I enjoy the drive from St. Louis to Chicago through the open plains. I used to take the trip regularly, but now I go that way infrequently. The vastness of the vision reminds me of those times when I catch a glimpse of the divine presence. Here's a reflection on driving north on I-55 written a litte over a year ago:
North of Springfield plains stretch out
and in their stretching swell my sight.
Fields still chew the residue of last year’s crops.
They’re chilled by winter winds,
which in turn are harvested by giants—
turbines briskly swinging sickle-blades.
Roads snip fields from one another,
barns and houses break the uniformity.
My vision, given freedom,
reaches for the fullness, the dark
tree border often edging the horizon.
Scopic sight can be a trickster:
a six-story high-rise will, a minute later,
transfigure into five tall tubes for storing grain.
Such places of expanded vision
leave deep marks. Faith is fortified
by vastness, the imprint of enormity lasting
when the vista’s drawstring is again pulled tight
and liberated sight is only sourced in memory.
I visited the garden deep in fall,
after many trees had been robbed
of their summer dress.
The sun was slow to rise
and even in midmorning slouched low
as it strolled the southern sky.
The garden centers on a pond,
a mirror to the stones and trees
edging its circumference.
While I stood beside it,
no leaves fell, or even rustled;
nature was at rest,
serene.
My life, in contrast, has it’s share of waves.
The churn of change disquiets me,
Foundations roll and sway with the uncertainty.
Would that everything was like
this still and sheltered place.
I watch a while, and notice that the water
wavers more than what had seemed at first.
Rays of sun bounce off the ripples,
then scan a rock that’s cornering a nearby island,
so that lines of light rise softly up
its shadowed side.
Maybe this is what I need.to see
Until death, there will always be a breath
or more to break tranquility,
but the resulting waves are just a way
that light is lifted, lines moving in the dark.
After my mother died in June, I went through lost of family pictures, including some from over a hundred years ago. It made me reflect on the people portrayed in them, thinking of who they were at the time they were photographed.
It’s a full-length portrait, head to foot.
He wears a dark suit, white shirt, and white bow-tie.
He bends his arms behind his back, hands out of sight,
the pose that’s favored by the awkward.
She stands beside him, dressed in white from neck
to just above her ankles. She seems to lean
towards him the slightest bit.
I’m quite sure who they are, though they
don’t look like the people I remember.
In the days to come, he would grow his waist
and lose his hair; her face would hibernate
behind thick glasses.
I see them through a grandchild’s eyes
but that is not the people whom they always were.
Unmoored once,
they got to freely walk around the city,
imagining the places they might live,
the people they might meet and marry,
and the man or woman each would come to be.
I would have liked to travel back across
the vast sea
of time to meet them then:
I wonder what our conversation might have been.
This is a poem I wrote last month. Sometimes I write something that I particularly like. This is one of those things. I don’t know quite why. It’s about the unpredictability of life, not a particularly pleasant theme. Maybe it captures my present situation-mom dying, having to move, lots of uncertainties ahead-fairly well. I’d be interested in reactions that others have when they read it.
Our lives are often linear,
not wavering from course,
so that we come to think we’re on
a road that’s without forks.
As things remain the same, we will
increasingly take hold
of calculations that provide
illusions of control.
But change is like a highwayman
that’s lying just ahead
to rob us of our certainties
and leave our plans for dead.
A bone will break, a car will crash,
pneumonia grows from coughs;
God uses ordinary things
to throw the balance off.
He baffles and befuddles us
disturbing our neat rows;
the Holy Spirit hasn’t come
to coronate the known.
My mom died a week ago today. So this is a time of mourning, which encompasses a great deal besides sadness. One thing that has struck me is how her death has resulted in a sudden change in my focus: from micro-attention to her daily ups and downs to expanded awareness of her life as a whole. I wrote the following poem about the vista that’s been opened to me as a result.
The last few years were mostly narrow,
so that she walked through places
where the walls were tight,
leaving only little alcoves where she could dress
and feed and sleep. Her step had slowed
and sometimes going on at all took exhaustive effort.
Long ago, most with whom she traveled trickled off
to other paths, so few still walked with her.
At last the road choked down to nothing;
Her walking ended and instead she flew away.
At that the vista opened and I could see
more than the cramped confines of final days
but a totality of life.
Yesterday, I looked at photos taken 80 years ago
and there she is, Loie then, not mom
or grandmother, a teen reclining on the beach,
smiling impishly, dressed in a swimsuit
that her mother wouldn’t have approved of.
Then she’s on a teeter-totter, floral dress flowing
off the edges of the plank, delighted to be lifted
high, among the trees.
Here she stands in snow,
black-shrouded, squinting from the cold
and cradling the family dog as if it were
a plump and happy child.
A few pages on,
her boyfriend sits back-to-back with her,
playing his accordion. He will go to war,
then they will wed and twine together
more than sixty years. She’s leaning into him
and holding up a cup as if it were at toast
to what had been and what was then
and what was yet to come: friends and faith
and family, a broad and blessed life.
Goodbye, mom,
may your spirit soar.
This was my first poem of the year, written in early January while reflecting on the year past and the year to come. It’s main image comes from Isaiah 40:8–“Grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of God endures forever.” It seems appropriate both in regard to the start of Lent and the present turmoil in the world.
Grass withers and the flower fades
winter comes to take away
whatever lacks abiding root
whatever lacks tenacious truth.
For metal rusts, the moth consumes;
the wealth that promised to accrue
gives little help when health erodes
thus proving a deceptive hope.
But we are blessed, not cursed by rust
for it discourages false loves
and losing is a discipline
that lights the way when dreams have dimmed.
Grass dies and human strength erodes
the word of God continues whole--
his grace and goodness are the hinge:
he opens and we enter in.
David Bailly, Vanitas. This is an example of the memento mori tradition
The last year spent isolated in response to covid19 has reminded all of us of our mortality. Now that some of us are getting vaccinated, there’s reason to hope for a gradual return to something like normal. Yet there are lessons to remember from this time. Here’s a poem I wrote about a month ago about what we’re going through; after the first couple verses, it is a conversation with death.
The ravages of death abound
in state to state, from town to town
conveyed upon the mist of breath
unholy virus, you are death.
So I avoid the best I can
death’s ravages, its frigid hand
while hundreds daily still fall prey,
be it by foolishness or fate.
My life for now is circumscribed—
lackluster days and quiet nights.
So, do I fear your dire threat?
No, but I offer you respect,
expecting we may meet one day
not battling, but in embrace,
prepared–by having had full life–
to book the journey you provide.
An ending, yes, but not the last,
for, after death mows me like grass
the king will come with trumpet’s shout,
before him death and I will bow.
This poem is a meditation on Psalm 77, a lament that seems suitable for the current moment. At the end I reference Marta C. Gonzalez, an Alzheimer’s patient who still retained a memory of her days as a ballerina. At the bottom of the page I link to a video of her that went viral.
Troubles fill the day
and spill into night.
My unresting hands reach out,
refusing sleep’s deficient comfort.
It’s not me, God, who wants
to prop my eyes ajar,
so it must be you.
I remember my night songs,
doves fluttering with hope,
and wonder where they’ve flown to.
“God, will you always be like this?
Did your unending love
reach its end?
Favor, mercy, sympathy—
have they all been chewed to pieces
by your angry jaws?”
Sometimes, I think it to be so,
but stubbornly my mind
recalls your deeds, the wonders
that my eyes have seen,
my ears have heard.
Even if I forget all else,
may your music and your dance
be so implanted in my heart
that I could be like
Marta C. Gonzalez.
She,
though wheelchaired and demented,
became again a ballerina,
filled with grace and light,
when she heard the song.
In deep autumn
the leaves have flushed
to yellow, orange, and wine;
some drain further
down to muddy brown.
Unlike animals
who add a winter coat,
trees shed their clothes–
leaves scoured away like scales.
Breezes animate leaf flurries
that descend like rainbowed snow.
They tessellate the ground
with muted beauty.
Not so long ago, trees were budding,
twigs proudly swelling
with the green vehemence of new life.
Life writes most gorgeously
in the prologue and the afterward.
Yesterday, I watched home movies
filmed by my father when I was young.
Christmases with gifts,
birthdays with cake,
throwing snowballs,
paddling in the pool
friends and relatives
scattered throughout.
How much life there is
within the space
from Spring to Fall.
Here is a reflection on Ecclesiastes 9:11 as it played out one night:
I rush, intending to be finished early—
wash the floor and vacuum,
fold up clothes and fix tomorrow’s lunch.
I’m hoping to have time to sit
out on the porch and read a bit.
All goes well until
it quickly doesn’t.
The sink is the first to balk;
the disposal chokes on a chunk of metal
dislodged from its innards.
Water spills into the space below,
soaking boxes and bottles and jugs,
a variety of oddities. Everything
needs to dry. A plumber
will have to come. Oh, boy.
Meanwhile, it’s started raining
I had left some stuff—a mask,
a paper napkin, and a music player—
on the car trunk. Soaked. Toss
the napkin, dry the mask,
will the music play?
The chair on the porch is wet as well.
No reading there tonight.
The shower curtain falls as,
too quickly, I snatch a towel
to absorb disordered water.
Swiftness does not win the race,
nor strength the fight or smarts the cash;
welcome time and chance
and watch tranquility dissolve.
Remember, Bob, that you are dust
and give to God your trust.
Life Assays 