to be good.
I believe that virtue rewarded is no true virtue.
I believe that killing, whether done by persons or by states, is always wrong.
I believe that happiness comes not by pursuit, but by grace.
I believe that strangers shouldn’t be.
I believe that pigeon-holing is a sin.
I believe that life is precious and that death is what it seems to be.
I believe that what is truly ours is not what we acquire, but what we create.
I believe that not to risk is not to live.
I believe that art, the act of making beauty, is what we were made for.
I believe that envy belittles God’s beneficence.
I believe that I know very little, but the little I know is wondrous.

Post Views: 690
Ekphrasis on a driftwood painting

Ekphrasis on a driftwood painting

Comments 1 comment

Driftwood painting of three cormorants

cloud roiled sky
turquoise ocean
a trio of cormorants
silhouetted against the horizon

proud heads raised
on bent black necks
serenely surveying
their watery kingdom

inscrutable imperturbable
standing tall on rugged rock
their pose not fleeting
but a cipher of eternity

Post Views: 4,271
SW 6973

SW 6973

Comments 0 Comment

Just yesterday, I bought two New Guinea impatiens, carefully chosen from among a colorful array of blooming Impatiens hawkeri. There were whites and scarlets, salmons and pinks, oranges and bi-colors, but I chose two exquisite SW 6973’s. Only, yesterday, I did not know they were SW 6973’s. I only knew I loved them above all the rest, adorned with ovoid petals of a most lovely silken lavender, not “Lavish Lavender” (SW 6975), not “Joyful Lilac” (SW 6972), not “Plum Blossom” (SW 6974), but SW 6973 … “Free Spirit.”

Free Spirit. A curious name for a color, but many colors on a painter’s palette have curious and often playfully suggestive names. Free Spirit. Is lavender the color of spirit? Not brash and bold and boasting, but subtle and soft and unassuming: humbly, exquisitely, timelessly beautiful? Free Spirit. Without edges, without boundaries, without borders, without walls, either to shut in or to shut out. No, free, filling the space it occupies, but also filling, infusing, beatifying any and all in its surrounding environs.

Lavender was not always my favorite color. From childhood, my favorite color was green, the color of an earth bursting with life, vibrant and soothing, luxuriant and intoxicating, a color to rest in, a color to revel in, a color to live in … forever. I am still in love with green, but lavender now commands first place in my heart, perhaps reflecting an ascendance of spirit over body, though, even as I write this, I recoil from any notion of wrongly bifurcating the two. Body and spirit are inextricably intertwined, me, not a soul trapped in a terrestrial costume, but me, as I seem to be, as I am, animated flesh, sentient protoplasm, a creature made from dust in the image of God. I am green. I am lavender. I am luxuriously and joyfully alive.

Post Views: 805
Refuge

Refuge

Comments 0 Comment

fugere
fleeing running
helter skelter
away away
no intention
but intentional dislocation
any place but here
any time but now
desperate disoriented
disquieted disrupted
away away
from here from now
aimless heedless
homeless soulless
fleeing running
fugere

re-fugere
fleeing running
repenting returning
back back
single-mindedly hopeful
hopefully determined
going home
going home
eager expectation
exquisite desire
for a here
for a now
embraced accepted
inhabited beloved
the place of
refuge

Post Views: 823