Fall

Autumn is dying time
yet we die in the heat of summer
not anticipating the chill.

We play and dance in summer's sun
running here, slumbering there
mindful of the heat -
can't imagine where
or when we'll get relief


We fall into false dreams
believing time will never change
the play, the sunshine, the love

holiness

the place revered
that place of holiness

the times
we heard
the Word preached

in the spirit
or
in the mind

the Word ever and always the last word

holiness today
in the rubble of war
in the rattle of pneumonia
the baby's cry

where is holiness in this?

Power

power given is power gained
the giver gains
the gainer gives

power driven into form is pain
the painful drives
the driver in pain

energy over time
in lost time,
the thousand visions
and revisions
that a moment can reverse

but the time for the powerful to envision
is now
the visionaries empowered
with energy somehow
act in concert
with the powerful to
gain anew insight and hope
for those inert and soured


energy in time
in time to save
the dying aunt
the frightened niece
the sister in denial
presence
sweet presence
is energy standing still

Can presence carry power
in time for those moments
when the disconnected glimpse
a little hope
peering into the emptiness of their pain?

Can power in presence
carry into those moments
we re-member (once more),
the comfort
of connectedness?

Rabbit and Frog

honey bunny she said
Ribbit said he

what sound does a bunny make?

add a pear and a hare
stir the grenouille

pour beure blanc pour tout
taunt the tongue

Pierre lapin watches me

from his sterling cup

but I can't see

Expectations

He quietly named the friends he was losing
at 76 and I
recall how parents, surprised,
felt this lonely prick
of their self-same mortality
with tearful eyes


alone -
The Last Leaf-
A rite of passage, this
realizing that you have outlasted your peers.


When half my friends died of AIDS
at half the expected age of death
I felt that prick.
young and energetic
I wailed, "this is wrong, this passage"
I've outlived my peers
and yet have years and years before I leave

Expectations shattered
waves of tingled silence.
hollow shivering pain
accompany the rushing realization
that the world is not as it is
or was
or should be.

Somehow I believed
my understanding
would go the distance with me.

Lost in time's continuum
in newly real vision
understanding revised
I stood shocked
The Last Leaf
at 35

*****************
with homage to Oliver Wendell Holmes' The Last Leaf