To thine own self be true

“Mariana in the moated grange.”–Measure for Measure, Shakespeare

You lie on the bed
your heart pounding &
you think “Something’s missing
again. I experience an absence
like I’ve never known before.
How did I get here?”

And you talk to many people
but you’re on ‘auto-matic’
saying only ‘right’ things,
the things they need to hear
until they abandon you at last
like so many others.

Till you drift once more
& you begin to dream
more than ever before
of rivers, parks & stars
as you wonder “Was I
ever there?” “Did I do that?”

And `Why did it change?”
And so you take comfort
in a thwarted sameness,
the labyrinth of repeated time
& mourning duties–
the maimed rites of forgotten love.

And all the while,
a river flows endless,
beneath the eddies
of your too-familiar day.

………………………..

“I am half sick of shadows.” –“The Lady of Shalott”, Alfred Lord Tennyson

Something my Dad
saw one day
he wanted to keep.
A memory of hoodoos
in hot July.

Walking the trail
long before his cancer,
long after his humiliating poverty
and being taken advantage of
one too many times.

He must have been looking up
at these sentinels of stone
rising golden on blue sky
wisps of cloud passing
by like a whim.

Something told him:
Take this picture
Save this much.
Maybe it’ll turn out.

Years later,
snow falling outside,
I look again at the
twin hoodoo giants
and recall a small man
in bright-coloured clothes

walking some ways
behind his wife
both of them smoking,
but something clicking
for him that moment,
there on the quiet valley floor.

Ominous evening
lone black stallion
gallops between
iron rails
resolved to defy
the single headlight
of approaching train

Funny to think
that the horse
might win

…………………………………………

So many passions are bound up in possibilities. The Canadian painter Alex Colville has passionately posited various ‘what if’s’ in much of his work. So, what appears to be some kind of simple statement about nature and technology/’the machine’ opens up as one considers the imaginative possibilities layered into this Colville classic.

The passion that led to this work has a kind of transference of imaginative energy and possibility to the viewer. If, indeed, the horse might ‘win’ (being somewhat tellingly larger in size), what else may be possible in this world with the passion of imagination, the passion of creation, and the passion of beautiful expression? Consider then the passions of the many other great artists, be they painters, architects, composers, musicians, writers, or filmmakers. The passions that teach, that inspire, that inform, that move, and that powerfully connect.

(response to HD documentary of space shuttle views by Hadfield)

there are no borders
up there
just you
and blue
as far as the eye

there is orange
and white
now and then
and mostly peace
or silence

no fear
or sadness
except for
what man
has done to
coastlines
and hills

irreplaceable
waste and wasting thereof
stupid killing hate
down below
too

up there
to float
and just be,
time to
reflect about
a larger view
of life

and how fragile
things are
the specialness
of disappearing life
left on Earth

“One thought fills immensity.”–William Blake

Ok, you were
borne in some
other time, another
place, now changed.

That may very well
be, but what
about who you
are today?

Are you just
someone defined by
where you’ve been and
(not) done or said?

Are you just
someone who was once
known ephemerally
in a mutually-forgotten
moment of someone else’s
failing memory or past,
not just your own?

If you have already
changed by the time
you have read this
and a glacier has
begun to melt in some
still-photo or other,
how can you ever be
possibly known or
even remembered?

The meaning that was
a remarkable possibility–
that happened once
and once only–has altered forever.

Ah, that was who you were,
what you were about (perhaps)
your spirit, soul
and presence–
passing thru a
moving present, now past.

“Awe is what moves us forward.”–Joseph Campbell

There are some moments
when you feel as
well as see it:
honest-to-goodness
awe and natural beauty.
So different from
a lousy day or the other
sad myriad limits
that flesh is heir to.

Only then arriveth
distance, peace,
rest and solitude.
And a brilliant revisioning
of freedom and unity
of soul and spirit.
A simple brilliance
that was there
all the time
but previously unknown.
……………………………………………..

Although there is a lot to be said for what Kenneth Clark described in Civilisation or Matthew Arnold’s description of culture (and art) as “the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit”, for me, it is beauty that is most truly special and valued. For instance, much as I love the architecture of Wright, the music of Beethoven, and the water lillies of Monet, it is natural beauty, especially in its wildest and most sublime, that moves my soul or spirit in ways words could only vaguely begin to express. In some large, symbolic, yet palpable way, they are in me and embody what I have often needed and desired whenever, as Wordsworth writes–”The world is too much with us” and/or the limited/limiting human world comes up ‘short’, sometimes ‘way short’…

Again, over and over, nothing significant happens or grows without consciousness and epiphany. Personal internalizations of external information, best experienced through the senses, as Keats often pointed out.

became a spirit
as much as then.
Well beyond touch or
anything remotely palpable
and the limits of empathy.
A veritable life in stars.
A final transcendence.

There are matters beyond
any limitations, chains, and
mind-forg’d manacles:
freedom from Other.
The end of need and desire.
Just free and only inner.
Like this.
The best, last.

I do know that
I had long wandered
the garden
enjoying the views.
taking note of the
many precious blooms.
There was more than enough
to keep one walking,
satisfied and
more than curious.
Till you showed up
one day on a path
I had not taken before.

You were the prettiest
and brightest
of all the flowers then.
It was here that I
wanted to linger
and savour your
remarkable beauty
with a Keatsian
sensibility,
composing poems
to you, your best.
Who could have thought
that gardens brought
such joy and freedom
and might stir
immortal lines
and images to
your soul and spirit?

Today your flower
fades or blooms
in other parts of
the garden.
I stand elsewhere–
by the water perhaps,
and recall what it meant
to be that close,
that certain in
our very special once.

You make it up
It starts like this:
an empty room
and paper to write on

Quill in hand
the peacock’s feather
an eye upon the world

You are the optical
On your bones
are fleshed the words
of your very seeing

Vision, your deliverance
crafts the songs
you sing to life

You make it thus:
the winds on reasoned sands
gulls wheeling above

the waters of mind:
mermaids, coves
and drowning men

It starts with the ebb
of experience
that change in season

Works of hope
galleon landfalls
of imagination

It starts with you
and the tides
of desire

It starts with you
on quiet shorelines
alone and looking out to sea
alone and looking inward

(written on way to dentist, rush-hour)

The car music was Mozart
under a soft blue
fall morning sky.
Few commuters noted
the black smoke escaping
a roadside mortuary
beside the sign
that promised “Dignity”.
Whatever had been tangible,
loved or unloved,
was gone in a puff.

Overhead, a Sundance balloon
floated to meet
whatever else freed.
Otherwise, it was
a pretty good day ‘to be’
either alive or dead–
whether conscious, or not.

…………………………..

footnote–this piece was subconsciously inspired by a Hugh Hood short story “Flying a Red Kite” and the N.F.B. film “The Red Kite”. p.s./On January 2015, in a stroke of irony, the funeral chapel aforementioned had a crippling fire which shut it down, the smokestack now standing exposed.