My grandmother was married by the communist party. Yes, don’t be surprised. Comrade Soare insisted: comrade Alexandru is a promising man, he knows the right direction for the world to go. Grandma wasn’t convinced, but the party insisted, it was her duty.  They lived in a city where every street had a dark end. Women were not allowed to have silence between their legs. Only arms filled with zest. My father married my mother for the garden. For the apple trees, peach trees, cherry trees, for daffodils, roses, for the raspberry. Their minds colonized,  the right to think abolished. The right to feel obscured. Politics of desire mystified. The wind had ears. But they were proud, they were tall, they looked the other way. They carried history in their teeth without laughter. I came along as an unfinished story. The debris of time filled my mother’s womb. It was never mine. They gave me the demand of truth: touch feels good. A living soul is necessary. Thinking is vital. Community is air.  We need each other.
One day I knew, how it happens. My blood started flowing with cataclysmic power.  This is not the time for Hollywood love stories,  but honest touching. You spin my mind, and I keep dancing.  I carry your body in my silences just for the sake of the world.  I had to cry. Passion is terrifying. You suddenly don’t recognize the meaning of crossroads. The world gets swept away.  I feel like shouting at the speed of the world decomposing. You make me laugh.  What if love is a tyrant?  There is emptiness hidden in the seed of desire. I had to learn from tears, from disembodied words.  I have to learn again the meaning of freedom. Who knows what is this everything that matters?

We assembled a modest telescope,
To find what sights there were  to see.
I stared, transfixed, at the moon and stars,
In the driveway with all of my family.

I know exactly where I stood,
The moment I would find,
The infinite nature of time and space,
And how it all unwinds.

I asked about the size of the moon,
The distance of its arcing track.
I asked about the space beyond,
The nothing in the black.

I asked my family how big it is.
I asked if anyone knows,
The moon, the stars, and all of it.
I asked how far it goes.

“My son, our curious little one…”,
My parents said to me,
“It has no end”, “It just keeps going”,
“Outward, eternally”.

I stared up into a southern sky,
Ominous, dark as the sea.
And I swear, at that moment,
Looking up,
Something departed from me.

            It flew into the dark of space,
And hasn’t slowed in all this time,
       As far and as fast as information can.
                        The speed of light, I hear…
Which is not so much a speed…
          Hitched, perhaps, to the Voyager probe…
   By these new thoughts inside of my head.
                             But I digress.

This thing  began a journey that,
Must bring it face to face,
With everything that ever was,
Every corner of time and space.
Everything that is yet to come,
Everything that has ever been.
Repeating every history,
It’s trek would never end.

That thought has always stayed with me.
It anchors me, somehow.
A line cast from a sailing ship,
Where I stand upon the bow.
In the oblivion of the infinite,
It grounds me to the “now”.

Twenty little sheets of paper
Some with one name, some with many.
Each a plea to God through Jesus
To be granted freedom from a need.

To be made well, to be set free,
To find the sun in a day of darkness,
To feel comforted in the wake of loss
To reach out and find a helping hand.

One at a time the names come in,
Sometimes maybe two or three.
Often their story is attached
But most assume that God will know.

My avocation is to pray for them
Unworthy as I know I am.
Why should Jesus listen to me
When I beg for things for someone else.

Weak and small as I seem to be
I offer prayer to meet their needs
And hope that Heaven answers us
And lifts me up with all the rest.
ljm

the amount of light
expressed equals how much of
our dark we explore

In he came, sat and smiled and warmly shook my hand.
Brought a pint of single malt from the dales of old England,
Sat, we did, on wooden chairs, fashioned in the way
Of craftsmen, then, from times of yore, when craftsmen had their day.
Spoke, we did, companionably. Spoke of simple things,
Of fire sides now dead and gone where Gypsy music rings.
Recalling all the good men who turned the wheels of toil
And fashioned work of quality and kept the engines oiled.
We supped the draught of warming malt with crinkles to the eye
And turned the glass of crystal cut in hands worn, undisguised,
Hands that once hauled heavy stone, hands that helped a smile,
Hands that stroked her silky face, just once in awhile.
Words now softly spoken with laughter now and then
But all the while the deep respect of deference to a friend.
A toast to all those dead and gone, then a final grip of steel,
With the knowledge that this finality's quiet moment, could be real.
We took our leave regretfully, we took our leave with grace,
For the sanction of those moments shared left warmth upon the face.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
26 August 2023

My words keep bumping into yours
And having to stop to wipe a tear.
My thoughts tiptoe sadly over
Moments shared in brief exchange.

Fellow traveler on a highway
Crowded with ideas and dreams
We touched hands briefly now and then
And warmth became the bow that tied us.

Every path has many turnings,
Some of them with no way back.
But still the memory of touching
Warms the heart that’s left behind.

Travel on to other vistas
You’ve left behind a monument
That will shine as long as eyes
Enjoy the worlds that you created.
ljm

I miss skin that doesn't crinkle.
The kind the doesn't matter
what I'm wearing.

I miss beepers. The 7730 hello
page.  The calls from people
wanting to go out to eat.

I miss moving like the wind
blowing daisies and spoors
of dandelions

What about singing in the
snow you ask?
The farther my poor article
could reach in the total
silence of the winter.

Most of all i miss warm
saltwater swims in the
early mornings, coffee
strong with sweetener.

I miss.you kissing me
with the wayward wind
playing.

The sirroco of my life
began in a dream.

It will drift like
phosphorescence
unconfused with

Poetry


Caroline Shank
7.28.2023

Joel, just so you know

I have it on good authority that our heavenly poets
are always near exhaustion, as the clean air, and the
distraction-free life gives one inspiration by the unending,
poetry the common language in the babel up above

but to be sure they see our messages and scrips, I forward them upward via Messenger, from down here to their seemingly inactive page, but don’t you poet, disbelieve me, they may not be able to send or reply to you via Fedex Direct, but they are receiving just fine

So I send them poems just so they’re knowing that they are
still on my mind…right Joel?

or do I say,

Write on Joel?