Before I woke this morning
this title was peeking through the cobwebs,
eventually waking me before dawn.

Now with Bernstein’s Grofe Grand Canyon Sunrise
is playing before first light, violins barely audible,
mules waking up with their weird wail
ready to hit the high trail.
Those magnificent odd beasts.

My old body still  dull,
my left hip protesting the early wake,
my brain puzzling with this title
me saddling the mules
for their trudge down the curvey canyon walls,
young adventurers on their old swaying backs.

Here I am looking out over the trees beyond the back yard
into the gray dawn.
I write with the thought of visiting my old friends
on the poetry website,
they probably wondering where I’ve been for the last several months
with  nary a word posted there.

Last night, the Beatles’ White Album played,
those young shaggy heads
awake with popping images
tunes and words tumbling from John and Paul,
they  too, like me, oblivious of where the trail would  lead.

Put me back together.
That’s what the Great Spirit is trying to do
between my synapses
while they still stir up there in the attic
among the dusty old books and broken furniture
and the all but forgotten dreams there
among the silverfish.

Recently Moses was trying to teach me and the new generation
in Deuteronomy
before they crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land.,
his old body still holding on in the mountains
where he would finally be laid to rest.
I  never thought I would get anything from that old book
but Moses had one more old mind to reach.
I am grateful his words were preserved
for me before I too make it up
beyond the top of the mountain
finally put together.

Dew collects on each tiny blossom
reflecting on
every pedal and sparkling
anger, blue, white and new
morning light multiplied
sapphire makes broken dreams worth it

I enter the sanctuary
my hand traces the brown skin
of the smooth wood
atop the last pew
where Saint James sits every Sunday morning,
his slender body planted in spit-shined shoes
that reflect the light of that sacred space
the light that pours from each tortured soul
that sings the praise, joy, pain, and love
inked in the green hymnals
that we open, feeling with our thumbs
the edges of pages
gathered over ages
from the fervent hearts and minds
of our faithful progenitors.

I will hug and touch
the shoulders and backs
of my fellow believers
who will grace these pews,
beating hearts scattered like red pearls of love
in the perfectly aligned rows
where each of us broken
beautiful brothers and sisters
will sit and listen to the Word
stand and sing
and breathe in and out the same Spirit
that cracked open his heart
and bled the universe.

I myself broken
and opened
am here where finally I belong
among my fellow travelers
pilgrims one and all
living our salvation
among each other
shoulder to shoulder
heart to heart
cheeks traced by tears
of joy, sorrow, faith and hope
we, tied together by Love.

Thinking of him flings me from these plains
to the nearest body
of water whose mist smells of salt and life
the unrestrained passion
and ****** of sea.

The book, Odes to Common Things,
a gift of a dear friend
who knew not the arousal,
the seed of near sensual desire
it would plant in me
like the buttery aroma of a woman’s hair
or the taste of her moist lips.

Even a thought of Neruda
takes me to the stormy stirrings
wrought from the ***** of the Pacific.
and sounding on the shores of Chile.

How could the writing of a man
a continent away
foment in my chest
a fervor akin
to a spiritual awakening?

I read him in English
but feel the thump
of his Latin heart
in my body.

Gathering into the hatchway
I push my breath from rest
in the clouds and adventures
into the city with my sister
who would rather walk and breathe
and push her body out and away
from convention and comfort
while I try to make up excuses
to use the car.

She stops to notice the police
trying to corral unruly homeless
while I seek refuge on a grassy *****
with a few of my elders enjoying the sun.

I know the city and the commerce
that has gashed through soil
of this once quiet prairie
to construct one steel obelisk
after another
making art and poetry sad afterthoughts.

Now it is time
for me to move my creaky bones
into a day yet to aborn
beyond my bed,
to wash myself in the infinite seed of creation
splashed upon me
with each dawn.

White Opulence

Days in the desolate plains
of my steady gray moods
have sprawled and engulfed
what I once called
and now barely remember
exuberance.

But walking along suburban alleys
I glance to my left and there it is –
amid brownish green leaves
shimmering with the clouded sun
are muscular white flourishes
which ****** me
back to my Louisiana childhood
and a neighborhood paradise
of blooming trees.

I walk over, bend down,
inhale and feel a near drug-induced high
by the alluring, inviting, tempting
fragrance of a magnolia blossom.

The errant thread in the rug
bothered me for two days
finally I stooped and cut it
but the rug is still wholly a rug.
It is not tile or skin or milk
not cashmere or silk.
I’m glad it’s still a rug.

Finally I can lay on my left side
that fractured rib healing
fell down walking  on the grass
uneven grass but I rejoice
in its grassness.

I’m a walking human mess
still a sinner after all these years
praying, reading the good book,
going to church, hugging
all my fellow sinners.
Elated that still
they are wholly human.

I pretended seventy plus years
I was somehow special
picked to do great things.
But here I am still fractured
but getting better and better
progress my favorite word.