Those days when you just can’t wait to go to bed.
Not to slump down onto it in yielding surrender
or fall into it in tears, face first and meat red,
but to gently pull back the pillowy quilt
and the sheets, with tiny blue flowers,
flannelette, like a fresh work shirt,
so that when you slide in carefully
and make your cave in the sheets
the hug is work-arm strong
and reminds you of soil
and wheelbarrows
and gardening
and building
in the sun
as it sets…
and rises…
open eyes
still hugged,
you stand lightly
then soft pad to warm,
dark, sweet, pitch-bitter
coffee, and lifting the mug,
you pause before the first sip
of bliss, flooding deep in waking
flavours from magic beans grown
in ancient Ethiopian forests, noticed
by folk when curious goats turned zestful,
becoming a helper for evening prayer, to allow
hard work and intentional presence to earn well
your tiredness, so that you just can’t wait to go to bed…

--Entry 0001--

At daystar distance, light-time 9.2
Reached orbit of a lonely little sphere
Inhabitants, galactic refugees
Lost beings fled for working atmosphere

From orbit I observe a solid wall
Bisecting the small planet into two
Is this the same as walls they made at home?
Before, their earth in ruin, they withdrew

Remote-scan sensors indicate two groups
One group in light brown garb, and one in beige
Communities uncoupled by the wall
No circumstantial need to co-engage

The beings take position near the wall
Their blasters in the air, as if to war
Will need a closer look to understand
Assembling ground crew for a recon tour

--End Entry--

--Entry 0010--

Away Team One have scouted both the camps
And both took great attention to explain
That cosmic contrasts sit between the two
So never to be reconciled again

The 'Northers', in their light brown town, *****
To Iris, God of Moon, a monument
The eye a symbol of this watching one
A stone displays his holy document

‘O God of cycles, ebb and flows of life,’  
The stone acclaims this lunar deity
The tablet smooth on left, and rough on right
Abiding token of fertility

The 'Southers', in their beige, build one as well
But this, a shrine to Os, the God of Bones
His sigil skull expresses loss and death
Indelibly recorded on his stone

‘O God of dying, born of earth and sky,
Hereafter and rebirth as well as death’
This stone that sits adorned with crook and flail
--is baby-smooth on right, and rough on left

Away Team One weaved worry through their tale,
A looming war was set to decimate
So, find a concrete plan to intervene
And hope and pray that we are not too late

--End Entry--

--Entry 0100 --

Away Team Two report the wild events
This sphere will be immortalised in verse
For these effects of war upon this day
So tracked that all our plans could not reverse

The first explosives wall-bound from great arms
Start slowly causing breech and then a fall
The northern and the southern lands revealed
Sameness no longer hidden by the wall

And for the first time see the glory stones
Sit, monument atop, aloft on shrine
An eery match in form and font and voice
A paired, reflected hail to the divine

An astral silence, weapons come to rest
Then reverent 'Northers' fetch their hallowed stone
While devout 'Southers' hold their tablet too
A meeting reuniting moon and bone

And suddenly as tablets are aligned
The warriors unblinded to the con
Of holy tablets two, and each with God
At origin the two were only one

The beings face-to-face now with their God
Examining the reassembled tome
Not Os and Iris, but Osiris there
A single God writ on a single stone

So smaller differences in brown and beige
And seeming larger gaps from death to birth
       Now seen complete, more holy as their whole
       Dualities reflected in one soul
Now possible a new united earth        

--End Entry--

Two painful events led to a hospital
and a team of cardiologists, lots
of tests ensued, a plugged artery
in my heart they informed, a stent
procedure in a few days will hopefully
solve the problem and I can get back to
normal living, normalcy you see is a very
good thing. Not to be taken for granted.

As the crow flies, my farm is less than two
miles from the Willamette River that flows
deep and brown through the fertile valley
of the same name, in Northwest Oregon.
From my porch upon a hill, I have views
out over that valley looking east and north
and as fall comes around, early morning
light and dampness transfers hints of rich
river scents, this added moisture paired
with the absents of wind pervades and
manifests an enveloping shroud of silence,
with low moving banks of slow white
ghostly ground fog that renders striking
visual contrasts to the landscape, with its
stands of emerald evergreen trees, and
autumn dressed orange and yellow leaved
varieties of deciduous trees, along with
sculpted brown newly plowed fields.
Another of Nature's own fleeting ever
changing painted canvases that never
disappoints.

One must rise early at first light on these
chilly morning to witness this seasonal
panoramic scene, but it is always worth
the effort. And what the heck, I'm retired,
I can snap some photos and always crawl
back into my nice warm bed to sleep, or
merely cogitate on what I've been witness to.

That old clock is ticking away,
the days bleed on one into another,
mostly all the same, nothing much
new to report here. I do what I can,
what my aged body will allow.
A limited return on my investment
I guess, but still finding little joys
that sustain me, mostly given up
on big dreams and illusions, anyway
being rich and famous was never on
my wish list agenda, all in all it's been
a very good run, with strong family
love given and received, our linage
prospers and continues, that is after
all the only real reason any of us, man
bird or beast were put on this earth.

To believe otherwise is but a
human delusion that in the end
matters not in the least.

Some poems never end,
Nor were meant too.
Alliterative phrases, invitations,
Add a verse, a word, even a sound,
An exclamation of delight,
A stanza in its own right.

Unfinished work, forever additive, collaborative.
Modify mine, pass it on,
Free to steal it,
For ownership passes to you,
with your first reading,
And lost when you close it,
Stamp it and release it into the atmosphere.

But some poems do. End.
Unique and distinct,
Pockmarked-faced at birth.
Owned by my initials,
Never to see the shelves of a
Lending Library.

Like this one:

Cannot remember a single day
When suicidal thoughts
Were not heard clearly above the fray
Of jingle-jangled, responsibilities
Demanding my immediate attention.

The end.


NML

leaves loosen from limbs
and the smell of apples sweetens the air

I follow you to the top, to the peak. You  laugh and I know
we are for each other in this life,

despite the weather, the path, the season.