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the calling

I had a sense of my calling by the time I was 12, but it wasn’t until the middle of 2001, 18 years later before I knew for sure. The calling is a strange thing. It doesn’t come with instructions. There are no guides. To follow it may be just as difficult as not to, but for very different reasons. The force of one’s calling demands all attention. Once known, if one turns one’s back on it, out of fear of poverty, marginalization, or not being able to realize its potential, then the despair that follows is as overpowering and destructive as the circumstances may be in heeding that call. For me, heeding the call meant simply casting myself on the current that had already swept away all else, and staying afloat as best I can. And in my case, it really has meant poverty, marginalization, and a continuing uncertainty with regard to realizing its potential.

the calling

it wails like an infant
crazed with wordless hunger
eyes wrinkled shut
toothless gums wide
fists balled tightly by
round quivering cheeks

it will not be ignored

it howls like a tempest wind
incessant against white paned windows
it rattles the mahogany door
in its frame and knocks
shadowy branches against deep
brown asphalt shingles

it will not be dismissed

it swells like a flood
seeping through sandbags
creeping up one wet carpeted stair
at a time until even the old maples
just outside succumb to the current
and the house leaves its foundation

it will not be turned away

once it is known
it cannot be unknown

it hungers within
rattles the windows of thought
floods the foundations of soul
until all of life is swept away
cast adrift on that one last
current of meaning

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Winter Relief

My hope was that I was going to be able to use this sonnet form to write a pen portrait of a man, possibly homeless, who during the winter ambles a ratty old bicycle down the avenues near where I work, dispersing bird seed to the fowl. He trundles along with a 5 gallon, neon orange bucket hanging from a handlebar. At various vacant lots, some of which are fenced in, he stops on the sidewalk and lobs great big handfuls of seed out across the gravel or asphalt. As he approaches one of the feeding places, the sky darkens with winged creatures, which land in a whirl of calls and flapping feathers. They are so used to this man that they let the birdseed fall directly upon them, bouncing from wing, beak and back.

I know nothing about this “bird man,” as I’ve come to think of him, save for the image of his moving among the streets in the dim light of dawn, arcing fistfuls of seed over his head and chest. His face is a mass of unkempt hair, his snow jacket old and held together with duct tape. His clothes are layered in tatters and crusted with dirt and debris. Yet for all his apparent misfortune, he has made it his mission to by some means acquire this seed and feed the city’s winged residents during the winter.

After a few weeks of trying to get the imagery in mind to bend to this sonnet form, I finally decided to give up and let the words and images find themselves. Sometimes the only way a poem gets written is to let go of the originating idea, allowing the words to choose and arrange themselves. Under such circumstances, the poet merely facilitates a process that was somehow already occurring, already waiting disembodied in the ether to find a channel into existence.

Winter Relief

The mourning dove lifts pale, majestic wings,
illuminating vacant, asphalt grounds.
A shadow moves amid the murmurings
of feathered creatures stirring all around
him as unsteadily he trundles down
the frozen sidewalks with an orange pail
suspended from a handlebar; the sound
of squeaking tires mingles with a gale
of pigeons, sparrows, jays that dance like hail
across a gravel, weed-strewn parking lot.
He stops and probes the neon depths to bail
a scoop of birdseed—harmless scattershot—
which, reaching back, he arcs above his head
to bounce among the birds with even spread.

This is my 2nd Spenserian sonnet. It was my intention to strictly adhere to the rhyme scheme for this second pass at the form, but the word pool was just too small for the b scheme, so I kept extending it until enough words became available to allow for a fairly natural flow of language and imagery. Still a partial rhyme by all accounts, since all four words share the “oun” phonemes.

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Cupid

If you take the lips—curved to a smile—as the bow, the cooing voice as the string, and eye contact as the arrows, then you may have Cupid himself, my son. Never in my life has love struck me so deep in the chest over and over, with each look and smile—each sincere, honest smile.

Cupid

Not one great archer of ancient times—
not Arash, Arjuna, Houyi or Odysseus—
not even the ageless Titans had strength
enough to bend back and string your bow.

Yet each day with remarkable ease you
curl back the tips and notch the string.

With hardly a thought you draw back one
shaft after another, and each streak of light
finds its mark deep in the still-beating heart,
the only wound a fire of unbridled affection.

My ribs are riddled, glowing warm
with the mystery of your unassuming skill.

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Gray Brown Eyes

He has a floor mat with a domed shape tripod frame that sets over it. Toy animals hang from the frame just low enough for him to whack at, grab onto, and of course look at. When it comes time to feed, I’ll often sit down next to the mat, slide him over and rest his head just above my ankle bone, which gives the bottle a nice angle, especially since it’s the type of bottle that doesn’t run freely. He has to really suck out the formula.

Sitting there thus, I’ll hunch over and look at him while he nurses the bottle. Lately he has taken to looking at me, too—right in the eyes. We stare at one another, and wildly intense, indescribable emotions well up.

Gray Brown Eyes

I don’t know what you’re thinking
                                   or if you’re thinking

Your eyes are oceans of ancestry
and each time you look at me
each time you study my face with
those pure wide open wells
I begin to drown in their fathomless
                                   age

Then
      gently slowly
                       you blink
                                   and look away

For a moment the spell is broken
and I gasp for breath in my soul
claw at the rocks and pull myself
ashore
                                   ribs bellowing

Yet your eyes flood back to me
relentless as a tidal bore
and I am swept along and pressed
among debris to wash end over end
through unremembered histories

The momentum slows to a pause
for the space of a kick and a flail
then broken splintered timbers sweep
back once more toward that ancient
                                   abysmal pain

And just as I lose the last of my
strength to tread that awful swell
amid invisible fragments of time that
scrape and cut hands feet and mind
and I let go to slip drift sink beneath
                                   darkness

Once more
          gently slowly
                        you blink
                                   and look away

I don’t know what I’m thinking
                                   or if I’m thinking

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Samsara

Birth. Death. Impermanence. Samsara. Samsara is a concept I was exposed to and learned about during my late teen years. At first, the notion of a never ending cycle of birth and death—coming and going—was somehow a comfort to my thoughts. But as I’ve meditated on the concept over the years, it’s become less and less of a comfort and I begin to grasp the value in learning how to find one’s way out of this never-ending stream of coming and going.

Here I reflect on the coming, the going, and the impermanence of it all. This is my 6th synthetic ode.

Samsara

i

Roiling coiling boiling
             beyond memory dreams
   phase and shift in amniotic mists
         swirl in the silence of pulsation
      swim in the stillness of song and dance

Slowly gently gradually
   sensations coalesce illuminating
shapes only somewhat guessed before
      till time takes hold and presses
long hard strained contractions
         bearing breath into the light
      where lungs expel a fluid reverie
   and struggle with thin arid vapors of life

Now spry pink fingers fan out
            new translucent maple leaves
      that ball and bob and grasp
         at each candescent moment
   each ray of raw potential
               emerging from the void

ii

Ailing paling failing
             beyond hope of recall
   yesteryears evaporate like mists
         drift in and out of apprehension
      drone in the absence of conscious thought

Fiercely surely naturally
   perception dissipates into a darkness
shapes only somewhat recognized
      as time slows down and shuffles
somber strained abstractions
         toward an ever shifting shade
      where lungs expand in fluid misery
   and struggle at each dim sensation of life

Here sun browned fingers curl up
            frail exhausted walnut leaves
      that twist and creak and claw
         at brief pellucid moments
   at dreams of lost potential
               returning to the void

iii

An old oak grows on the side of a hill,
the side that faces the afternoon sun;
on the ground in the grass, her litterfall
has collected around her ancient trunk,
its bottommost layers turned back to soil.

A short distance away the blanched remains
of a sister lies rotting in the grass,
her wood resculpted by late autumn rains
and frosts that covered her corpse with a glass
that deepened the wedges along the grain.

The old oak rises, the last of her kin;
her trunk is split and a third of her limbs
in perpetual winter scrape like bone
the progression of ever changing climes—
the blistering azure, the thunder’s groan.

In the shape of a crescent moon, decay
has collected around her knobby base,
the twigs and branches that once would display
a green that shimmered now turning to waste
where skeletal shadows reach out and pray.

Another third is beginning to wane,
the crown has turned to a light mottled shade
and the leaves have begun to curl and thin
where, before, a reflective glimmer played
like fairy folk dancing within the sun.

She is old; she was old when condors soared
in the skies that revolve above her leaves;
for centuries she has weathered the storms
that lumber in from the watery weaves
which pattern the sandscapes of distant shores.

Her time is near, as it nears for us all;
the vibrancy of her youth has been lost
to the powerful change that claims us all,
yet she faces the end and bears the worst
with a grace that exists within us all.

So here part i explores birth, or coming into being; part ii explores death, or going out of being; and part iii explores impermanence, or the stream of beingness. Most of the parallelisms in parts i and ii exist between the two segments. You may find it an interesting experience to read parts i and ii at the same time, line by line.

Another thing that may catch your attention as you read is that part iii uses an entirely different style than the first two parts. Everything about it is different. Parts i and ii read like free verse while part iii reads more like a piece of classical poetry. This is intentional. This is meant to jar the senses by jabbing a sliver of “impermanence” under the fingernail of thought.

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Malaya

We knew the name within an hour of finding out she was pregnant. We batted around a couple of ideas, and when “Malaya” jumped out we both knew this would be the name. It took neither one of us to convince the other. We just knew. “Malaya” is Tagalog for “Free”.

Some have asked me what it felt like to discover that I would be a father. It’s not an easy thing to put into words. In fact, it’s beyond complex. Poetry may be the only verbal or written medium where it could even be attempted. So, here it is—to the best of my ability. Here is what it felt like.

Malaya

Everywhere they sense it

To the west in the mountains
     the junco hops to the cedar’s highest twig
          and warbles out to the east
     the marmot comes out from beneath his rock
          and twitches his whiskers east
     the big ram balances on a granite crag
          and nods his great curled horns to the east

To the south in the sun-stroked deserts
     the scorpion stops in the underbrush
          and scrabbles to face the north
     the wary diamondback quiets his rattle
          and flickers his tongue to the north
     the gray fox peers from her rocky den
          and turns her head to the north

To the east where grasses sing to passing clouds
     the large elk cranes his rack from the stream
          and fills his eyes with the west
     the black-tailed prairie dogs climb from the earth
          and gaze as one to the west
     the bald eagle breaks from her circled flight
          and rises on winds from the west

To the north on the ageless tundra
     the stern-faced grizzly stops to check the breeze
          and points his nose to the south
     the caribou pause on long expanses of green
          and lift their heads to the south
     the ptarmigan hops to a boulder-top
          and studies the view to the south

Even on the far side of the world
     the lion shakes his mane and sniffs
          quietly at the air
     the elephant matriarch raises her trunk
          fans her ears and scans the horizon
     the old crocodile holds his lunge and allows
          the watering wildebeest to bound away

And for a moment
     for the briefest inkling of time
          the sun the distant stars
               the planets and their moons
                    the far-flung comets and meteors
                         and even the most faded galaxies
     pause completely still

For a new star has flared life in the darkness
     borne on ancient cosmic winds
          from the dust of all that has ever been

                              And his name is Free
                         as white billowed clouds
                    as thistledown on the breeze
               as cottonwood seeds blown through the void
          as starlight flashed through geometries of night

Our son is due to arrive around June 21st.

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Three Thumps

This is in some ways inspired by my reading the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Not the content aspect of it so much as the storytelling aspect. During the few months it took me to work my way through the tales—yes, I’m a very slow reader—I gained several valuable insights into the overall nature of storytelling and how it can be approached in poetic form.

This is the longest highly structured poem I’ve written. I hope you’ll enjoy.

Three Thumps

Each day she walks through old white oaks and laurel trees
where often on a park bench just beneath their leaves
she sees an older fellow sitting casually,
a book held in his hands not far above his knees.

She finds him always lost amid another world
that turns from page to page as slowly it unfurls
against the backdrop of his mind, the letters curled
in hands as weathered as a pair of walnut burls.

Just recently she chanced to see him as he closed
the covers of a tome to which he held his nose
for several weeks there on that bench within the grove
where leafy shadows played across his rustic clothes.

This caught her eye because just then he lifted up
the words within those pages like a sacred cup
before his deep gray eyes, as reverent as a monk,
then tapped it thrice above his brows with ringing thumps.

At this, she couldn’t help her curiosity
and found herself approaching him to ask why he
would thump the words he pondered on through recent weeks
against the seat of all he shuns, accepts and seeks.

She asked, and he was more than just a touch surprised,
for in his reverie he had not realized
that anyone observed with penetrating eyes
his tendencies and speculated strange surmise.

But, still, he thought, she is a young and vibrant thing
to be so free and open with her questioning;
there is no harm in what she asks or answering,
so I will tell her what this little custom means.

“It came about,” he started, “very long ago,
before I climbed through youth onto this high plateau
that rises steadily above the years below
to stop at cliffs that overlook a great unknown.

“I found myself absorbed into a text then, moved
by all I read, my youthful understanding soothed
as seeds of insight sprouted, grew and came to bloom
within the subtext of my soul and all I knew.

“When every word had danced its way throughout my thoughts—
their twirling motions still reechoed in the halls
of mind—I wondered how much knowledge would be lost
to time and slip beyond the powers of recall.

“Then all at once I thumped the book against my head
and asked the ones who govern life that I forget
not one small passage, phrase or word from what I read
so wisdom may inform the days that lie ahead.

“At this new thought I thumped the book a second time;
for wisdom shapes the waterways through which a life
will flow, and more than ever now I wanted mine
to move through channels carved by what I found inside.

“Then one last hope occurred while still I held the tome,
that any insight gained this way would on its own
bestow good fortune on all days to yet unfold;
and so I thumped it one last time to drive this home.

“Since then, whatever I might read, when all is read,
I pause to three times thump the text against my head,
the first for memory, so though I’ve reached the end,
I’ll always bear in mind the best of what was said;

“The next for wisdom, peerless pearl of peace of mind,
that when affixed within the crown bestows a sight
that guides the wearer of the jewel, however blind,
to paths and possibilities of greater kind.

“The last for fortune, that the understanding gained
from studying the thoughts therein would somehow change
the course of life ahead, the days that still remain,
in ways that mitigate calamity and pain.”

He stopped, his salt and pepper beard now motionless,
and saw her dark brown eyes were lost in all he said;
at least a minute passed in silence; sunlight etched
mosaic patterns through the leaves all round the bench.

A ruby dragonfly came drifting near, then soared
abruptly off to fade above a nearby sward;
at last he added, “Now you know the reason for
this little custom you observed and how it formed.”

While he was talking, she had dusted off a place
to sit beside him on the bench and contemplate
the words he used in answering and to explain
why he would shock the front edge of his thinning pate.

She listened to his every word and did not stop
his monolog to interject a single thought;
but now that he had finished with his long response,
a silence thickened like a slowly rising fog.

At length the silence overcame her taciturn
consideration of his luminescent words;
and so she crossed a knee beneath her business skirt
to turn and thank him for the story he unearthed.

She told him that she doesn’t normally approach
and question individuals whom she doesn’t know,
but that his habit was so foreign to behold,
she couldn’t help but stop and ask him to disclose.

She stood and thanked him once again and wished him well,
then carried on across the park to where a swell
of skyscrapers emerged above the green—a realm
where dreams are sectioned off to rot in flat gray cells.

He watched her walk away and vanish like a mist
that dissipates when rising sunbeams shine amid
the vapors, causing them to glow and fade in wisps,
then rose himself, returning to his daily niche.

Throughout the day she answered phones, composed reports,
attended meetings, cultivated strong rapport
with all who shared her daily hamster wheel perforce,
and navigated storms of deadlines port to port.

Throughout the day the old man’s words reechoed back
to her attention, while she worked, and overlapped
with mental focus leveled at the daunting task
of satisfying expectations and demands.

Until at last the day was over, and she found
her feet retracing steps through verdant, well-kept grounds
toward where she lives across the other side of town,
that bench now still beneath midsummer evening boughs.

She pulled a book from out her shoulder bag to read
as she commuted through the darkness on a stream
of light that arced and paused below unresting streets
until she heard her station’s name and left her seat.

As she ascended concrete stairs back to the light,
the sun began to set and cast its colors high
on wavy cirrus clouds that fanned across the sky;
again the old man and his words returned to mind.

She reached the steps that rose to meet her townhouse door
and climbed them to the comfort of her covered porch;
she fumbled for her keys, and then her spirit soared
to be at last surrounded by her own décor.

She kicked her heels off in the entry way and left
her keys atop an ash wood corner stand, intent
on eating something small before she got undressed
to soak away the strain of unrelenting stress.

When all was done, she found her shoulder bag downstairs,
still hanging from her grandma’s dark-stained oaken chair,
half pulled out from the matching dining table where
she hung it when she first got home and freed her hair.

From this she pulled the book she read while on commute,
its pages nearly finished, nearly all suffused
throughout her intellect, her intuition fused
with understanding raised by every page she viewed.

This book was given to her by a long-time friend
who felt its words would calm her thoughts and help to mend
her spirit from a recent tragedy that leapt
from nowhere to assault her days with grief and dread.

She took it to her room and propped herself in bed,
and just inside an hour finished all it said;
she closed the leaves and pondered everything she read
then suddenly she thumped it once against her head.

“For memory,” she thought, “that every word may shine
like stars, however far away, throughout all time
to light the plains and valleys of an open mind;”
and then she raised and thumped the text a second time.

“For wisdom, too,” she thought, “without which all I’ve learned
would be of no more use to me than bridges burned
where chasms gape or surly waters leap and churn;”
then one last thump she gave the book to make a third.

“And, yes,” she thought at last, “for fortune—certainly—
a cosmic shift within the roiling karmic sea
that alters all potential futures yet to be
toward something better than what waited formerly.”

She sighed, a perfect comfort sifting through her chest,
and placed the book atop the nightstand by her bed;
she reached to turn the light off, feeling oddly blessed,
and turned to drift into a nearly dreamless rest.

This is all developed from a habit I formed some years ago. Whenever I read a book I really enjoyed and felt I gained something from, I do have a tendency to give it a few taps against my skull, just in case osmosis is a real thing.

Structurally, this poem is written in iambic hexameters from the first line to the last. Whether or not you scan the lines strictly as iambs somewhat depends on your accent, but I took accentual variation into account as I wrote this. For instance, most people I know pronounce “every” as “ev’ry”, but there are plenty who clearly enunciate that middle syllable. Though it throws an anapaest into the line for those who do so, it doesn’t throw off the overall flow of the poem. When I write a poem to meter, I intend for the lines to be read naturally. It should not be necessary to force the meter. Nowhere in this poem will it be necessary to invert the natural accent of a word or phrase. Where weak accents occur—a quantitatively short syllable despite the accent—it’s fine to scan them as weak for a “short” hexameter. I weigh such lines and read them aloud several times before deciding whether or not to keep them. This creates variation in the otherwise overpoweringly iambic lines. I’ve also used enjambment to throw off the expectation of meter in a few places in order to disrupt the “iambic trots” a little. As you read, you can allow the meter to disconnect briefly through this process as a sort of syncopation. This is intentional, and also used for rhetorical impact.

The end-line scheme all the way through is aaaa, but not rhyme. Instead the focus is on end-line assonance, with variations within the scheme involving rhyme, alliteration, and/or consonance.

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Wither

I think it’s always been in my nature to fill in the blanks when I take notice of an unusual situation or activity. I’ll create all manner of scenarios to explain what I just saw and accept one from among them as reality until more information proves otherwise, information that may never manifest. What inspired this poem is simple; I saw a man around 50 tossing out some nearly dead plants. Then my brain went to work and created a story around it.

Wither

I’m tired of trying to keep these plants alive.
The leaves are few; they haven’t bloomed in years.
I’m weary from watching branches pale and die
that once would greet me with vivacious cheer.
Perhaps somehow they sense that she is gone,
my fragrant rose who swayed such vibrant hues;
perhaps they’ve lost the will for living on
without her touch—a touch that fell like dew.
I’ve tried to care for them as once she did,
to keep them green and rioting in bloom,
but all my work has left them nearly dead—
instead of blossoms, growing mostly gloom.
    I guess it’s time to toss them out—and mourn,
    for she is lost and never will return.

This is my 11th Shakespearean sonnet.

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Darkwater

This is very loosely inspired by Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts. The place created here for reflection and as a metaphor for the “I” behind the “I”, the self beneath the self, the deep, dark, fathomless, impenetrable nature of being, is purely of the imagination. Yet, it is also a place I “know” and have sometimes been able to visit.

Darkwater

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.
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Loss

Two of my wife’s uncles have recently passed away. The first after suffering a series of debilitating strokes, the first of which occurred around five years ago. The second about a year after discovering stage four cancer in his throat and enduring debilitating surgeries. I plan eventually to write memorial poems for each of them.

As I reflected on what it must have been like for the families of these men, a metaphor formed in mind and I found myself writing this.

Loss

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

This is my 10th Petrarchan sonnet.

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The Rarest Gem

There is a women’s Christian group that meets at 7pm on Tuesdays at one of the coffeehouses I hang out at. They usually gather round a large meeting table near the table I tend to favor, so I’ll often find myself listening in on their discussions—Not because I’m interested or nosy so much as because I possess the unfortunate inability to tune anything out.

Six to ten women attend this meeting, bringing a thin blue book with a title something to do with living a wholesome life as a Christian woman. Each week they discuss what they’ve read and share stories about what’s going on in their lives, often giving one another advice on how to deal with this difficulty or that personal trauma. Considering all the personality types involved, it seems like they form a great emotional support group for one another.

About two weeks ago one of the women was visibly despondent throughout the discussion, so toward the end, after each of them had shared and discussed something from her week, they gently ganged up on her and got her to open up. She broke down into shuddering sobs as she attempted to explain what was going on with her. Turns out she was feeling overwhelmed and depressed by drama and chaos created by some of her close friends. Stuff that perhaps fewer men than women would understand or relate to.

This poem builds on some thoughts that formed in my head as they urged her to draw a line and demand that her friends respect certain boundaries.

The Rarest Gem

Peace of mind is a rare and precious gem,
  shot through with deep unblemished shades
   of autumn skies that never fade,
each facet polished to a cool aplomb.
It waits within the deepest, darkest clime
  to be unearthed from rock and clay
   and crafted in the light of day
by empathy and wisdom till it gleams.

   So we must choose our friends with utmost care,
for there are those with whom it can’t be trusted,
  who treat this jewel with disdain,
   who scuff it up with gall and shame
until it’s rendered void of all its luster
  and every thought is muddied with despair.

This is my 9th Petrarchan sonnet.