Beach Impressions

A recent visit to the Oregon coast generated several hundred photographs and this poem, a series of three line stanzas about what I saw and felt as I explored this rugged coastline.

Stretched thin along the horizon line

the grey mist grows,

approaching slow and thick.

Beneath the cotton wisp of clouds

the white birds fly

free and far they roam.

A roiling foam invades the shore

the green water flows

back and forth against the tide.

The sound the charm to lure me in

the hypnotic siren’s call

to heed the past of lessons learned.

The driftwood lay like Roman forms

relics from another time,

smooth and white in their nakedness.

Patterns in the wet sand and shadows

where tidal pools form

full of creatures expelled from the deep.

The fading sun obscured in mist,

a ghostly orb that

settles in sleep upon the sea.

Meditate on this moveable feast,

the human presence wanes

where the sea claims its majesty.

This solemn beach on which I stand,

where eternity reigns

and I am left to wonder why.

Come What May

Come what may

On a shallow field of gray.

The lover’s bow snaps,

A shaft of light so bright.

I turn to the sky

To watch my sorrow fly

Away above the clouds,

Fading from view

And my memory.

A once piercing wound

That split the night

And broke my heart.

Now a subtle curve

That bends back my mind

To a happier time.

The Color of Life

My wife likes to say, upon returning home from a trip, “My nest is best.” But my first question is always, “How are the plants?” Here is a stream of consciousness expression of that experience of both leaving and returning home.

A flower is the color of life

a yellow lily blooms

the purple buds curl round

the green stem reaches

the sky is gray but

the car is white

snow on the way today

before we take flight

to where the sun always shines

and lizards sometimes fall

through the white clouds

we fly over the mountains

as the green plants in the study

grow ever so slowly

as if we had never been

away with the gators

crawling dust on the table

and I know the guitar

is out of tune once again

but nothing has moved

the flowers still cast

a sweet substance that lasts

the color of life.

Life Preferred

We are all familiar with the old adage, “growing old sucks, but it beats the alternative.” How we deal with the aging process will come to define us. Some do it better than others. But we must never lose sight of the simple fact that not everyone gets to do it. Growing old is a privilege.

When growing old it’s all the same;

the dreams, the hope, the pain.

Each day locked in steadfast

conformity.

To what end, I cannot see.

For what do you dream;

a new place,

a new path,

a new partner?

For what do you hope;

a peace transcendent,

a re-birth of common sense,

a world without tears?

And what causes your pain;

the ache inside your head,

a day without purpose,

a life… deferred?

But through it all remember this;

Aging, though not welcome,

is still a life… preferred!

On the Beach

An obvious reference in this photograph to the people on the beach, contemplating the incoming waves upon the shore. But the message in this poem was heavily influenced by my close reading of Percy Shelly’s classic poem, Ozymandias and the current political climate in America. In addition, there was this movie I watched long ago called On the Beach. The Cold War plot focused on the fate of the last survivors of a nuclear war, huddled together on an Australian beach awaiting the inevitable cloud of nuclear radiation to reach their shore.

Is it folly to think what we build will last,

Memorials and monuments, nations all?

The future comes for us and we become the past.

Hands held in prayer before the waves now cast,

We stand as silent witnesses beneath the storm.

On the beach I saw a thousand ships appear!

Our destiny rolling in with the rising tide.

Building empires meant to last a thousand years,

Never calling into question our foolish pride,

But we are blind to truth when held fast by fear.

Alas, we acknowledge that those who led us lied,

Promises lay broken, our fate made clear.

Those dying dreams turned to dust, year after year.

Mere monuments of our hubris before the fall,

Decency and compassion, honor all.

Ballerina in Black

It’s as old as theater itself; the assignment of color in our culture to represent virtue and its antithesis. It made me think of the significance color plays in society writ large right down to the color of our skin.

To what purpose do we perceive a color?

A radiant guilt for the dancer in white,

She glides across the stage in speckled light.

Innocence and purity like no other,

Was there ever such a sight?

When suddenly appears the ballerina in black.

Long shadows fall across the stage,

She twists and turns in malevolent rage.

The other dancers pause, taken aback,

What to make of this passionate sage.

And what role do you wish to play,

In the daily struggle of this ballet?

When curtains call and the lights go down,

And the audience assigns it’s phony crown.

You come to realize the price you pay,

To wear the color to which you are bound.

The Music Room

Step back into the Victorian past and wonder; who sat in those chairs, what did they discuss, what music did they play? Like a ghost from the future, I am drawn to this portal, camera in hand.

I) I heard the music then, I pretend to hear it still,

soft melodic notes drifting through the maze of time,

emanating from a source both near and far, like an

echo that flows through the canyon walls, so that

I could feel the sound as it touched my soul, long

measures of wistful chords that lingered on and

drew me in. I felt compelled to find the source.

II) There is a place we can visit in the deep recesses

of our mind, where time and beauty gather, a haven

of endless fascination where everything is as it

should be, and no thought or memory is out of place,

here we are free to see the best of us, engage in

selfless conversation with the ones we love, and

the strangers we have come to meet, to listen or

dream as the moment requires, to revel in the

sound of a harp, as our fingers ripple through

the glorious strings, like a fresh breeze over water,

to feel the pulse of the piano, as the notes of a

beloved tune spring from the box, as our hands

float across the keys with divine purpose, and

when the realization comes at last, you know

what it means to be at peace with yourself.

I found this place once.

III) I have endeavored to return ever since,

to see her sitting there in her sparkling gown,

dressed as a princess holding court, a living

portrait of a timeless lady, her visitors come

and go, and with each conversation a new

revelation, set to some romantic melody from

that long forgotten age. I sometimes imagine

my presence as an unseen spirit, a quiet observer,

taking measure of the tranquility I can sense,

the magic of this place, the story of a vanished

age where we both belong, together, forever,

how I long to be in that room beside her, to reach

out and stroke her hand, to kiss her cheek, to

forever float on a sea of unrestrained happiness.

But alas, to my eternal dismay, my vision fades,

the music I so loved, no longer plays.

Twilight on the Baltic

Have you ever experienced a moment of a beauty transcendent, only to have it shattered by a sudden disturbance; a loud noise, a group of tourists, a jet’s long contrail?

The sea turns gold beneath the sun’s farewell.

Suddenly, a ship is born—
as if the earth itself has parted.

I watch it ease into the channel,
slow, deliberate.
A languid plume of brown smoke
dissembles into the dusk.

The passage writes itself upon the water,
by the wake it reveals.

So foreign it appears—
disembodied,
mechanical,
impersonal.

A fugitive from time,
adrift without purpose.
I see no resemblance
to the nature it traverses.

Yet, in quiet reflection
the ship claims its own fate,
gliding soundless
across the shimmering Baltic.

It draws near, and I think
how beautifully this moment
might endure in memory—

photographed, preserved.

In such a place I come to see
tranquility,
harmony,
majesty.

I lift the lens to my eye,
to frame the sea and sky.
My finger rests upon the shutter—

then—

the ship’s horn rips the air apart!

Suddenly displaced

I lower the camera,
the silence broken,
the moment erased.

The Plein Air Painter

I have often wondered about the source of artistic inspiration. Where does it come from? How do we acquire it? How do we express it? I think this photograph and the poem that follows offer some possible answers to these questions. Consider the artist, shown here, who chooses to paint nature while standing within it.

I paint the things we cannot see,

I paint the wind that moves my hand,

Across the canvas and through the land.

I paint the light that shows me the way,

I paint the love that shines upon me,

A whispered plea to keep us all free.

I paint a palette of promises to keep

Beneath the umbrella’s shade,

A shimmer of hope in a summer glade.

The canvas reveals my inner thoughts.

Shapes take form as the colors grow.

The path opens, the message clear.

Then I know, you are with me now.

What guides my strokes, I cannot say,

Only truth drips from my brush this day.

But I know when the work is done.

The light begins to fade.

My promises kept in the summer glade,

I look upon the finished work and smile,

For the gift you have made.

The Way of the Tea

The poem takes you through the ritual of the tea ceremony. If you have experienced one you will quickly recognize the many references. Photographed in Kyoto, Japan. Hope you enjoy it!

We enter through the teahouse door,

Where silence greets us, soft and pure.

Host and guest in reverent grace,

Meet soul to soul in a sacred place.

The tatami yields beneath our feet,

The air is calm, the world discreet.

Hidden rhythms now centuries old,

By whispered hands and ages told.

A sweet, three bites, to begin the dance,

As time dissolves in a ritual trance.

The whisk’s soft hum, a meadow’s tune,

The matcha blooms like early June.

I turn the bowl with humble care,

And lift it slow through fragrant air.

Three sips, a slurp, a quiet plea,

For peace, for grace, for harmony.

This fleeting moment, serene, complete,

Where past and present come to meet.

A meditative breath, then all is still,

My soul made tranquil by its will.

Chains

A thought provoking image about the tools we use that both build and destroy.

I gaze upon these rusted chains

And wonder

Of all the tasks they once performed.

Linear bits of steel forged like a molecular strain.

Banded together to hold something fast,

To pull an object a certain way,

To suspend a heavy load from a tower,

What strength, what power

Devised by man.

To ease the burden of a difficult task,

To secure a thing of value to its place,

To hold me tight to a core belief.

Ah, but these chains have a duality,

It would seem to me.

Hard and gray, functional but not beautiful.

Heavy with the weight of oppression,

They confine and restrict,

Subduing the perceived offender,

Chafing both skin and mind,

Sinister in its purpose,

I find.

And is that not the nature

Of all things made by the hand of man?

To build and preserve as a noble task

The ugly chains we forever cast.

Prayer by the Lake

Wherein lies the power of prayer? Do we really believe that our prayers are answered or not, by some unknowable deity? Turn on the television most days and you will hear some public official sending his or her thoughts and prayers to the families suffering from some tragic circumstance. Who benefits most, I have to wonder? The victims or the person doing the praying?

To whom do you pray when the day is dark?

And if those prayers are left unanswered,

Where do you turn?

For what do you pray when your soul is troubled,

A miracle in time or a simple smile?

What have you learned?

Does it matter if I pray in the day or the night,

Before I sleep or when I wake,

To make it right?

And where should I pray to feel His presence,

A house of stone or by a shimmering lake?

Show me the light.

Tell me why I should pray at all in the end,

Without certainty, no receipt do I take,

Just thoughts to send.

Does it matter then if it’s to no avail?

If it’s the deed itself that matters most,

In the end, to help me mend.

The Last of Us

Let this image sink in. I will leave the poem open to your interpretation.

From this chaos to that

and back again.

A sign of the times

in which we live.

No fear no foul,

No taste no waste.

Look for the one who stands

above us all,

On a throne without a crown,

sneering and lying.

Look for the fool who follows

beneath the robes,

seeking life saving affirmation,

indecent and cruel.

See the ghosts of the nation’s past

buried within the pages,

obscured from the literal truth,

crying and lamenting.

See the last of us

gathered along the shore,

horror on the stoney faces,

ridiculed and rejected.

On to the next paradigm

and back again,

reeling in a dystopic future

with nothing left to hold.

No law no crime,

No reason no rhyme.

Just Old Men Now

I have always believed that fame is a double edged sword. There are many positive and negative components to life in the public eye. This poem focuses on one of the negatives. On social media we constantly see images of our heroes when they were in their prime and compare their aging selves to that standard. A symptom of our culture’s obsession with youth, I think. And it saddens me.

We are, all of us, just old men now.

Who carry the burden of time and change.

The aging rock stars, idols of my youth,

The tough guy actors who beat the odds,

The underdog athlete’s spectacular range.

I can see them still when time will allow

Those old memories to surface somehow.

But fame offers a poor bargain revealed,

To age in the public eye in a final reel.

For you are forever competing with

The glory days of your younger self.

So I am thankful to age in anonymity

With friends and family in my company

Growing old at the same pace as me.

She Sweeps the Steps

Perhaps it was the incongruity of this female caretaker sweeping the steps of this grand palace (photographed in Prague) with a simple broom that motivated the story told below. I did not speak with her, I don’t recall even seeing her face. I do not know her story. But this image has always had a powerful effect on me. So I gave her a story, a sad one to be sure; coping with personal loss! And just maybe, the simple repetitive task of sweeping will free her mind and bring some measure of relief even if it’s just for a matter of minutes.

Solace, in a word, is what she seeks

The columns rise above the fallen leaves

From the shadows of the hall portraits speak

And still she sweeps the steps.

The chairs arranged in long obedient rows

Awaiting an audience she will never know

They come from the palaces, they come from the courts

But only silence does she hear.

It is quiet now in the cool morning hour

Clutching the broom like a treasured heirloom

The movement a relief to assuage the grief

As the leaves tumble down.

How could we know the loss she conceals

She is hardly seen by those who walk near

They hurry on in their blind measured fear

Past the woman who sweeps the steps.

So many hidden stories never to be told

A simple task to find relief from the cold

A loneliness found in a loved one’s loss

And still she sweeps the steps.

The task is done but the pain lingers on

When will she reach the end of her will

Head bowed in silence, she begins to weep

Solace, in a word, is why she sweeps.

Saguaro

A Saguaro Cactus at sunset. Aside from their immense size, countless shapes and their other worldly beauty, I was struck most by their age, their resilience to the test of time, their relationship to a particular place. Thus, a poem that attempts to capture these enduring themes.

I stand among these ancient pillars,

Monuments to the test of time.

As silent witnesses they rise

High above the desert floor. Old

As the stars, they point to the heavens.

A testament to their longevity

In a world limited by time.

Enduring, Growing, Reaching

For the darkening sky.

Cast in absurd shapes,

Human in their form,

Alien in their presence.

A sight as strange as men can see.

They appear to move in the fading Twilight,

A marching force without Formation.

Where the shadows bend to black.

Where endless sunrises and sunsets,

In this desert space,

Come and go in a timeless place.

Transcending all earthly bounds,

Mystical apparitions from a forgotten age,

Mocking the limitations of my mortal life.

Descendants of the Tohono O’odham,

The Pascua Yaqui, the Apache.

They remind us, in the blue hour,

That the spirit lives in perpetuity.

If we take the time to look

For those who take the time to see.

In Repose

Our dreams may offer some solace, a respite from some sadness. Or they may play out that memory in some strange and vague form that crystalizes the moment we awake. In any event, the unwanted memory always returns. A Lotus flower rising above a sea of green and blue at daybreak tells this story. But there is something inherently sad in the way it lists toward the light.

She rises from her slumber

Upon a misty bed of green.

Her petals softly spread

A burst of color in her dream.

But her quiet eyes admit

That the memory lingers still.

Her slim leafy heart opens

A soul weeps its silent will.

She shakes those bright pink petals

To dislodge those final dreams.

Soon she slips from nature’s bed

A flower rising, or so it seems.

Her limbs reaching forward

Her stem a slender arch.

Then her entire flower quivers

A sudden shiver on the march.

When, moment of moments sigh

She turns a dew dropped face to me.

I see her sad fading smile

For a love not meant to be.

The Shipwreck

I’ll admit that I do not have a photo of a sunken ship. This will have to do. Here’s the connection; when I look at this photo it reminds me of the kind of shore where the detritus of a shipwreck would wash up. It’s rugged, uneven and uninviting. The poem, however, focuses on the moment an underwater discovery is made although the last stanza makes an allusion to experiencing the dangers of the sea from the relative safety of the shore. The poem was inspired by an article I read about modern day underwater treasure hunters. I was also inspired by the unforgettable scenes from the Titanic wreck. 

Suddenly a ghostly form in the shape of a ship

Miles below the storm an underwater crypt.

Lying broken at the bottom a fate all mariners fear

A prize for Neptune’s gotham in darkness now made clear.

A link to the distant past carrying some priceless treasure

Hidden under the mast sealed in liquid pressure.

Sadness for the souls who once walked her decks

Or swung from tangled hammocks floating free as tiny specks.

Silent fish swim in schools looking for a humble haven

Glowing like living jewels swift in their evasion.

As we hover in our place the seabed rises up

To conceal the secret space over the tomb we now corrupt.

Her graceful beams are rotten a once proud vessel lies

Now all but forgotten her legacy yet to rise.

What is it about the sea that draws us to the task

To solve another mystery of the fate of men once cast?

And those of us who stand along this crooked shore

Cry courage for the damned whose souls are evermore.

Innocence Lost

I watch as his body bathes

In the shallow mountain stream,

By the glowing twilight of this day.

His head bowed in quiet study.

The late afternoon sun reflecting

Softly from his youthful frame.

An innocence personified

By untroubled thoughts and dreams,

As pure as the cool dark pool

Where he plays with the little fish.

A child unaffected by the past

Or the burdens of the present.

A boy’s wishful indifference lost

In a world of his own making.

I wish to hold you forever

In this moment of childhood bliss.

There is so much you do not know

Of the sorrow in this world;

The fear that will grow like a weed,

The pride and the pain, you will learn,

Fall like rain. And you will come

To know them all, and recall

That moment in the sun when

You were carefree,

Your time your own,

Your play your dream.

Sheltered, protected, unaware

Of the world beyond your play.

The future is yours, but it can wait!

I am saddened to know your destiny.

I fear for you and what will be.

An innocence lost!

The water is cool and clear,

The sun is warm and bright.

But someday you will realize

There is a price to be paid

To live in this world we have made.

And for that I am truly sorry.

On the Beach

It’s a rainy day on the beach. Bad news is never far from our day to day reality but we are always surprised when it somehow finds us, as if it were all just a profound mistake. Are you sure you have the right guy? Depending on the severity of the bad news our first inclination is some level of denial. Anyway, that’s what the experts say. Over time you come to the realization that you are not and never have been exempt! So when that bad news does arrive, why not just roll the dice? Why not go jogging in the surf even if it’s raining.

Let me not ask favor this day,

For our time soon must end.

The Hummingbird hovers then flees,

A flower to attend.

Like birds we flit from chore to chore,

Consumed by endless day.

But we all know that night must fall,

And send us on our way.

The weather will bring what it may,

A storm upon the sea.

Thick clouds upon the horizon,

A rainy day for me.

Farewell blus skies in days of old,

My thoughts like heavy weights.

Will you come and sit next to me,

Share my uncommon fate?

Let’s take a chance on the morrow,

Go jogging in the surf!

Let’s roll the dice and spit the spice,

Lie naked on the turf!

Unscripted, that’s life, some would say.

So little left to hold

Once the final account comes due.

If simple truth be told.