music is jewels
hung in sky between my eyes
water laps my feet
Tag Archives: water
Outlines and Mirrors and Turning Away
Adaptation
Love and the Ocean (RIP Ronald Baggs, 1941-2014)
Slow Days
Rock in a creek bed
Water flows and babbles past
Rock still and silent
Awe
Awe is where wonder and fear collide
And we stare out to the stars meeting the sea
And we wonder is there a place in this world for me
Awe is where my heart turns into a stone
A living, pulsating stone of many colors
That move out of the way to make room for each other
Awe is where the stones meet the ocean
In caves that took millions of years to erode
And my body tells me this is your second home
Water and earth can mean so many things
The soil of the redwood rainforests
The stone caves carved by water seeking the sea
The river rocks with holes all through them
The monsoon season in the desert rocks
The rivers carving canyons
The tiny creeks wetting tiny amounts of soil
The springs of water flowing out from in between the rocks
Waterfalls crashing down with caves behind them
And all of these things are sacred to me
And all of these things are part of me
But the one that means the most
Will always be the soil in the redwoods
Awe is where wonder and fear collide
I am where earth and water unite
I am in awe of the collision
I am in awe of you and of me
We are made of the stuff of the earth
We are made of the stuff of the water
I have only to look at you
To see a metallic daughter
With the earth kept tight inside
Like a vessel full to bursting
And I have only to look at myself
To see moistened soil from the forest floor
And I could see even more
The plants that grow, wither, and die
And decay to become part of me
The wind with a sigh brings down
Dead redwood needles and cones
And it doesn’t matter where you go
Or who you are
You have only to look at the ground
Below your feet
Or up at the stars
The clouds roll overhead
A thunderclap hits a little too close
And that beauty and awe is back
But you’d better run home
Haiku #5: Redwoods drink water
ocean mist blows through
redwoods drink through their needles
not only their roots
Haiku #1: Koi and Swans
Return to sender: no longer at this address
My mother is a wizard with plants
I kind of knew it already
But when my father was upset
Because he'd never see the morning glories
Bloom again in his life
My mother secretly coaxed
A morning glory vine
Out of season
To bloom, and climb, to bloom, and climb
And she took him outside
To show him the magic she'd done
And that's how much my mother loves my dad
My flowers are my poetry
I coax the words to bloom and grow
And climb and climb into his heart
Even out of season
I use words to express the wordless
And that's one kind of magic I have
And that's how much I love my dad
But one of these days
I'm going to write a poem
It will be full of obscure mountain lakes
And treks across the mountains to the sea
And forest floors that were so much more
And owls hooting up in the trees
It will show him every place
That I could feel his love
Without the emotional bombardment
Of living in the city
And it will be a perfect poem
For that time and that place
It will certainly be better than this one
It will show him that I care for him
(As if he doesn't know by now)
It will show the depth of love
That death can dredge up when you're lucky
And then i will get a phone call or an email
It will start out:
“Go and take your dexamethasone right now.”
And I'll have a sinking feeling
But I'll take the syringe of steroids
And put it in my feeding tube
Then go back to the phone or the computer
Then they'll say
“The news is bad
Your father has passed away
He was far too tired this morning
To check your blog today.”
And all that's left of my magic
Will be words on a screen
Words he may have understood
But will never hope to read
From that point on forwards
We'll be separated by time
We both will have existed
But from that point in time onwards
I will be here and he won't
I wonder how much dexamethasone it takes
To avoid adrenal crisis when your dad dies
I wonder how much magical love it takes
To stand the pain you feel when you realize
That you will never talk to him again
You'll never hug him again
You'll never sit next to each other
With an elderly cat spread across your laps
You'll never ask the questions
You forgot to ask when he was alive
You'll never play with his beard again
And there's so little time
There's so little time
But I'm wrong
Like people are often wrong about time
Eternity is all around us
That's all the time in the world
Eternity is where love exists
Outside of time and space
So even if he never reads my best poems
He'll feel the love that went into them
Just as he feels the love
From that morning glory vine
He feels the love from his two pet dogs
He feels the love from his wife
He feels the love from his three adult children
He says he's lucky to be surrounded
By so much love
So I'm terribly sorry, Ron
If some of my poems don't reach you in time
And i'm terribly sorry Ron
If I try to Skype you and it turns out you're gone
Just know I love you more
Than even the best poet can convey
I love you more than I could ever say
And love is the magic that made my mom
Able to grow those morning glories
And love is the magic that makes me able
To write poems daily after years of dormancy
And love is the magic that connects you to me
It's the way we can feel each other's love
Without any form of contact at all
I hope the place I built for you outside of time
And filled to overflowing with my love
Will see you through
And I hope that I'll continue
Writing poetry to you
Long after you've gone
And I hope it reaches you in Eternity
Or wherever it is you're going
And I hope that even the worst of it
Conveys this message:
I love you
I love you
I love you
That Dream Where I Stopped Fearing My Feelings
A river flows away from all the stones
That hold me on the ground beneath my feet
It carries in its current more unknowns
It holds me in its arms, and moves so fleet
So fleet that I can scarce come up for air
No chance to grab onto the wall of rock
I must allow the river now to bear
My flailing body far too weak to walk
I float away until I reach the sea
I have no means to keep my head afloat
The waves of feeling lash and flail at me
And I will drown, the water fills my throat
But all at once, I let the waves crash through
And gills appear where only lungs once grew