Kitties gathered by the window

(a song parody inspired by a friend's photo of his cats
 crowding the window above the kitchen sink on a sunny morning)

♫
Shall we gather at the window
Where so many paws have trod,
Shining in the morning sunlight
As we're warmed by the pure grace of God?

Yes, we’ll gather at the window,
We'll warm ourselves and let our bodies simmer
In the sunlight streaming through the window
Content in the sweet love of God.
♫

Between heaven and hell

We were born
in a temporarily safe place
poised between heaven and hell
at the bottom of a gravity well.

It has taken us 4 billion years
to wake up and realize where we are
(or where we seem to be,
for we have three-dimensional eyes
in a universe that may have four,
or many more, dimensions).

We are short-lived instances
of a self-replicating pattern
that has repeatedly and randomly
been crushed and flattened.
It's a wonder we are here at all.

Our odds for survival were greater
if we were able to see, understand,
remember, and adapt,
and so we grew a brain,
slowly and relentlessly,
until we reached our current level of consciousness.

It's pretty clear that we won't stop developing for a long time,
for we have many faults and weaknesses,
and we are quite vulnerable
both to the natural extinctions of our past,
and the man-made extinctions of our future
powered by the same understanding
that we thought would save us.

We are still apes with clubs,
defending our territory,
intent on surviving on a planet
that we still believe has
only limited resources,
with not nearly enough to share.

And so,
two trends vie to control our future:
the growth of openness and understanding,
and the growth of power and fear.
We do not know which of these will win;
as I said, we are still evolving.

We are like a plant that eagerly
spreads its leaves and grows upwards
to gather the sun's energy,
while it simultaneously, but begrudgingly,
develops a root system to anchor its growth.
We may be fine
as long as the wind doesn't blow too hard
and we don't grow so tall that we topple
under our unsteady weight.

For myself, I am content
to exist in this minute
and to share
what understandings may come to me.

Individually, none of us will be here very long;
collectively, some of us may survive.
It's all a matter of balance.

In memory of my father

Soldiers of the 96th,

we are your families.
We are your wives, sons, daughters,
grandchildren, great-grandchildren,
and all those who bore your children
or share your bloodline.

Your legacy comes down to us
in books, in movies,
and in black-and-white photos
that show ordinary men
working, playing, taking a break,
training in the snow for a war in the Pacific,
and sailing thousands of miles
to places that had no Kansas wheat fields,
no Iowa corn,
no Ozarks or Appalachians;
places with strange names like
Buri, Dagami, Shuri, and Medeera;
and with hills and ridges that we gave our own names to
and would long remember in our dreams and nightmares:
Hen Hill, Conical Hill,
Hacksaw Ridge, and The Big Apple.

So many of you never returned,
reaching your end in rifle fire,
a hail of machine-gun bullets,
or an exploding shell.
Those of you who did return
were not the ones we had sent overseas;
you bore their names,
but you carried dark secrets
that you would not share with us;
secrets that clouded your thoughts during the day,
and spawned terrible nightmares after dark --
Nightmares so real that you might mistake your lover
for a Japanese soldier
and find yourself shouted awake
with your hands at her throat.

We could not condemn you later
for drowning those demons in alcohol,
or silencing them with a bullet.

But amazingly, some of you
chose to live, love, and work again
in the country that had sent you away.
Look at me; nearly seventy years ago,
one of you chose to marry, build a home,
and create and support a family of five.
Only two of us remain,
but we remember,
and stand in awe at what you accomplished.

Despite your pain, you worked 72 hours a week for 20 years
to support that family and watch its children grow.
You stopped only when the oil company that sponsored you
declared you too old to be of service to them.
Deprived of your ability to serve others,
only five years passed before disease took hold of you
and slowly erased your mind and memories
over the next eight years,
until nothing remained.

Your ashes sit atop a high point of land
that now looks westward across the same Pacific
through which you sailed to hell and back.
Your devoted wife, my mother, sits close beside you
under a stone that proudly proclaims your union and service.
I hope to join you there some day.

Few will notice your memorial
among the thousands of other stones there,
but it is my hope that some will remember you,
as we do here today.
Soldier, leader, husband and father
we thank you for your service
and your inspiration.

Life after the unicorn (part 1)

I walk there twice a day, knowing, as always, that the result will be the same.  These creatures have too little time for adventurers such as I.

And yet I persist.

My doctors tell me not to think about it; to broaden my horizons and give the real world more time.  Their reality is not mine, for I know what I saw, and I cannot, and will not, forget.  For who could forget, if they had been there, with me?  The rustle of the leaves, as if a respectfully muted wave of applause had accompanied the breeze that had softly risen and brought with it the clarity, the spiciness, the electric certainty and realization that a moment unlike all others was about to unfold.

I had experienced something like that once before, in a clock store a world away, where the small bell that hung over the front door announced my arrival into a softly ticking room of scent and sound, where the smell of seasoned wood a thousand years old combined with the slightest hint of machine oil to cause me to suddenly stop and stand in anticipation and readiness for a singularly rare event.  The door closed silently behind me as my numb hand let slip the handle, and as the street noise faded the experience intensified to become a world where nothing else existed; there was only I at the center of a universe where that scent and sound emanated like twinkling starlight from each golden messenger who now stood, immobile and facing me, to present a single truth in unison.  Improbably, all said exactly the same thing:  it was two seconds before five, the moon was full, and it was time for them to sound.

And sound they did, until I stood among a choir of cathedral bells proclaiming that yes, this was the time, the moment of momentousness, where everything else fell away and there were only the loudly proclaiming bells stridently marching through an ancient rhythm that pierced my consciousness from all sides.  My breath had caught in my throat, and I felt my body yearning to breathe while my mind said, no, not now, stay, stay here, and just be.  It was only when the darkness rushed in to eclipse me, and I felt myself falling forward, that I gasped and broke the spell, while still, with mouth agape, I sank to my knees and turned my head slowly to see, hear, smell, and taste the cold, sharp importance of the event.  I had passed through much more than a physical doorway, and was now worshipping at a celestial altar.  As the last bell faded, I rose shakily and staggered out of the shop, into a man-made cacophony that beat upon me and demanded that I return to the reality I had left just moments before.  Yet I knew then that I would never fully return.  The veil had been lifted, briefly, just for me, and in the days to come I pondered and struggled with the memory.

Perhaps you will understand, then, why when she appeared, my reaction was not fear, but acceptance and satisfaction.  The curtain had risen on the second act.  The four polished hooves ascended into impossibly pure and perfect legs that supported a regal frame and a graceful neck that lifted my gaze to be dropped into her eyes.  Those eyes had seen millennia pass, had seen empires come and go, and yet they were now focused on me.  They saw everything, all my failings, all my yearnings, and all my hopes.  There was nothing for me to say; I simply bowed my head and silently waited for her to speak.

Rock Lover

I saw you climbing heavenward
Silhouetted, flesh on rock
Poised between your life and mine.
No eagle, I, nor even flea;
My leaps are tightly kept within
A heartbeat, catching my dry throat.
Did you slip? I gasp.
My eyes would turn
And run away
But love constrains me here
To wait, and wait again.
You love the rock far more than I.
Your lover, cold and grim
Suspends you as you toy with death
Feints a hand, then laughs to see
You scramble to regain your grip.
You've never held me quite so tightly;
Must I then become a Fate?
Atropos, my scissors poised
To slice the rope that binds you there
To bring you back to me.

Oort Cloud

I didn't find you there last night
Amid the rumpled unkempt sheets
That shroud me as I sleep alone

I didn't feel your body's heat
Radiating, given freely,
Warming this small drifting speck,
An icy clump of random dirt
That happens to be me

I turn again and look around
In every path are points of light
But they are frozen, cold and distant
And Newton's laws are not enough
To bring them quickly here.

And so I wander in the dark
But still from time to time
I check to see
If one of them is brightening.

It could mean that
I'm getting closer.

Lock and Dam

In my day
I separated water from water
And made a lake that stretched for miles.
At Onalaska, they called me Number Seven, "the lucky one".
In Trempeleau, I was Number Six.

Though I was made by men, not God,
Still I was a firmament
And firm I stood.
Ice did not crush me, nor waves overtop me.
Warning lights marked my stout piers, and men and water crossed my gates
Only when I allowed. Concrete, stone, and iron I stood, and still I stand --
But without purpose.

The "drying", they called it,
As if the river was a pair of socks.
But it was clear to me that it was a dying.

As the droughts grew longer
And the rains less frequent
My life's blood ebbed
Turned muddy brown
And congealed.

The fish that had deftly evaded the hook
Now gasped a final breath
And lay by thousands in the mud.

Too strong to die
I hung alone above the stench
And raised my eyes to God.
As he waited, so did I.
We watched the seasons pass
And counted each new blade of grass
That sprouted at my feet.

Where the pike and catfish
Once had darted
Came the meadow mice.
They sniffed the air, and strained to see
My strange rocks standing
Where no stone should.

And still I survive.
Where once flowed acre-feet,
Where once scurried mouse feet,
The lizard and scorpion now contend
For whatever life remains.
Dust surrounds my feet, and the dunes threaten to overtop
What no wave could.

Let them come. I will sleep the sleep of centuries
Sheltered from the sun and wind.
And I will dream of rain.