From an Upper Floor

You wonder if you make a difference.  You’re those things that escape the notice of people.  But without the daily doings of choice, of comforts, of niceness,  the world could not go on.

The smallest act of mercy has large repercussions.  Remember that.  When the smallest act of kindness is received, it is passed on without thinking because the act gains a life of its own and struggles for expression.  It gathers momentum as it moves through the person’s hands, their life and those about them.

It is these acts of kindness, of niceness, of love that keeps the earth’s purpose in mind.   And the earth continues to vibrate its song and sings it for the ears that are destined to hear.  One person can delay it but no person can stop it up completely.  It will only be delayed but never destroyed.

The many acts of kindness and goodness dispensed by you took their proper route and touched many lives giving to each a measure of estimation they could not reach by themselves.  You are an example and a cherished purpose.  You are making an inestimable difference.

You Are The Difference. . .

Walking obscurely, you catch
a glimpse of yourself in a storefront,
not trendy nor polished,
a little unkempt,
not to be remembered.
Wondering why must you
always smell of baby powder.

So much to do
with so many needs.
Why do you hear them crying?

It’s always the children, you think,
for whom you would do much,
but some of them
are so big and so old. . .

You pass out treats
to the little ones
and listen with your heart
to the elderly. . . .

You wonder if your caring
can make any difference
in lives that are so needy.

You are the difference,
you who takes the time
to blot teary faces
and listen to abandoned lives. . .

Hazarding that.  . . .
some are not too big to sit on your lap
but all the right size

to sit on your heart. . . .

photo by
Joe Hallissey Sr.

It seems strange to be living with devices that usurp time that could be spent with persons,  either beloveds or would be friends.  These devices  take precedence over relationships that would enhance life to the utmost or heal encounters that would promote peace.  How we have let celluloid people on the wall take precedence over a live breathing person  beside one,  is a mystery to this head.  And happen it does.  It is not that I don’t indulge in technology of my choice but to watch devices being used in the midst of conversation is a stealth that will be regretted once the situation realized can never be recovered.  People leave and die and circumstances alter cases.  What is a real chance for furthering civil and emotional growth is bypassed in favor of situational procedures that have little relevance in our daily life.

Unless the moment depends on word on the life and death of a beloved,  should we not hang up the device while in the presence of  another like us who still breathes?  This moment is all we have.  Time is a commodity that cannot be spent twice.  Once spent it is gone and unless wisely spent,  regret is left in its wake.

I Take Your Hand. . .

Come,  I take your hand.
We go to places where
our hearts share dreams.

Sometime back, in histories
having no years,
we trod places where paths
had not been worn.

It was a good time,
seeing how we formed lives
with no lesson plans,
loved with no time
and lived fully aware.

We remember now
when the hands of the clocks
tell us we have only so much time;
only so much to check emails,
to see to bank statements
and to note how many Likes on devices
from those we don’t know.

And only so much time
before the next commercial break
and then we might have time

to love one another?

I am calling to touch base with you.  It has been too long since we chatted I said.  And after a surprised response she started and went on at great length finding her own equilibrium.  I could do nothing for her except be an ear to listen.  She called me the next day with gratitude because she said she was ready to puddle.  And there was no one to mop her up.

Another young friend would be facing an enormous decision the following week.  I was in a quandary about what to do and then realized I could only be an assistant.  I could not decide nor input any information.  I would plead ignorance on which I was an expert.  Unless asked,  there was no insight I could offer.  With today’s abundance of information,  there is too much in fact.  The brain can only handle so much since everyone is an expert in everything,  all I could do was stand by and catch the fall out.

Another body, another human is what is needed.  Just Presence.  Just being there is what is needed for the individual to stand and make their own decisions.  Just someone to listen to the garbage spilling forth and not stop loving them.  To take them in their frustration and to let it dissipate so the residue  does not kill them.   Just to be able to have a someone there who does not fall down will enable them to stand and do what they must.

I don’t have time for your drama a husband said and left his wife to handle the emotional conflict of the children.  Well, mister,  that is what earth life, physical life is all about.  Here we learn either to handle our emotions or gift them onto unsuspecting shoulders and watch our grandchildren fight the same battles.  Is this our desire?  To see the icons of past history smashed  by the frustration of generations of ancestors rising demanding restitution?  How better to spend your time than by listening to a soul in search of an ear to hear their lament?  Be the quiet symbol of peace.  Be the one who stands and gives Presence to allow the right thing to be done.  To Be may be the all we can do is the all we can do.

A Good Friend. . .

You stayed the night
while I lumbered my body
through a partition
closing me from life.

While I fought
through a sea of memories
holding me hostage
to long and lonely years.

You saw me through eye of tears
reflecting the hardness
mine needed to smelt with coals
being fired in a heart of no use.

But you stayed, close as my skin,
and had you pulled away
I would have understood.
You walk me yet and I stand.

My eyes have shed their steel casings,
now ground as dust beneath my heel.
I look inward to softer places
and find the world not so hard.

You tell me you need to stay close
because you wish to claim
my strength  if only by association,
but I ask,

of what heavenly use is a soft shell crab?

photo by
Joe Hallissey Sr.

He was five years old and did not want to go back to kindergarten.  I don’t want to read to the class while the teacher  teaches the green color to the other kids.  I don’t want to read the baby books he said because he was already reading higher grades by himself.  The  teacher was using him as a teacher’s aide because he read fluently.    And I was commiserating with the principal about discontinuing the trial of the homogeneous grouping, even though  the first grade was doing 3^rd grade work and loving it.  Their teacher in conversation extolled her enthusiasm as first she taught years ago and could hardly wait for the day to begin to race the children to class.  The excitement, she said!!

And the principal held his head in his hands and told of the call at midnight from the irate father who wanted to know why his kid was in the dumb class.  How will he learn he shouted,  if he doesn’t see what he might do?   But do we have the right to relegate the eager and bright to a slow pace to justify the process of the less able?  And can we expect growth from the less able when we withhold potential for achievement from them?   It will take a Solomon to disentangle the arguments which justify evolution for everyone.

The Universes depend on the progress of the able to set the standards for all.  Because what is done for one is done for all.  And our younger brothers in evolution deserve the chance to augment their chances for growth by aspiring to emulate the ones who set the pace.  What is the fair thing to do and can we depend on the good graces of the swift to hide their light beneath a bushel to allow a moment in the sun for the less able?  Can we keep the larger picture in view while we work toward greater purposes of growth of all Beings?

Can we inject the virus of learning to ensure evolution and see progress?  Or stagnate the process for all?  It is crucial for newness of thought at some point to find response in one’s peers or the impetus for its birth dies.  And the chance for growth is lost.  The only change that makes a difference is change in the value system carried by the time.  The Universe gauges the growth of its worlds by this best of all learning places.  Comfortable people do not like to have the boat rock.

Toward Greater Life. . .

The heart searches parameters
for openings unto worlds
not torn by those intent
on limiting knowledge. . .

always searching
for those to willingly embrace
the differences challenging
the hesitant heart. . .

We look toward the union
of heart and mind
with litigious veins
of knowledge, pushing like sludge
thickly through rock. . .

eager to consign edges
toward greater life. . .
knowing always the
least demanding would be
the most sought for.
Even the tardy would give
evolution a jump start.

Never insulting the slower envoy,
always grateful for the god participants,
the larger reality scoops forever
the narrow focus. . .

giving eternity’s starters new life and hope. . . .

What Have You Done?  (understanding)

They will ask, what have you done with your life and in truth I will answer.

I have alibied and done laundry for a world so soiled that even bleach couldn’t reach.  I have waited for the winter snows to cover the debris to give surcease to eyes that tire.  I will say to understand is harder to live with than not to understand.  For to understand one sees the child in the bigger body struggling to be understood.

Waiting, just waiting for arms to lift the weeping child in love to comfort, to support and to assuage what doubts overwhelm.  The Master said  suffer the little children and he mortgaged his life for eternity to give them the love they yearned.  Understanding takes away the right to vent, the right to rage and the anger to strike whenever and whatever is in the way of one’s path.

Understanding urges protection for the psyche clinging to the grandfather god who has one’s good as the only good necessary at this moment. His hand is on my shoulder she says, refusing to think why 6 million Jews went unprotected.  To not understand justifies one’s behavior to anger, to war and to smash in sight what one feels an obstacle to one’s right to live.  To not understand keeps one’s focus on one’s despair.

The day comes when creeping into one’s darkness will be a link to light that beckons.  It will be the beginning of a journey and it will happen because to continue with the wreckage of the previous way is unthinkable.  Some will call it salvation and it is.  Some will call it evolution and it is.  Some will call it reclaiming one’s divinity, one’s heritage and it is.

It is with utmost concern that we get on with the journey.  Universal well being, many worlds, hinge on our stewardship of this planet.  Our neighbors may not be quite so understanding  of the child who refuses to grow up.

King To Pauper. . .

Rendering itself useless now,
the elements of Nature
first borne by Man to work for him
have gone rabid.

But in wisdom still,
the moon continues to pull
the ocean by great force and
gently lays the rolling waves
on windswept sand, clearing man’s debris.

The wind, if amortized, would harness
its power to push the plow.
And sun, first born of woman
would gladly warm the earth’s chilled bones
and never cast a shadow.

The earth would form the nested nettle
where foot transgressed,
with pleasure support
the frame of man forever.

Air in bunches note
the going in and coming out of men
and upholds their stance, untiringly;
gladly yielding itself to noble ends.

Relegating himself
to the beggar’s position
of that which man himself created,
the Art is lost and in its stead
small triumphs rise.
Birth and death are Nature’s saviors

preventing man from raping her in anger.

Painting by
Claudia Hallissey

I was getting dinner for Sunday noon.  I was in the process of setting the table and finishing up.  I was listening to Carl Hass give his voluminous views on classical music radio when I heard him say Bach’s little suite.  And when I listened it was the same feeling I had when I first heard Pachelbel’s Canon.  If in a different time, I would have been driven to my knees.  I saw again the hall and the girl and the violins. It was the same feeling that almost drove me straight down or up.  It was the blending, the melding that comes with finding a time right for you.  ((the following I scribed as I wrote the entry describing the experience))

The time was indeed right for you.  But where were you and what were you doing?  (The gloves being pulled on the male hands.  White gloves.  I wrote about it in a poem.  The time was yeasty.  I used the same word when I looked at the portrait of Bach.  Was it the same as fermenting?)

It was a time of fermentation.  Much was going on and you were privy to it all.  Your ability to make connections and ferret out cause and effect is useful.  The times of the music were beautiful.  They spoke of romance and love.  Today’s world bears the fruit of its decline.

I wrote If I Could See Me .  It was a Given.  I wrote it as I heard it and saw it played in mind.  It was vivid at the time. Often when people tell me of their experiences that are vivid,  they immediately distract themselves.  It is unasked, it descends and often with a feeling of unease.  If held for a moment this experience can be healing, liberating and might yet save them.  What you hear and see cannot always be wrong.  Sometimes misinterpreted but mostly it is given for the preservation of life.  Hold it for a moment and do not be afraid.  It is given to you  with Grace and love.

If I Could See Me. . .

I am conscious of a Presence
to the east of conscience,
bedded in memory.
A pair of white gloves
are smoothed over large hands
and the cutaway coat is laced with white.

A head of black hair, I see,
streaked with grey, thick,
but the face is cloudy
and the eyes indeterminate.
Somewhere time appeared
in the place and I lived in it,
with full participation,
now foggy except with a knowing.

Was I the you I see to my left?
Was I the someone smoothing
on the gloves in preparation?
If I was you and am me now,
who was the Other?
Is it a protection I seek, daring not to think
you were you and are now
to the left of my appearance,
to the east of conscience
only to rise from memory?

I could, with sweat pouring
from every body opening,
probe the memory, bedded
and know for certain what trails I left
for me to one day find my way back.

Perhaps you could tell me.
Was the affair as gay, as bright
as the confirmed costume of the evening?
Or was there sadness, presumed
and the memory stays
of that bright night to hide
what my face would reveal and yours,

if I could see me?

When it comes to memory,  how do we separate what is currently ours?  Yet the question should be, what is not ours when we are part of humankind?  What can we separate from since we do not know what it is we have participated in since time began?

Have we lived before?  What is called reincarnation can also be memory banks filled to overflowing.  Yet are there not new souls on this planet who do not have practiced ways of behaving that can only be the result of centuries of living?

Can we say we have lived before when we fumble much in elemental situations? If we are asking these questions, it means the footwork has already been done to bring us to this place.

Can this incarnation be one of many?  Can we not be walking in many worlds relying only on custom for this one?  For some, one answer is sufficient.  And for others, if thoroughly understood,  would have worlds spinning into oblivion.

There are those who have been open to such a degree that worlds have impinged uncalled for.  Understanding can only come when there is a frame of reference to assimilate the information.  There is no mind that can understand everything.  All expressions are needed in every world to begin to uncover the essence of the spirit that rules and loves.

In the frame of reference that use the word God in its religious life or spiritual life,  everyone and everything is allowed to express the many faces of God.  There is no mind that completely understands nor completely accepts  all the expressions of Being,  whether in this world we inhabit or in worlds we give space to in thought.  There are aspects of memory that have no putting place.  It is only in retrospect that we can face the reality of many lives and loves and still retain our wholeness of being.  It is with divine grace that we do.

Memory Bit. . .

Will you appear again?
The picture was hazy
and around the edges, vague.
I was conscious of you and saw only you.

Your black , thick hair was streaked with gray
and sweat separated the streaks.
The table  upon which you laid
I cannot describe
but I was at your head
and your eyes were turned upward,
straining and you pleaded.

‘Do not watch,’ you cried
in a voice cracking with pain,
‘they are going to kill me.’

Your face.  Your face.
The jutting jaw, the coarse features so angular,
as sharp as I even now remember.
I knew that face
in a time and space I cannot place.
Where had the horror begun?

The tears roll down the creases
of this face I now carry
and I let the pillow catch them.
I do not care anymore to hide them.
I can now cry down as well as cry up.

I shouted something into the night.
I do not remember what.
But sweet oblivion caught me
and I went to a somewhere
and awakened with no fatigue.

You will come again.
I have known you before
to recognize you now,

even in a memory bit.

photo by
John Holmes