I Long To Return

It is a moonlit, windy night.
The full orb above has pushed aside the stars
and lazy clouds, backlit  in pale blue seem alive.

I want to return, return to the mountains,
to deep corridors hewn from rock,
halls of wild nights and exquisite beauty,
peaks of ecstasy dropping to rumbling cascades
speckled and glittering like the stars wheeling overhead.

And I wake, and I rise from city slumber
thinking on the pine and madrone,
the oaks and redwoods, the sorrell and moss;
this dust that settles 'round unnerves me.
But new strength speaks to me.
This new dawn sings of the hills,
just as the exhausted dusk
shall sing of valleys long.

Terry Coates

I should be writing a love poem,
a sonnet or an ode to affection.
I can not write about a rent of sorrow.
So I'll light a cigarette
because I don't want the drink
and I'll eat something
because I shouldn't smoke
and I'll deny that vent
calling, "Sit with me. Feel me."

"What? You too?" began a fusion,
a harmony in healing
and a lesson on love,
and the value of vulnerability,
and how simply being is enough,
and if I am present
when incumbent upon me to share me
this.... this love will fill the days
when there's little joy in life.

"Sit with me. Feel me."
Your beauty without vanity
made a difference, Terry Coates.

Memory of Mom

I thought of you today
and my memory failed me.
I could not remember the loss,
yet in you
I find memories of happier times.

The Journey

My seatmate is a squirming eight year old from Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico. He is mildly peeved at my rudimentary Spanish. I am impressed by his mastery of English. We are each traveling to Orlando, Florida on a journey.

He travels with family to support family. I also travel to support family. His cousin has earned a new sponsorship in some type of auto racing venue. His tee-shirt sports more sponsors logos than I can count, including Chevrolet, LabCorp and Ricky's Authentic Mexican Food. Oh, there's some Nascar stuff too. Christian, my seatmate, assures me he has no interest in Disney World this trip. He wishes only to yell loud enough for his primo to hear him over the noise.

And so with the lights of Dallas to the north and maybe College Station well to the south I have adopted a grandson for the moment. I am learning a bit about what an eight year olds' life in Hermosillo is like (well, actually a suburb I can not master pronunciation of). And I recall how young boys travel in small tight-knit groups in their natural state. And I am sensing that they fear the violence of their surroundings.

He has the most amazing chocolate eyes. I'd say they are about 65% cocoa in color and they flash with delight when he speaks of his papa. It seems his dad also works in construction and my traveling companion is much enamored of him.

I'm also benefiting from eight year old wisdom. I've been told that eight year old boys don't like to go to sleep but under questioning he admits that they don't like to wake up either. But they have the best dreams; dreams of cousins and Fiestas and riding bikes and a special girl. "Sí. Mañana es el día de San Valentín."

It is somewhere north of Biloxi/Gulfport when I realize my journey has changed. I am traveling to a memorial service, a celebration of the life of a most remarkable woman, my mother.

The life of Margaret Ann, know as Sue to seemingly all but her mother, who called her Ann, and a brother who called her Margaret, will be memorialized by many tomorrow. My seven siblings, her numerous grandchildren, in-laws, outlaws, nieces, nephews, great grand kids, perhaps a sibling or two of hers, friends and God-only-knows who else will assemble in a church in Retirementburg, Florida, to pay their last respects and maybe share a memory or an anecdote about someone I am just beginning to realize how much I miss.

In the two and a half months since my mother went home to her Lord I have not allowed myself to experience much emotion surrounding a deep loss. And my new young friend, in sharing about his family, has in a short three hours allowed me to re-experience some of my childhood again. And the first tears come easily, softly, while some cleansing of those cobwebbed spaces buried under ill-conceived notions of how a grown man should express loss begins.

As we deplane I share a warm handshake and a look into the eyes of my young friend's father. I am convinced that I was he many years back, working to earn calloused hands and raise a family. He is grateful his son didn't disturb my trip. Quite the contrary; his son made my trip memorable and enriched my life.

Let Us Return Home

Let us return Home, let us go back,
Useless is this reckoning of seeking and getting,
Delight permeates all of today.
From the blue ocean of death
Life is flowing like nectar.
In life there is death; in death there is life.
So where is fear, where is fear?
The birds in the sky are singing “No death, no death!”
Day and night the tide of Immortality
Is descending here on earth.

Falling

It smells of dust
as the gentle rain begins.
I can taste it growing in the damp air;
no sweetness, not now.
These tears falling, falling, falling

Loose Ends

Each human life an epic
and unrepeatable anecdote
is still but a sample size of one
and may in the end be the control
for a much wilder experiment
being conducted in the next room.



The role of being myself
fell to my understudy
sometime in my fifteenth year.
That gawky loner
for whom nothingness came easy
had spent his life in the wings
mouthing the lines unaware
the smallness of his perspective.

Why

While examining the why's
(I want to know the reasons
my writing has ceased)
I see a tendency to give up
trying to relate an experience
you can not relate to
whether through pity, or envy,
or simple forgiveness
and so it drifts away
from the volume of my life experience
and the memory seems out of place,
almost mythical,
wandering restless in the fog
no longer even looking
for a place to land.

Trying to Relate

While examining the why's
(I want to know the reasons
my writing has ceased)
I see a tendency to give up
trying to relate an experience
you can not comprehend;
whether through pity, or envy,
or simple forgiveness.
And so it drifts away
from the volume of my life experience
and the memory seems out of place,
almost mythical,
wandering restless in the fog
no longer even looking
for a place to land.

For Emmalyn

Consider one apple, fall's bounty
tucked into a bushel of them.
And though much like all the other apples
it is individual already, cover and core.

Now think of this day, one you'll not recall
owing entirely to your new-formed youth;
your next breath, that quick sip of air,
ordinary, yet not, because it is yours
and you matter.

And so you were born
without knowing the date,  or why,
but the particular joy surrounding your arrival
and the swelling of hearts drawn to you -
you'll not understand until new life
springs from you.

And you have the experience
of your first apple yet in store.

Untitled

What is left behind

when crossing a frontier? 

Pain and melancholy? 

The tears of loved ones
who see a search for forgiveness
in rheumy eyes?
At the precipice
I feel the world changing.
Or is it me?

The Storm Within

Though formless I am battered
tossed for long ages
torn within by raging forces
incomprehensible conflict unknown to me
dwelling in dimensions of madness
the blackness fighting to engulf
my shattered fragments of rainbow
whiteness of incredible intensity
writhing in this malignant gloom
I am lost

Fears

I acted out of old fears
and it left me fearful.
In the ensuing loneliness,
I became unsure, isolated, fatigued
.... Oh, I was so tired.
And at the end of the day
I brought you my fear.
Seeking relief I put it at your feet
and called it love.
It was not.
And neither was the beating
my spirit failed to endure
because of your fear.

Parsing Thoughts

Only a few birds are still speaking

the troubled ones, I think, 

as this dusk settles to dark 

and I am left
to look about aimlessly 

and emptily seeking what can be said

for purchase against the unsayable.

And as I might attack a block of ice 

with pick and mallet 

I prize apart the compressed, 

the mass of my obdurate brain,

picking loose the skein of thoughts 

before compressing them anew, condensing,

distilling phrases to word.

Fear

Anger

Pain

Sin

God

My tragic capacity for self-deception 

with the limitation of language,

a driven force required 

to overcome these mantras,

I now see my words a simple finger 

pointing to the moon,

not the moon itself 

and the mallet life's strongest force,

Love

Maybe

Too long have I slumbered
secure within the discomfort
of transferred fears,
the paralyzing gifts
that kept me in a box
unable to venture out,
unable to risk.

I've been hindered, I believe,
believing in the false realities
imposed by others,
my inability to fulfill your expectations,
my feet held to the fire
for falling short.

Lately I spend much time thinking
maybe I have a right to ask for what I want.
Maybe I have a right to be happy.
Maybe it's acceptable, to me,
to have healthy relationships.

I should spend more time writing
and perhaps, one day
I can eliminate the word "maybe".

Uncomfortably Numb

Many holidays that came and went
Empty days and memories
Echoed laughter as time was spent
Something I refused to see

Each time I knew the day grew near
I felt uncomfortably numb
To wake alone like all days past
And wish it had never come

Is it future yesterdays
Or maybe past tomorrows
I fear the dawn and what it brings
This overwhelming sorrow

I've finally seen what it was I left
With no friends or family
What it is that hurts so much
My life went on without me

As I Die

Let this time for parting be sweet
As love melts to memory
          As pain to songs,
And the gentle last touch of your hand
Soft like a flower
That only blooms at night.
Be still now my soul
My death is but completion
My lamp no longer lights the way.

And while I am gone,
In the depth of your hopes
          And desires
Exists your knowledge of the beyond
          Unacknowledged,
Like bulbs under the snow
          Dream of spring,
My restless breath now rises
          To seek God unfettered.

A Meal, Post Marriage

Alone,  at my breakfast table
In an otherwise empty room,  ruminating
The bitter taste her beauty held,
How that kept me in sway
And the loss of two castles
Each charming in its way
And missing them (but it wasn't a catastrophe)
Even losing her (the voice and gestures
I'd loved)
I shan't have lied, but the art
Of losing is not hard to master
Though it does look like (write it pen!)
Like disaster.

Resentment

Here am I
destroying my liver
and you walk about
as if nothing has happened?
This kombucha I keep
in a refrigerated heart
and sip from whenever
the compulsion fails to start
is nothing more than
an imagined hurt
a resentment no more delicious
than the dirt
I choose to feed it.

Dreams

But a dream or two ago
we'd trade a kiss hello.
But the scourge of dreams... ?
Soon I'll wake, and it seems
certain my tears will flow.
In a world of constant change
some things never do.
That's how it's meant to be
with the love I've held for you.