This seems appropropriate given how much snow we've had

WHITEOUT

(A poem in five parts for Bern—Christmas 2011—with much, much love....Jim)

(WHITEOUT is a weather condition in which visibility and contrast are severely reduced by snow.)

i.

A solitary figure trudges

across of faceless landscape.

It is bitterly cold and bleak beyond believing.

Nothing makes sense.

Exhaustion is near.

It is dawn, or dusk.

Faint light.

(The horizon disappears completely and there are no reference points at all, leaving the individual in a distorted orientation.)

ii.

Down is up.

Left is right.

Forward is back.

East is South and North is West.

The figure pauses. Sits.

Dreams of sleep or sleeps and dreams.

Either the other, or the one.

(Whiteout has been defined as: A condition of diffuse light when no shadows are cast, due to a continuous white cloud layer appearing to merge with the white snow surface.)

iii.

Without a shadow, who are we?

A shadow is proof positive that we are there:

We take up space,

block light,

displace air,

have substance,

exist.

To cast a shadow is to be Real.

Without a shadow, where are we?

Do we exist? Have being?

Shadowless, are we real?

(People can be lost in their own front yards during a true whiteout, when the door is only 10 feet [3.04 meters] away, and they would have to feel their way back.)

iv.

I often experience whiteouts—mostly in winter, which is appropriate.

I feel lost, disorientated,

confused by pain, physical failures,

the frailties of my body,

my memory,

who I am,

not knowing if I BE,

or not.

Some whiteouts are emotional:

fear of fading away into unbroken white,

wondering if I have been

good enough,

loving enough,

caring enough,

enough.

Disappearing in whiteness,

dreaming of sleep,

sleeping dreamlessly.

Longing, longing greatly,

longing always

to feel my way back to the front door.

(In whiteouts no surface irregularities are visible, but a dark object may be clearly seen. There is no visible horizon.)

v.

You are the front door of my life.

You are the 'clearly seen' object when my horizon is not visible.

You have always oriented me in the whiteouts of my life.

Whether I have been good enough,

loving enough, caring enough,

enough...or not,

I could find my way,

reach the front door,

orient myself,

see the horizon,

survive the whiteouts,

weather the storm,

move through the bleakness and the chill,

the dreams of sleeping

and the sleeping dreams

and find my way home.

You give me back my shadow

and make me exist,

make me real,

make me

be.

You are the 'home' of my life

and the clearing that leads to light

and wholeness, and wonder,

and magic, and love.

And simply,

mostly,

always,

forever,

just this:

Home.

It's not pretty anymore....

When it fell, it was glorious,
ethereal, wondrous, full of glory,
but a month later
it has lost it's beauty.

The snow plows have done their best
to throw each new fall up,
full of salt and sand,
to cover what was pristine.

The sun melts make sidewalks
almost impassable
with ice you can't see at night.

And the snow has grown old,
with icy fingers
and frozen mounds
where once it was soft and lovely.

Ah, but when it falls,
coating your clothes,
your dog 
and eyelashes,
you just want to open you mouth
and catch a few flakes.

Snow can hypnotize you
when it's falling.
But after a month on the ground,
shoveled up to shoulder level,
frozen over and again,
it's just a pain
you want to go away.

A brown and dirty and icy
reminder of what
looked so pretty once.

A visual tooth-ache
that has no easy relief.

"irony" doesn't do it justice...

So, when the Senate passes a bill to fund the Homeland Security Administration, we will wait with somewhat bated breath to see what the House will do (with all its crazy people).

"Homeland Security" for God's Sake--being held hostage by none other than Republicans!

Republicans--the Hawk Party, the Security Party, the Defense Party--is about to defund the governmental body whose job is to oversee the security of the nation.

Will planes fly without folks to do the security checks? Will the folks ordained to keep us safe from terrorism be working?

And it's all about the President inviting 11 million hard-working folks to move into the light and out of the darkness of the threat of deportation so they might fully participate in the nation they chose to come to at great risk.

"Irony" doesn't do it justice, what the House Republicans may just do.

"Stupidity"...that may describe it....

how old I am

Linear time and the calendar tell me that I'm 67 and will be 68 in less than 60 days.

It's just that I don't feel that old.

Oh, my bones and joints do, from time to time, that old and more. But I've never believed my 'body' was 'who I am'. In my inner life I feel much younger--or no age at all.

It's like the thermometer on out back porch. Right now, at 9:33 p.m., that thermometer says it is 18 degrees Fahrenheit outside in Cheshire. The weather channel says it is several degrees warmer than that. I believe our thermometer, not some meteorologist somewhere. That temperature is 'out there', our back porch is 'in here'.

I often ask groups to raise their hands if they believe in the 'immortality of the soul', and most always most everyone raises their hands.

Then I tell them they're all heretics since the Nicene Creed and orthodox Christian theology believes in 'the resurrection of the body', not the immortality of the soul.

But I don't chide them much, since I believe my 'inner life' is the 'real ME' and not my body--my outer life.

After driving for a couple of hours, my body reminds me, when I get out of the car, how old it is. Believe you me, it reminds me.

But my inner life--my mind and heart and, I guess, my soul--is much more attune to getting into the rest stop and let my body relieve itself than it is to my chronological age. My 'inner self' has to take care of my 'outer self' a lot!

I wonder if that ever stops, if you ever feel as old 'inside' as you do 'outside'? I hope not. I enjoy being who I am inside more than I enjoy the limitations my 'outer self' has begun to impose.

I guess I'll find out someday.  Or not....

I am surrounded by poetry

I SURROUNDED BY POETRY

I am surrounded by poetry
I will never write.

The old man down the block
with his droopy moustashe
and the dog he used to walk, long dead now.
The particular shade or orange in this morning's sky
and the wondrous pink as evening came.
The down on the neck of a woman I loved once
who never knew I loved her.
And her seashell ears.
The bend of her slim elbow.
Her ears--I mentioned that already.

The leafy, logical pattern of ice on my windshield
one January morning--
something a chaos physicist
(talk about a mixed metaphor!)
would have adored.
What smoke feels like in my lungs
when I inhale deeply on a cigarette.
The particular color of the eyes
of the crazy man I talked to and gave two dollars today.

My dreams--coming on me like a tsunami these days--
endless vistas with old friends,
walking through amber when I need to run,
conversations with those log dead,
hard work to accomplish less than nothing.

The smell of skunk standing on my deck.
The taste of coffee ice-cream.
The feel of the hair of my Puli dog.
The sight of a woman, walking fast,
staying in shape, fending off death
by walking fast past my house.

Hearing anything by Mozart on the radio.
And just the way it feels to be inside my skin,
how I can count my bones,
if I would stand still long enougn
and count.
The many ways I imagine death.

And there is o time, no time at all,
since I am growing old.
There is no time, no time at all,
to write the poems that surround me.

And what about the dimples my daughter has?
And the strange way new ten dollar bills looks?
And how my wine glass is empty.
And the wear on the 'n' on my keyboard?
And how the ringing in my ears is sometimes a sonata?
And what the night sky resembles?
And the air under my fingernails and the gaps between my teeth?
The sound of rain, rain's smell, all of raining?

What is unworthy of a poem?
Nothing, so far as I can see.

And I don't have the time.
Surrounded by poetry, I have no time to write.

jgb: 1.30.06


 

497!!!

There were 497 views on my blog on Saturday. I've never had more than a hundred a day before.

I wish I could figure out what they were looking at so I could write more posts like that.....

The Castor Oil Tree is not a mega-blog by any means. I usually get about 1500 views a month. Yesterday I got 497!

Email me at Padrejgb@aol.com to let me know what you were looking at. Please.

Amazing! 497 views in one day....

Reality Check

   REALITY CHECK

What was it Pilate said to Jesus?
"What is Real?" No, no not that.
"What is Truth?" more like it, as I recall.
But not nearly so interesting a question.

Truth, it seems to me, having learned it recently,
sounds forth like a gong in a gigantic marble room:
echoing and re-echoing with (what shall we say?)
integrity, constancy, eternity even,
that puts 'honesty' to share as the self-serving
little slave of convention that it is, truly.

Truth is self-defining: it gives life and hope and
possibility mother-wet wings most would deny.
Pilate should have had eyes to see and ears to hear.
Truth stood before him, stripped and raw.
Truth whispered in his ear and he heard not.

"What is REAL?" Now there's a query worth some salt.
There's a wrestling match worth of an Angel foe.
There's something to wake up just before dawn and parry with--
sword against sword, making sparks, drawing blood.
There's a nightmare full of incomprehensible images
requiring pause during a sudden afternoon rainstorm
with lightening, thunder and a touch of hail.

When someone drags "reality' into the field of play,
play stops.

'Being realistic,' someone told me recently--with
words that echoed like Truth off marble wall--'kills the Spirit.'

Poor dead Spirit, slain by Reality's arrows!

(Here's the secret Truth that Reality can never quench:
Ice water poured over you in sufficient amounts produces gratitude.
Gratitude is an alias of Truth. Truth is the twin of Love.
And there is this--the Spirit never dies....)

Finally, there's simply nowhere in the cosmos to cash a Reality Check.
There's no currency available. The banks are closed for the holiday.

jgb