Between Birth and Death

Two photos showed up in my Facebook Memories today, one taken days before my mother's death, the other taken one year later, weeks after my grandson's birth. And here I am, on death's side of center.

I don't have to write a memoir. My entire life story is right here:

"When you walk through a forest that has not been tamed and interfered with by man, you will see not only abundant life around you, but you will also encounter fallen trees and decaying trunks, rotting leaves and decomposing matter at every step. Wherever you look, you will find death as well as life.

Upon closer scrutiny, however, you will discover that the decomposing tree trunk and rotting leaves not only give birth to new life, but are full of life themselves. Microorganisms are at work. Molecules are rearranging themselves. So death isn't to be found anywhere. There is only the metamorphosis of life forms. What can you learn from this?

Death is not the opposite of life. Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal."

                                   Eckhart Tolle

Man and Woman in Café

Man in blue striped shirt
watches woman in black leather boots
click-clacking heels across burnt red tiles
stretching long thin legs
that spread the short black skirt
that hugs the tight round bottom
that holds his gaze,
his head caught
in her gravitational pull,
his neck tugged long and along
by this heavenly body
as she passes and exits,
a flash of blond zest in her wake,
and a lump of envy in my lap.

I notice that he
hasn't noticed me
but on closer examination
I realize that I

held his outstretched neck
in my peripheral vision
while the center of my eye
climbed the length of her thigh
and met him at the summit
where we paused
in humble adoration
as the desire to have
and the desire to be
coalesced
in the wild fields
of imagination.

(2006)

hell's hungry gaping mouth

hell’s hungry gaping mouth 
bids me come and so
I do 
and beyond the gilded altar
I fall—
spiraling sprawling crying crawling
thinking my way down
as arms and legs thrash
at emptiness all around
at desert water and
arctic flames and
a void that enfolds me
with unscented aromas and
unsung songs that
fill my head with nothing
nothing until
my desire for nothing grows
swallowed not in darkness
but in the unfulfilled promise of light
surrounded by the absence of
a thousand other souls
no gnashing of teeth
no teeth at all
just the familiar bite
of indifference

(November 2003)

26 December 2004

I recently came across a folder of poetry that I wrote years ago. In honor of National Poetry Month, I've decided to share some of those poems, just as they are. It's one thing to be unfinished, and quite another to be unheard.

The 26th of December Two Thousand Four 

our planet wobbled on its axis

when the earth quaked
thirty thousand meters below the ocean floor
sending a ripple in the water
that grew as it traveled
on a course it did not choose

hundreds of thousands died

half a million injured
and countless cried

while on the other side 
of this wobbling globe
we celebrated my daughter’s twenty-first birthday
at a quiet restaurant
where nothing quaked
but the ice in my glass.