From an Upper Floor

In my life I have seen much damage done when people have been deeply wounded by emotions  that could not be handled or words that cut and sliced the heart.

Is it for us to walk untouched but acknowledging the emotions that devastate us and continue to live our lives with no further ado?

Emotions become a burden needing to be understood before they are shrugged.  Once understood they become integrated and no longer need to be carried as excess weights.

Emotions belong to Earth life and here they are learned.  There are worlds where emotions are an unknown, where to love has to be learned and compassion is an unknown.  Where caring must be learned for those of less kind circumstances and must be attended to.

Those of us who have read the Doris Lessing’s Shikasta series or Frank Herbert’s books of Dune know intimately and identify worlds  with emotional innocence and sterility.  They are a shock to the sensitivities but even harder to live with such persons.

We cannot write a check to feed the world nor bandage its wounds, but we can walk into the mud to lift our brother up.  That to me is what emotional understanding does.

The Counselor. . .

She sat across the desk, crisp and sharp
and in charge of who she was.
Emotion is not fact, she said, so separate
what you feel from what is happening.

Then why I ask is my heart breaking?
And with composure she assures me
my heart is whole.  She does not see that my world
is built on feelings that shape my days.

I was born to paint my life
with the wide brush of emotion,  to teach me to love,
to see, to care and learn to Be.  When love
withdrew from me and left me barren,

I knew I would not forget its power to lift
me high enough to touch the heavens
and care enough for this Earth I walked
to sweep the debris where others might walk.

To see the opening of the crocus in the covering
of snow to tell of Spring arriving and of days becoming
longer with light and caressing me with breezes
as soft as baby kisses.  She did not know of worlds

where emotions were not born yet,
where facts dealt the cards to be played,
where feelings did not lay color on days and nights
and where learning to live with feelings were reasons

why we asked to be born of Earth. . . . .she did not know. . .

When appearance is all that reality is for some, that is all that counts.  It is a common reality.  Illusion is part of the game.

Jesus said that seeing you will not see and hearing you will not hear.  There is a world out there  they are not aware of and it would take a two by four between the eyes to make them aware, if then.

By their inability to see and hear, they put the responsibility on others and even that they do not see.

There is a physical limit, a mental and emotional one too that frames the question of how much can a body bear.

To maintain an infection free household,  the work falls on unsuspecting shoulders.   What good to have another sense and a responsibility to make a difference in this world if others can not or want not to share it?

How does one remove oneself and not be pained by inconsideration, obtuseness and senselessness of others?  Gaining another sense does not mean separation from self consciousness.

It means you are saddled with what you have been and then given another view of what you can become.  The dichotomy is excruciating.

But a gift of supreme value has been given to the seeker,  a gift of true contentment in being no matter the condition one finds oneself.  The word gift means something of value has been given by a giver.

And hopefully with it will be a sturdy constitution with sufficient self esteem.  And also held determinedly close will be the desire to continue to still make a difference in physical life because the dream was worth dreaming.

In the midst of sophisticated personal relations of knowing what buttons to push in this world,  the knowledge of ways of sophisticates can make one wash one’s hands of their supposed innocence.  Life continues its weights and measures and there is a consequential balance. 

If we learn nothing else, that lesson should bring us up smartly.

It Is Time. . .

It is time to call a halt
to the fatigue already overwhelming
and laying icy fingers upon your blood
and calling for your breath. . .

Too little now and too late,
but soon enough for meaning to come
pilfering through.  Lessons learned,
lives are lived without the intensity

concerning the air you breathe,
and bound only by their desire
fed by their anger and what life has denied them.
Life is a balanced judgment.

Next time conscience will lay heavy
on their unsuspecting shoulders.

This Old House. . . .

I am like this old house.  I have windows that are broken or have shifted in the space designed for them.  I have appendages that were once new rooms added on to make space for new dreams or for widening the premises for old forms expanding.

There were so many things added to make space, to make room for adding new thoughts.  I felt so full.

Like a banquet dinner, overeating because the taste of the new sent me reeling into ecstasy with renewed energy,  exuberance to make new what now was seemingly out of date.

Excited,  couldn’t wait for the construction to begin.  This is what motivated me to move the furniture to new places in the original rooms.  And I did for what seemed like centuries, moved three cushion couches up and down flights of stairs.

Moved  furniture around curved staircases and did not sweat and with magic collapsed a wayward desk stuck hard within the frame of a doorjamb to regain its form on the other side of the door.

When the furniture had tried all the corners,  all the different positions,  we went with the room additions to accommodate the children’s dreams.  Eventually the children grew up and left and the funds ran out and now began  the simplifying.

Do we need?  Whatever we held in our hands the answer was no.  We did not need.  Just headroom to organize the memories of a lifetime so they wouldn’t decay amid the premises that began to fall apart.

The landscaping was the first to go because there was no energy to care for the feeding and pruning of what went unrestrained.  There was no greening of the lawns.

The funds were pared to essentials.  The wall paper peeled and the paint faded and then the bare boards loomed in their nakedness.  The house once held dreams and saw centuries pass.  My dreams inexhaustible, need new frames.

The teachers say that we stay until we use up all the changes, all the additions and all the new houses.  Then come the new worlds.  And worlds they are because one  world cannot contain all the ideas needing to be born.

There are places waiting for the itinerant and exuberant teacher who has in her carpetbag tiles from the Pewabic Natives whose art formed the skyline,  solar trees to grow on mountainsides to furnish heat in frigid places and books with magic words that show the love grown in unknown regions.  I understand the school stands ready.

Consider This. . .

What makes you think we do not use
a worker who thinks and injects
new thought in old ways?

What makes you think we would
let loose the likes of you in a world
for frolic, for nothing more than waste?

We look for farmers for the vineyards,
for the fields needing seeds for food. . .
for thought, for starving minds as well as bodies.

Where we put you is in a place of value,
of your talents, of your loves,  of your sweet thoughts
feeding the children of all ages. . .

How else to sweep clean the Father’s House?

                                                the teachers

photo by Tresy Hallissey

It is long past the time for all people to stand and demand of themselves to be infused with a steel core to uphold their wobbly selves.

We have stood by and watched the principles upon which we have built our lives and our children’s heritage broken and by pieces swept away.  It is long past the time now for all to take stock and question ourselves and ask upon what is it we stand.

All of us can go far back and some new ones, not so far, to see that we all come from distant shores.  We became Americans no matter our beginnings.  So many nations, so many cultures have formed what we consider to be these United States.  How long can we be satisfied to be less than we once were, faults and all?

Lest we expect less from ourselves, we must all work in what ways we can to restore our respect for our heritage which includes all peoples.  There is no partisanship when it comes to bestowing honor and trust and courtesies upon those who differ from us.

Less is demeaning what we are; lowering ourselves to what has taken centuries to build to make our country a leader among  people whose ambitions were to emulate what the United States symbolized.

It took dreams that took hard work and thought toward becoming a haven that the statue of liberty was gifted.  The world watched us and marveled.  And we became the heaven possible upon which people built their lives in this country.

We work now to restore those dreams not only for those seeking to flee despotism but for ourselves now to guard what we have known to be our country.  Or our dream will go begging.

The Strange Bequest. . .

There was a man, a slim man,
whose head was bedecked with a white cloud,
and whose eyes saw dreams
he could not articulate.

He sat one day staring into space and
when I questioned him, he said,
‘I am sitting and watching the grass grow.’
I hesitated far too long and have lived to regret it.

I wish the courage had been mine
to have asked him to share his dreams with me.
For he bequeathed to me a mind that does not rest.
I have the thought that his father and father before him

wrestled the same misty vision
which now is mine to set in motion.
I question this strange bequest for I have not
the staunch heart required to lay to rest

my ancestor’s  anguish.  Papa, I plead now,
to replace my heart with hot ore, inject me with a vial
of celestial courage  and fuse my spine with
with tempered steel. . . .

There is so little time. . . .                                                        

There came a  time when man decided to forget his Source and do life on his own.  Since then it has been a game of catch up.  Our progress has been nothing to shout about but there would be those who would argue with me about that.

But for me it has been a matter of chasing down the first ‘why’ ever uttered by the child in search of a palatable reason for someone insisting he do something.  I don’t think it ever is a matter of courage though in retrospect it certainly is.  No one knows who will pursue that first ‘why’ and where the  journey leads.  And I tell you this, sometimes it is not pretty.

Those who observe know that it is a something, but they don’t know what.  They realize awesomely,  that it takes courage, a kind not familiar.  I say it mostly becomes a stubbornness to not falter and be a stumbling block.

Courage is not garnered overnight nor is it stored for all time.  It is fought for every morning in bathrooms and bushes around the world.  It is worn, with conviction man hopes, into  breakfast.  I know this and everyone who nurtures and is responsible for others know this.  We hope to present ourselves to the new day and convince our loves it is a day worth the living.

The following poem was written in 2013 and is a favorite of mine realizing that courage takes practice.

Found Courage. . .

I ask,

where did you find your courage?

On what tree was it hanging
that you could reach up
and pluck it from its hiding place
to wear as epaulettes
on your shoulders?

The children whisper during the night,
saying their Ave’s to each other,
hoping they will grow into courage
with a red badge to wear.

You say,

they are blinded.

They cannot see their milky courage
like cream rising to the top;
one day to merge
through alerted senses
that call for unthinkable strength.

They have been practicing every day
since they were born.
They will learn that courage
comes with each breath taken
and like the freedom they take for granted
must be won every day.
One day they will find it wears

like a second coat of paint.