Archive | Introduction

I had been struggling with the newer hearing aids for over two years.  And the audiologists kept saying they are the state of the art but my ears were itching and my brain hurt.  It was irritated, my brain was.   With the new hearing test, the audiologist said you work very hard at hearing, don’t you?  I could have wept with no reserve, I was so relieved someone noticed.

There was more loss in hearing, but he said I can do nothing for your brain.  It is not registering always the switch necessary for human voices.  And because I focus so deeply on thought to shut out head noises, it is tiring and aging does not have much energy in reserve.

So to engage in conversation with more than one person is very hard work.  It is not because I am not paying attention.  And  when you call and I give someone the phone to talk to you, it is because I do not hear.  Not that I don’t want to talk.

I am grateful for the people in my life who help me.  Especially family.  They allow me space to work my work as long as I draw breath.  I hope I am worth my keep.

I Don’t Know How To Be Deaf. . . 

I am among you whom I love,
and try to understand your words.
I read your gestures, your body language
and your eyes telling me again
what you wish me to know.

I am desperate to understand.
Your impatience runs through your body
and into mine.  Shackled am I
with emotions as mine tumble
with yours and consume me.

We have shared our histories
through decades but now you run ahead of me
and I take my silent world and retreat.
I piece your words, the ones I hear
with a history I secured in mind.

What I have learned to read
by eyes that speak, are words that run
like rivers into each other to form
a crash against walls I hope I did not build.

Aged now, rubbed raw, there is nothing left
to flex against, to tell me how to assuage the deficit.
There is little energy at the end of Now
to make it work. . . no lessons offered
along the way but to be left dumb. . . .

I just don’t know  how to be deaf.

As  a good friend kept telling me,  circumstances alter things.  And as birthdays gather behind one, one seeks the comfort places.  And at the keyboard with the mind in long conversations with compatriots, companions, in conference and in prayer, it is a comfortable place for me.

I asked Jon Katz of BedlamFarm.com to recommend a book on Kabbalah since he quoted the religion often.  What I did not remember ever reading and did not know was that Kabbalah was the religion or practice long before the conforming Jews were praying.

It was a form where what we call Sages were gathering and chasing down their thoughts and giving gratitude for life.  One sees the connection in the first chapter of Genesis.  Upon their death they were able then to enter what was home.

The Sages when they died would be thought to be as in the next room.  They were as close as thinking could be and were visited.  Part of the Sages’ knowledge was that they could be visited in graves and could be spoken to and they would answer.

And I too, now sit and converse and religions call it praying as easily as I do right now.  The Divine Within is the I Am of the each.  We are in conference.

The Road to Damascus. . .

And Paul,
on the road to Damascus, unaware
of forces pulling at his thought,
was none the less surprised.

In the privacy of mind, how could
an invasion of thought not his own
be in conference?
So it is,  in the wars of the visible

and invisible worlds, the
supremacy for power does not stop.
Our worlds!  Claim the gods. . .
My world!  Claims the pilgrim. . .

One in partnership till man
tasted the lust for power.
Lest we lose this,
the best of all classrooms,

brotherhood is still the dream
and our hearts still too unripe
to embrace its benevolence.
But its power of magnetism

still attracts
what prompted this dream,
that catapults us
to give search to the meaning

to the why of us. . . .

When given and we are present in heart and mind, it is a rare gift.  I call it a Camelot Moment because it was perfect in itself and yet a confirmation to a philosophy in process.  It met with great appreciation when first published and now approaching Valentine’s Day,  for new readers, I wish you a Camelot Moment.

Camelot Moment. . .

The words we chose to speak
could not be construed to be words
of great love, but they were.
It was with gaiety that we chatted
about the commonplace and laughed a lot.
We were happy.

I sat in my chair at the dining room table
and watched with joy a moment rare in our shared history.
My coffee cup had been refilled so many times.
Its taste was cutting sweet.

You had risen from the table and in the space
that was the middle of the kitchen,
were moved by some unnamed force to do a jig.

In the fragmented second it took to blink away
a laughing tear, your form transformed and
there we were and yet not.

With feet doing your ancestral dance in mid-air,
your solid body was no longer solid.
A maze of dancing atoms and molecules took your shape.
Your color took on their transparency
and I thought how fragile you are!

It was just a moment but eternity practicing and
you were back into the time frame
we both knew as you.  I could not tell you what I saw.
The rules of this let’s pretend world are hard to break.

I sit at this desk with magically moving molecules,
drinking coffee from a supposedly solid white cup and saucer
and holding tight to a yellow pencil at a time
when the rest of the world sleeps and weeps.

Knowing the mountain is only a thought form
and with a little faith in my ability to move it, I could.
With our prejudices we mightily construct a world
to please or not, as our self image directs.

But in this brief Camelot moment,
I know that in that sacred space
I saw you so utterly defenseless,

I never loved you more, nor me.

I at first thought that everyone can do anything.  But later realized that somewhere, someone has to show by example something that strikes home with another.  A something that is meaningful to another.

That will be of value to him or her.  Then when something comes up there will be an instant where there will be only one course of action and it will be the correct one for them.  And that will be the beginning of a value system that will guide all action.

And then you will have the beginning of a philosophy being built.  And then we go for home.

The Farm Woman. . .

Woman of the Earth, you are loved.
You gather the fruits of your labors
to your bosom and feed the children.

You’ve inched your way along the dusty path
with back bent in great fatigue
and cultivated the rows yielding wise fruit.

You would feed out of your mouth
those you think hungry and then beyond measure.
The fruits are the heart of your labors,
the harvest of your mind’s philosophy,
spilling indiscriminately.

Who is left to feed you, farm woman?
What commissary is left open
to feed your hungry soul after hours?

What bookstall will house the words
between stiff covers to increase your harvest?
Labor, till the sun closes its blinds on the day.
Restless legs will speed you through the night

to find the bins ever full.

We need to come to a place now and again when it is necessary to find a mind matched to ours so we can for all purposes say all that is heavy on our hearts.  With no explanation necessary because our route has been followed step by step;  to hear the words,  I held your heart in my hand for safekeeping and here it is, whole. 

And in a whisper would come the words,  I thought it fractured beyond repair!   We are embraced knowing instantly that we were not abandoned to do it alone. 

We prepare then to venture another time to come with the sweet knowledge that great songs will be sung again.

Great Songs Will Be Sung. . .

Should you find the need
to tell your story in words,
think mightily on them and
they will be caught up
in the air’s currents and carried
on the birds’ wings.

They will reach the ears
they were designed for.  You will find
that you are not alone in this universe
and you will be heard.

And when the thoughts reach
the places in the heart of an Other

great songs will be sung again.                                      

Long before the world ever was. . . .

As co-creator and creature both of the universe, it is man’s prerogative and innate yearning to stand erect.  To bow down all the time leaves one eventually on one’s stomach.  Man rose from the crawling position.  There are too many yet who find the child’s position too comfortable.

To stand erect means that certain responsibilities must be accepted.  And that includes responsibility for one’s person and attitudes.  There are worlds yet where man will find the child’s position more comfortable and comforting.

To be adult means that one has to survive the inner turmoil and the outward condemnation which the world applies.

You do not defame the heavens.  The heavens are not all that peaceful and without its own turmoil.  There are many cliques yet which aim to destroy what man in his finest moments tried to accomplish.

We continue to say at every life’s departure that we go to a better place.  Unless our life’s pattern has been to work toward that better place,  we may find ourselves again learning the lessons we failed to learn but in lesser circumstances.

Like primer on bare wood, being and doing good must be innate.  The Source of our impulses must be the Greater Heart.

The Roses Are For You. . .

I tell you true.  You were known
before you came here to this vast land.
A waste for some, a paradise for others. . .
for one a dim place, for another the sun shines.

You took upon your spirit a work, a job,
looking to make a difference.
You said to send you where your heart
could change the world. . .

You were given your wish, hard as it seems.
You have not failed.  Your ripples are felt
on unnamed shores and even the unborn
know your thoughts well. . . .

Come, be kind to one the heavens
sing praises for.  Your work is virtuous
and your talents creative.  We make bet on
the one winning the trifecta.

The roses are yours.  For keeps.

A Kind Of World I Hoped To Build. . . .

where hearts open to each other, where minds are keen on learning and where love intends to see its full bloom.  Where beings are intent on growing to their fullness and work becomes a blessing.  Do I want much?

I want only what I worked and hoped for. . .where parenting is approached with a reverence bent on new life nurtured. . .

where the talents are perceived with a reverence granted to the giver, where life is held in the crucible of love and needs are cared for when they arise and lovingly attended with appropriateness.

Is it much that I ask for. . . . it only costs of self. . . . .priceless. . . .

The Weaver. . . .

Standing on a shrouded hill, integrating
worlds in a body split, is a woman,
weaving the old and the new
to warm a world gone cold.

Walking and usurping man’s ego,
split from his metamorphic mind,
she knots her splendor with magic.
Jealously guarding the expenditures,

she weaves the woolen mat in metaphysical colors,
unidentified by he who walks.
Marvelously melding with utmost utility,
she embraces the fabric, whole,

with never a glance to see the world
spinning into it.  Splendid is she
at her task as she garners strength from silences
filled with howling voices.

She separates them in her mind
and makes more magic.  Look up, we say,
look up at the wondrous unfolding!
Rain ponders its drops as they fall

but the woman weaves and weaves
and weaves.  She will look up

when it is finished.