Grey House in White

A reflective view from my morning window: Lit now in new light. What quality of service do we offer? The house is still empty after four weeks. Some are never really home. Could a call have made a difference?

Check in with the living.

Gray House in White

House once home to older lady
Lonely after Dad had passed
Mom ten years before
And now she too – no heirs
Thought no one cared
The neighbor said

I shoveled snow in February
Thank you polite with smile
and wrote my phone number
but never called
And I thought once of phoning her

Empty now across the street
White by morning sun
Just a week from diagnosis
So little hope in lonely
I could have called
Gray house across the street
In white of morning sun

Reckoning by Heart

It flowed so fast from somewhere out there--within. I have to read it a few more times to get it. Sometimes things change so quickly, unexpectedly. But really, we knew all along. For time is an illusion. And space. You know. Without sadness, we would not know joy.

Reckoning by Heart

I’ve never loved another more than I love you
And I’ve loved many as much, and I still do
True love doesn’t recede with the waves of time and circumstance
It’s not by chance that we each unfold in the Light and Sound
It’s by the beat of each heart as it recognizes the divine in every Soul
so clothed in human form and race.

Then reckoning relationships from birth to death
Simple ones like love of mother
and others more complex.

We each have chosen well in perfect recognition of our needs
like the vine that grows from dark to light to reach the sky
Why I never loved another more than I love you?
First there was the swelling of the seed in earth
I’ve learned a lot by love
that blooms and dies—
for it’s not gone
The seeds were hiding.

After harvest there is a feast of celebration
Every heart that sings remembers its own weeping
In the season of eternity it seems so short
And I’ve never loved another
more than I love you.

Pending Death

On highway 7, just west of 101 . . .

We could all look at life this way
were it not for a view of Soul in eternity.
But still its possibility is most unwelcome
when it is viewed more immediately.
Even when it has little to do with oneself
or family or loved ones.
For we are all family really.
This morning on the way to work
it was a pleasant drive despite the wind all night.
I should have known something
was coming on the wind.

But still, it was too sudden.
The shock too great.
Traffic, two lanes each way.
It changed my day.
Though not as much as those
six tiny ducklings on the highway median
without a mother.

Wind Bending Grass

On this windy day the willow seedlings sway out back of my western window at work. There are taller cottonwoods and ash beyond that. The view takes me back to another place . . .

Wind Bending Grass

Ears waving, trunk and tusks
above the head-tall grass
now bent in wind,
and jungle in the back.

So real, like yesterday,
yet not sure when.
Hot wind. Monsoon.
Quench the fire after noon.
Was it 1966? This seems too recent.
And still…

Hot sun almost lost in hazy sky.
In tall grass bent by wind
I see the ears and trunk,
but not the tiger stripes and tail.
She could be hiding.
Stone fence and iron grill
stops them all, but not
the snakes.

Saw a cobra once
by green banana grove
not hooded now to strike.
But hacked and quartered near the gate
By guards of palace grounds.
Maybe 1923. Was it a dream?
I look around.

The next excursion leaves.
It’s not too late.
The hunt of kings is not in here,
but outside the palace gates
beyond the elephant grass,
jungle in the back.

What’s in this wind
that bends the head-tall grass?

I've spent some time in Thailand, and even more in dreams. We've all lived before. It's hard to tell where it comes from. So real.