Greyhawk Passage
&
Other Poems
copyright 2001, 2002, 2003
|
|
Greyhawk Passage & Other Poems copyright 2001, 2002, 2003 |
There are many hills, many valleys
Many winters, cold times...
Recurring warmth, consuming heat
Tired days, anxious nights
Fulfillment, loss
Frustration, confusion
Stones and feathers
Laughter and tears
Pride and failure
Birth and death...Yet sometimes only
ExistenceIn the journey of Greyhawk...
Elusive memory of early times
Long before the arrival of the hawk
Comes and goes, like morning fog...Why remember?
Walking barefoot in freshly plowed soil...
A bouncing child behind toiling father,
Concern only for the occasional sticker weed
That found its way into the fertile ground..."As a barefoot boy I walked
Through warm and oozing sand,
Without a thought of seriousness
Of ever becoming a man..."Or so the lines go
To the opening
of the hawk's
first published poem...Why remember?
A tall black horse that could run
Fast as the wind
And the worlds that opened
To the budding imagination...
Of Wild West ranches and Indian duels...
And the cry of the friend
Who tumbled off to the ground
While riding double at breakneck speed...Why remember?
Smoking in the barn
And the rats that consumed
The hidden stash
Of forbidden cigarettes...Why remember?
The warmth and security
That came to the small child
As he crawled beneath the heavy covers
On a cold morning,
Snuggling against the slumbering father
And inhaling the aroma of the sleeping form
That kept all evil at bay...Why remember this and little else
Of the time before the hawk...?"Tell me more...
Tell me what he said,"
He asked of his young bride
As she stirred from the deepest of sleeps...
For a fleeting instant they had shared a dream...
A dream of significance...
In which she was being told all the secrets of life,
Warned even then that all would be lost
To consciousness.
She knew he had been there also, beside her,
And that he too knew the answers,
The answers that neither could recall
As they shared the experience
In the darkened bedroom.
But they both knew
They had known
The Secrets of Life...Memories ignore
Chronological order...
Bouncing here and yon
Up and down
Through years of being...Tears flowed from the eyes of the child
When he was told of her death...
His surrogate black mother, the house helper
Who eased his insecurities with a warm hug,
And brought him peanut butter sandwiches
To the kitchen door when he rode up
On this four wheel peddle cycle...
The one who made him laugh
With antics of her own...
The one who cared
For him
Gone...Self-centered
He had been...
Knowing nothing
Of her world...
The poverty,
The hardship,
The prejudice,
The struggle
Of her life...
Yet she still cared
For him,
The innocent
Unknowing
Child
Who knew nothing
About her.As the hawk flies back
Through the evasive fog
Of other times,
She is not forgotten...
She still lives
In that inner place
Of cherished memories...
Still loved,
Still remembered...Feathers...
There are feathers
In my soul...Sometimes I hear the chants,
The quiet flute,
The stirrings
Of my Indian self,
And I wonder why...
What is my purpose...
Where will my journey lead?And then I crawl back
Into my turtle shell
And prod slowly onward again
Into mere existence...There is power
In the written word,
And in the power is truth,
And in the truth is right,
And in the right is justice,
And in the justice is hope,
And in the hope is...
Happiness somewhere...Or so it seemed in earlier times
Before the wind gathered beneath
The wings of the hawk
And drove him upward,
High above the mire
Of the world below.And from that vantage point
The words looked jumbled
And meaningless
Among the reality
Of what lay below...
Why is it that thoughts
Sometimes drift toward
The end times...?Why are there no answers
For the vital questions
That all come to ask?Or, are answers
There
Somewhere
In our inner beings,
Hidden away in that place
Where we fear to look?Greyhawk searched that place once
And, for him, a new season
Was born...When the years pass
And one reaches the time of counting...
When one, in silent moments,
Can start to see the end...There emerges
A Fifth Season of Life...
Not yet reached, yet visible
After the final Autumn year...A season which brings forth
A new vision, a new hearing,
A new awareness of that which is
The Earth...It is a season of love
For surroundings,
For trees,
And birds,
And crickets,
And smells,
And beauty,
And sounds,
And touch...For it is a season
Of awareness...As one prepares
For that moment of freedom...
When the soul of man
Takes flight
And soars upward
To that other place
Of good feelings,
Cherished memories,
And happiness...It is a season of joy...
OTHER POEMS
|
THERE ARE NO WORDS There are no words There is no expression There is no way There are no words...
MAYWORDS Through the mist and haze of the woods Though I walk through the valley... The mountaintop seemed more distant now
VOICES FROM THE PAST Sometimes My heart feels the pain And now, alone, racked by pain
CLOCK Every day or two As he loved Tick...tick...tick... It continued to tick And there was no one else And after awhile
DOMINOES I looked at him And my mind wandered And in my mind And then I heard He loved to play that game...
Oh, hell, I love it...
The hard rock spring bed Maybe after a heavy rain And we would walk at times The cedar breaks crouched close Here and there were the tracks And, our tracks and theirs There was a presence felt here...
There was one very special place And in this place An occasional flower or plant We came to call this place
It was one of those rare places It was indeed a place of Enchantment.
There was such a wonderful sunrise today... The sky streaked red and orange This fleeting sight was majestic And I wished I could somehow capture it I wished there was some way
There was sadness The long distance lines As I sat thinking about her there,
He loved that dog so much, Close companions they became And now, at times,
I've kept your cards Precious they were then As I browse through them And a warm, salty wetness
RHYTHM OF THE PAST Hear it there? Steady beat... Louder still...
|
|
