Snow Falls Softly

Snow falls softly, silently

if you aren’t listening.

Quiet yourself to hear its voice,

a soft whisper in the silence

of snow falling, reminding us

to be still, and in our stillness,

our hearts beating, we find ourselves

listening, hearing our own voices.

Christmas Poem, 2017

Christmas arrived, again, amidst political

and social unrest, this season of promises,

of “peace on Earth” and all. And he went once more

to the church, arriving early, away from the small

group gathering, old folks and children, mostly. 

The old church was growing older and shrinking,

despite the preacher’s youth and enthusiasm,

this modern church, upbeat and new, inviting

the children to the front for the Christmas story,

a squirmy bunch of kids too restless for stories,

awaiting Santa or grandma’s arrival, talkative

kids full of misunderstanding and unanswerable questions.

And their parents, too, squirmed in the pews,

all smiles, but anxious to leave, too much to do

to ready themselves for the holiday, here only

because of tradition and their mothers’ insistence;

“but it’s Christmas,” she told them who had given up

“Christmas” years before, lost in their disbelief

of stories told by pastors too enthusiastic, perhaps

even out of touch with the reality of living.

He, too, had been lost many Christmases before,

looking for peace and finding none in a world,

like now, of political and social tension,

in a church that gave no ready answers, shared no peace,

so he left, vowing no return to the dogma

and demands of deacons and deities, ministers

and his parents whose beliefs he could not live,

could not trust, not as simply as they did.

But he missed the Christmas story, a child born

to a virgin birth, shepherds and wise men,

away in a manger among the sheep and donkeys,

joy to the world, and on earth, peace, goodwill.

Unreal as it all seemed, it offered something good;

it offered hope, something beyond the unrest,

beyond his own life, something out there

to believe in amidst the confusion of living.

So he came to church early this Christmas eve,

avoiding the faithful and the faithless,

the children and the grandchildren gathering,

readying themselves, despite too much to do

in this holiday season, too busy perhaps

to remember the stories themselves, the questions

left unanswered, the anticipation of something new.

He came to hear the stories anew, the music,

joy to his world, angels heard on high, sweetly singing

this holy night, this silent night, the stars brightly shining

on a midnight clear, an experience he shared, now,

if only with himself, this reminder of Christmas,

Christmas and the peace implied in its story.

The details may be skewed, not exactly as he recalled them,

this story of joy, of peace, this story of hope,

this precious gift given freely to a broken world

that must fix itself, each man by himself remembering,

just as he has this Christmas Eve returning,

a season of promise and hope,

of Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men.

A Winter Day’s Delay

There’s always snow to shovel,

to clear or move around, transported

from here by my door to a pile

piled high already, snow-thrown,

and a path from there, plowed

or pitched, carefully cleared,

to my car, “just in case,” an emergency,

or perhaps a planned trip calling me out,

this necessity forcing me from the warmth

and comfort of my hearth and home,

reminding me where I live, the North Country

subject to winter’s snow and cold,
and the beauty of a winter's day.

Show and Tell, First Grade

Show and Tell, First Grade

I brought a book, Pinocchio,

“something you got for Christmas,” the teacher said;

it sat on the show-and-tell table

among the other toys, others’ gifts:

I’ve often wondered what happened to that book;

Just as I’ve often wondered about Pinocchio,

the wooden puppet who wanted so much to be a real boy,

wanted so much to be a real person,

with all that being a real person means,

that he risked it all to make a star-wish come true.

This big world calls us even when the cricket warns to beware but we want it all, for a little while at least, if only to show, to prove, that we are a person, a real person, and not a wooden puppet without any strings—no one controls us!—but we really are just wooden puppets, toys with strings we pull ourselves, for what do we really know anyhow about the world outside the toy shop where we were shaped of soft wood by a caring woodcarver, a toy maker wishing on a star who only wanted us to be real, to be a part of his life, to share himself, his dreams, but who was willing to let us go, encouraged us to go, and was willing to find us and bring us home and let us go again, more cautiously this time, but he did let us go and go we did, a little wiser, but perhaps not much;

Wishes on stars do come true, but not always like we want them to because we are only little wooden puppets brought to life by a blue fairy who let the decision be ours, to remain a wooden puppet with strings or risk it all and be a real person with all that being a real person means.

I sometimes wonder if maybe being a little wooden puppet might not have been the better choice, but like show and tell Christmas gifts, we outgrown that, too, and puppets and children’s books become only objects of wonder in years of being a real person, which may not have been so bad after all; why, even Pinocchio escaped, survived, and got his wish.

What do you give a princess?

We’re an old family, a long lineage

back to England, 1600s, Puritans,

not pilgrims, making our own way

to this new land, escaping, risking

a voyage cramped together in prayer

in a sailing ship, huddled below deck

among the ruffians who didn’t want us,

just our money. But we arrived, survived,

and three brothers became tens of thousands,

hundreds even, generation upon generation

growing larger, populating these United States,

Puritans no more, but Quakers and Baptists,

all religions, or none at all,

doctors and lawyers, farmers and statesmen,

soldiers, craftsmen, artists and entrepreneurs,

rich or poor, educated or not, famous -

a few - or little known, dying and buried

among the unknown citizenry beyond the borders

of a town, city dwellers or rural gatherers,

ordinary folk eking out a living or living

the lap of luxury and all points in-between.

But now, on this tree - so many branches -

we find a princess, marrying the prince,

a distant, a far distant cousin connected

to John, John’s wife, her sister marrying

and we wonder, what do you give a Princess

on her wedding day, for the little place

she holds on our family tree?

Helluva Way to Go

“Helluva way to go,” he would have told us,

if we’d been there, but we weren’t,

or if it had been someone else besides him

they’d found there propped up, sitting bolt upright

against an old spruce, looking like Rip Van Winkle

sound asleep on old Henry Hudson’s grog, the start

of twenty years’ sleep, to wake up and find us

older and maybe wiser that cold afternoon

with the sun low in an autumn sky. How many times

had we told him he shouldn’t be out walking

these trails at his age, his chances greater

for getting hurt or lost, but he’d shrug

and turn away and we knew he didn’t care,

he was going anyway; no way was old age

and persistent kids going to keep him bound

to the house, an old man on borrowed time perhaps,

who’d worn these trails down in all seasons,

since his youth, a perfect record of zero injuries

and loss; though of late, he’d admitted a touch

of forgetfulness and taken a strange trail

into a dead canyon, unbothered by this fortune.

“And when you find me, you’ll know I went happy,”

he's say, which made us chuckle behind our tears

when they said they’d found him and summoned us.

Perhaps he was right, for we found his knee prints,

soft impressions, next to the stream, a cold drink

scooped up in his arthritic hands or just bent

over to watch the slow flow of water, reaching

for a smooth stone for luck, the one that fell

from his hand when they lay him back down on the moss

that covered where he sat, the one I picked up

unseen, unconsciously rubbing at the cool smoothness

of it, as he would have done, perhaps had been doing,

the one I slipped back into his hand, secretly,

as we trooped past his coffin on a somber Sunday morn.

Maybe we should have just left him as we found him,

his back against that old tree, the smell of spruce

sharp in his nostrils, let the seasons take him back,

take him home; he’d have been happier left that way,

reclaimed even as he claimed these woods as friends,

family even, an unconditional love freely exchanged,

asking only the peace of a soul at rest, lost in the woods

that had been his life, a life of solace taken there,

and given back to us, “a helluva way to go.”

Late fall, and a strong wind ...

Late fall, and a strong wind has stripped the colors

from autumn’s trees, laying bare naked branches

but for a few brown and faded leaves holding fast,

as we all must, holding fast to ourselves

in the approaching season of ice and cold.

For autumn exposes what lay hidden in summer’s

lushness, an earthiness costumed in green,

unmasked now, darkly seen in the forest of our lives,

confronting us with remnants of life returning

back to itself, our own, cloaked and hidden, laid bare. 

Cribbage

Wednesday was her cribbage night,

one of the few things she actually remembered,

that and Thursday lunch with Van,

the important days at 88, worth remembering.

Cribbage Wednesday, then, was a day unplanned,

kept open, to clean and ready herself for the “boys,”

three younger men who came for a night of cards,

15-2, 15-4, and a run of 3 for 7, plus the crib.

Their hob-nail pegs move around the score board’s

parallel holes, up one side and down the other,

tallying up their points in a race to the finish,

the kitty but a couple dollars won at the night’s end;

this is a cutthroat game, serious cribbage, bragging rights.

Weekly, faithfully they come, mostly, bearing snacks,

too many, and wine, not enough, and for an occasional treat,

she’d bake them cookies, crisp and slightly burned,

“the way they like them,” or so she’d claim;

nobody ever complained, just ate them anyway.

Lately, though, she’s slowed down, less sharp, the cards

not adding up as quickly for her as in her past;

nobody cared, nor paid much attention to a card

missed without notice, a tally slightly off.

And so the weeks persisted, Wednesday nights,

two teams of two, or the rare night of missing players,

conflicts or weather keeping some away, one on one,

her against whoever showed up, Gary or Ed or Tom,

a well-worn deck of cards and a cribbage board,

two parallel rows up one side and down the other,

racing, like time passing toward it’s end: time remembered.

Weather Forecast

The weather, so far from what we’d expected

of fall and the impending snow of winter,

the storing up and the settling in,

has kept us hopeful this year,

and our dock still stretches out

into the lake from our front steps.

We are the last on the lake to “close up camp,” 
turning off the water against freezing

and broken pipes, removing the dock and boats

and stowing them away, locking the door behind us

until spring’s return. We’re pressing our luck, we know,

the cold creeping into the ground around us,

the furnace running longer, and mornings,

the wood stove slow to heat us up,

so with cold and rain and hints of snow predicted,

it’s time to leave; just as October gives way

to November, we, too, must give way to ourselves,

pack up our lives, and return to the convenience

of insulated living, elsewhere, shut in, away

from the cold and the snow of our lives, distracted

and inconvenienced by the weather coming in.

Driving into the Fog

Driving into the fog on a drizzly morning

when the sun stayed hidden behind a shroud

of moisture, white and wet and cold around me,

clinging, a shadowed world, unseeing,

I barely saw their movement, scanning

the road ahead, two young does suddenly appearing,

unsure themselves where to go, back or forward,

no clear direction, as disadvantaged as I,

perhaps, in our low visibility, caught unaware

and focused ahead on the edges around us,

blurry and still and thinly veiled.

Cautious, these two soft figures startled, me, too,

and I slowed quickly, just to see them dissipate

into the woods beyond, swallowed up, nothing to show

they’d been there, to mark their presence,

two specters returning to their own mystical world

I cannot enter, cannot follow them to in their leaving,

and I wondered if I’d even seen them crossing

my path, paved and easy and away

into the fog on a drizzly morning, wet and cold.

[untitled]

He grew up during America’s

then current war, the one

in Southeast Asia, Vietnam, the “police action”

of the time, and we protested, peacefully

or as violent as the war itself,

“hell no, we won’t go,” “make love,

not war” ... and then we grew up,

moved on, forgot even, but not him,

who served no time behind bars

or in front of a gun sight, slogging

through swamps and rice patties running red

with the blood of his peers, comrades,

who came home broken and rejected,

part of something he was not, never was,

nor part of some anti-establishment movement

with flags and fists and placards raised,

“sitting in, dropping out,” proclaiming peace

and love and simplicity, back to nature,

power to the people with the right to do as we pleased,

do our own thing, whether we should or not,

beating down the man who would constrain us,

hold us back, make us conform to a world yet unformed,

but he would not, could not, even when he tried;

for he was a quiet man, confronting no one,

raising no alarm, hating none, dreaming ...

as others have dreamed ... believing ...

as others have believed ... and waiting,

patient, his hand out to others to raise

them up, even as he faded into the background

that lay behind the new order, an ordinary man,

unassuming, apart, noticed yet unnoticed,

unknown really, an unknown man changed by circumstance,

making peace with himself in that world rocked

by the times, by all times, dreaming, believing, waiting.

And now, years later, other wars behind him,

other actions and reactions, rallies and protests,

progress and regression, he grows old,

tired, and the dream, perhaps, fades some,

when what we fought for then, Peace

and Love, a better time and place,

is as far away as it’s always been,

long before Southeast Asia, Vietnam,

before the wars to end all wars, I & II,

and the battlefields since, and he wonders

if mankind is hopeless, self centered, afraid

even to change, to grow, to begin

the healing process before us, confronting us,

or is it just giving in, mankind giving up,

fighting just to fight, meaningless words spoken,

making noise in a world of silence,

this silence we dread, perhaps, this healing silence,

if we’ll just listen to humanity calling,

or is it too late, he fears, even

as he reaches out his hand to others still,

raising them up, believing and waiting,

holding fast to a dream,

fighting to keep it alive.

Archeology

At the bottom of a shoebox

from some old pair I long ago outgrew,

or wore out with miles and miles

of walking through my life,

I found your picture, stuck,

not by glue, but by time and moisture

and the blue ink scrawled across the back,

letters and words now blurred together,

barely readable by my old bifocal-ed eyes,

head tilted back, peering down my nose,

drawing the photo closer, pushing it away

to make sense of these blue smears,

loops and swirls running together

Or washed away, a blue stain remaining;

my name stood out clearly, though,

as did yours, but like all the years

and miles in-between us then, too young,

and now, the words blurred, illegible,

just as our love blurred since we parted

and our lives went the way lives go,

on and on and on, and the picture became

an artifact of some ancient time forgotten,

buried now in ruins, grown over with the vines

and tangles I let take over in my leaving,

years and years of old growth obscuring,

covering, blotting out a time before

until this archeological dig in the ruins

of my own life, hacking through vines

and tangles, tearing them away, revealing

this shoebox holding you and a life we shared

before I left and the world changed us;

I’d forgotten this simpler time of love

shared in the innocence of youth

where what mattered most was us  

and being together and the world

was conquerable outside the bubble

we’d wrapped ourselves in, believing

ourselves immortal, but like the Incas

and Mayans and old Phoenicians

we died out mysteriously,

found, discovered, rediscoverd

years later in the bottom of a shoebox,

blurred runes on the back of your picture,

faded and creased, barely readable,

the crypic runes of what might have been,

ancient words of a time now gone.