not so wet lands

beside still waters

for Wendy

You are sharing how it was for you those last days,
You continuing to speak to her when she could not respond,
You with so many more conversations to have with her,
Reciting the 23rd psalm over and over to ease her transition.

You lead the congregation in unison reciting the psalm
And I know it by heart and I am with you saying good-bye.
You are so emotional. Your cup runneth over.
Your heartfelt connection with her moves my heart.

Later we are talking about your special ability,
How you sense the feelings of others,
How you feel the feelings of others not expressed,
How you are compelled to express what you feel from them.

That was a gift for us there in the congregation that day,
On that special day when we make our peace
And a vibrant life becomes a collective memory.
It was an exceptional day.

Other days your gift is not so welcome.
Other times what you feel is denied.
It’s just your crazy feeling, don’t imagine
It really exists. That denial is so hurtful.

You have the companion gift of completely disingenuous trust.
If you give your word, that is your bond.
What you promise is what you do, absolutely.
And all the deceits of the world are devastating betrayals.

You have such passion to do good.
You truly love all the people of the world,
Not in an abstract way but for real in the things you do
For every person fortunate to cross your path.

Now is a time when your spirit is wounded.
You have lost she who was a part of yourself.
You are no longer whole. You were not prepared
For such an overwhelming loss.

Now my heart goes out to you.
Now I so deeply regret that I ever pushed you away
When I couldn’t handle your intense affection.
I will go to you and comfort you as best I can.

Look and See

Was it October when Venus and Jupiter and the moon were in a tight triangle
Seen from my commuter car crossing the bridge leaving Manhattan?
Since then I’ve looked every clear night at the southwestern sky
And seen the evening star is there, same place, same time.

It’s March now. Who knew? Has it been there my whole life,
Proving again we only see what we are looking for?
Has it been sitting there for all of human history and long before,
Watching over us no matter if we look back or not?

Such sights are my solace, my place of peace.
But I don’t live with my head in the clouds.
I am one of many and we all touch each other.
I live in a community. We all need each other.

Here on earth last October brought us a financial panic
And the ripple effect is more like a global economic tsunami
That is sweeping away all human constructs of wealth
In the terrible deepening crisis of capitalism.

Now spring is arriving in the natural world nonetheless,
Unperturbed by the collapse of artificial systems.
And we humans can see better what transpires in society
Is built on false assumptions of permanence.

Bang! And the planes crash into the financial center of the infidels.
Now the figures are leaping to escape the flames, thudding dead below.
Shroom! And the buildings collapse, vaporizing everyone into a giant cloud.
This is shock and awe. This is terrorism.

Last October’s crash was caused by decadence and greed,
Not some foreign ideology. And now the world economy
Is collapsing like those buildings with all of us inside.
You can smell the fear. This is the death spiral.

Is there going to be a Captain Sullenberger leader
Landing a miracle recovery on the Hudson?
Not if we all are frozen in fear when the economy
Depends upon us consuming packaged things ad infinitum.

Those who have nothing have nothing to lose
And that’s most of the people on the planet today.
Lost all your savings, did you? Welcome to the third world.
Lost your job, your house and everything? Poof!

It’s horrible, don’t get me wrong.
Grinding poverty is a life of pain and grief,
Not poetry and art. All work and no play.
I don’t wish that on anyone.

I wish that the ownership would change.
We have socialized losses and private profit.
We have privatized everything to profit the few.
We would do better to socialize everything to benefit the many.

They won’t let go. They are the party of “No.”
We have thrown up a leader for our times,
A reformer, imperfect, but he gives us hope.
We must mobilize and push to get the change we need.

early season bike ride

tenakill swamp

Seventeen

          for my daughter

Seventeen years you have been with me.
I’ve tried to protect you from harm
And prepare you with knowledge and skills
And a moral compass to guide you.

And here you are, such an excellent person,
Smart but not arrogant about your brainpower,
Sympathetic about the difficulties of those around you,
Happy to have fun with your friends and enjoy being alive.

The hypocrite adults all say: “Do what I say, not what I do.”
So I have tried to teach by example.
But the example of my life is a checkered record at best,
So take what you like and leave the rest.

I hope that you have what you need most by now.
I don’t take the credit for who you are
Though others compliment me upon meeting you.
I hope that misfortune mostly passes you by.

This year the world will change for you on your birthday.
This is the day you will get your driver’s license.
No more will you be under my wing going here and there.
You’ll be an adult in the eyes of the DMV.

I remember the delight of mobility first gained in my youth.
Now I’ll be free of the driver duties for you, do you think?
Not! Really it will be a loss of something I enjoyed,
But you’ll begin to get the feeling of not depending on others.

In that way adult means being independent and self-sufficient.
Of course I hope you always need me and seek me out as an advisor,
But most of all I wish for you to surpass me totally
In what you know and what you accomplish.

The Promise

          for Julie


This I can promise you, you who are bereft in your loss:
She is gone from the external world but remains with you.
She will be there for you when you need her most.
You will feel her guiding you when you are quiet in yourself.

You will honor her and remember her and carry on her traditions.
You will cook a special dish and she will be there.
You will arrange flowers and cherish a peony and she will be there.
You will wrap a present in her special way and she will be there.

I know these things because my mother is with me still,
Though she died nigh on fifty years ago.
And I have children who never knew her
And births she missed and I sorely missed having her with me.

But I keep her memory alive and I give her to my children
In ways they know and ways they do not know
Because she is in me and is acting through me.
It is not just stories of another time, it happens right now.

When I set out a vase with gladiolas, her favorite flowers,
She is present in a way that defies logic.
I feel her love and I express my love to my children
And in that way she touches me and them with her love.

Memoriam

          for Barbara

Today we gather to honor the woman who was my aunt.
I am here to add to the chorus singing her praises.
Wife and mother, nurturing people and plants, decorator par excellence,
Shopkeeper and more, she did everything well.

It is strange for me to speak of her as a separate person.
To me she has always been there together with her husband
And I marvel at their sixty years happily married.
Not once did I hear a hint of discord or annoyance between them.

I know that there were difficult times for her and for him
Growing up and then making their way as young adults and later in life.
It was not a bed of roses, not at all, but I heard never a complaint.
Their love for each other and for their children made a safe haven in their home.

As an adult I would seek them out, awestruck by their love,
Grateful for their acceptance of my faults and their support and encouragement,
As I am sure my cousins their children likewise received.
She will live on in our memory as an exceptionally good person.

Barbara, I can hear your voice. You are speaking kindly, affectionately.
You say “Charlie,” beginning a sentence. Can you all hear it? "Charlie."
This room is filled with love for you because of the love you gave us
Like some multiplier effect for the currency of the heart.

We are your legacy in the way you touched our lives
And showed us by your example, bearing up and carrying on.
As we go on with our lives and are good to each other,
So we honor your life among us. Thank you for the sweetness you brought us.

The Quickening

The declination of the sun tips towards us again
As February moves towards March
And the ducks are soon active on the mill pond
Before the ice has completely melted away.

The drakes beset the ducks when spring is still an idea
Imagined in the angle of the sunlight.
The predatory snapping turtle still sleeps in the mud below,
For fifty years or more rising later in the spring to devour the ducklings.

As I imagine the idea of someone new, of an intimate relationship,
As if we have lived shared experiences in a parallel past,
As if she knows my heart and I hers. It is possible.
After all, spring is on the way.

She has her pond, too, not the same pond, but not so different,
Left there by the receding glacier as part of that Long Island,
Part of that huge pile of billions of round stones that is the island now.
On her pond the swans nest and lose their cygnets to another large turtle.

Her swan is not the lustful Zeus swan who raped Leda.
Her swan is female, tenderly hatching the eggs,
As if Leda was transformed into a swan by the experience,
And her offspring each spring tragically get devoured, one by one.

And what would bring us together now, more or less sixty years old?
There is the bittersweet sorrow of our losses, each our own.
There is the eye for fleeting beauty in the world around us.
There is the dream of a companion’s embrace.

For her the stars and stones somehow conflate. I do not understand.
I think the stones break bones and words can hurt, too.
I think there is deep pain there but it is not my metaphor.
At times she is too abstract for me.

A humanist feminist: that’s good for me in theory.
It’s not an intellectual act, though, and not an act of will.
What the heart feels is like a dream, not a rational argument,
And trust and courage are matters of the heart, mine and hers.

receding ice

alone with my thoughts

          for Charlie


I am alone with my thoughts in the predawn hours
Waiting for your call to say it’s over.
Three days ago you called to say she went downhill fast
And only a day or two are left in hospice.

She can’t speak, she does not recognize anyone.
Everyone is at her bedside, you and your five children,
Saying your good-byes to one so very dear to you,
And I make sure I have my black tie ready.

I think of your children gathered there, my cousins.
What a blessing to have many close brothers and sisters,
Your brood your legacy, every one adored by you both,
But one is my special favorite.

I remember her giddy girlish antics so many years ago.
It was my first halting boyhood crush.
Our lives lived apart, she alone for many years now,
And I imagine us revisiting a happy time, enjoying living out our years together.

I remember the last hours for my mother so many years ago
And there’s something in that picture I see this morning that escaped me then,
Me in such pain then, numb with overwhelming grief.
I don’t see you. Were you not there?

No one was by my mother’s side. She died alone.
We never said good bye. I saw her last in the hospital
Perhaps a month before she died, my father still pretending
To us and her that she was not about to die.

My step-mother-to-be moved in when the final wait began.
Were you keeping your distance? Or kept at a distance?
How awkward it was for my father to tell me what I already knew
Taking me to talk in the darkness of the back yard, touching me.

He had never touched me gently. “Who is this man?” I thought,
“The one I know glares disapproval and stings with his words.”
But I digress into my own inner void symbolized by her closed casket
As if that would keep our feelings sealed inside.

How could two brothers be so different, you and he?
I admire you all the more for it. When you called me,
We did not speak of my Quagga poem I wrote for you.
I was afraid somehow it had offended you.

The next day I got your letter thanking me for it.
Thanking and thanking, such effusive praise!
Telling me how it touched and pleased you and your true love
In your final days together.

Thank you for your approval.
Thank you for including me in the large universe of your love.
Hear my heartfelt wish that only goodness and light
Shall be with you all the days of your life.

field trip new space

ice falls

ice divers