it means we made promises

bonesnsnowanniversaries, family, home, humanity, life, love, marriage, photo, photography, photos, poems, poetry, relationships, self, women 1 Comment

I embraced her as we left the church forty years ago today, and she has not released my heart ever since…

it means we made promises

it means we made promises

on the last day of may

both still clean still possible.

it means we made plans and babies

and sent them both

to bang against the world.

it means we learned to cut

and leave no trace

no blood trail for evidence.

it means we gave up on wonderful

and wove a nest

out of ordinary.

it means we rattle now toward evening

in our dark compartment

as the engine enters the tunnel’s mouth.

it means I can still catch your breath

between my fingers.

it means you

can still close my eyes with your lips.

it means the fire burns

until the last dry wood is gone.

May 23, 2020photography, poetry

such a fool

bonesnsnowdeath, dogs, dying, family, foolishness, humanity, life, memories, photo, photography, photos, poems, poetry, relationships, wisdom Leave a comment

after all these years, you’d think I might have learned a thing or two…

such a fool

what becomes of our memories

when we die? do they simply vanish

with the last flickering spark?

so many years of careful assembly

and rearrangement – why would the gods

invest so much in something so frail?

maybe instead we pass a kind of key

to those we leave behind

so that as long as they remember us,

our life’s collection

of learning and stories, heartbreak and joy,

remains connected, alive, flowing

in waves of what we call wisdom,

what we call beauty, accessible to any and all

with a beating human heart.

as I wander, hands in my pockets,

I absently jingle my enormous ring of keys,

and across the heavens the ancestors

and all of those who went before me,

rejoice at this music, beginning to dance and sing

at the warm pleasure of still being known.

then one by one, they look down at me

and start to laugh, shaking their celestial heads

in wonder, that despite a lifetime afloat

in this ancestral sea of wisdom

I insist on remaining

a complete and utter fool.

May 15, 2020image, photography, poetry

rising

bonesnsnowbrothers, death, dying, family, home, humanity, life, photography, photos, poems, poetry, relationships 1 Comment

rising

either there are no angels

or we are all of us angels, rising

by degree. when I left you,

you were supported by pillows

billowing like clouds. now,

sitting on the plane

watching rain glaze the runway,

I wonder if you’re awake, your eyes

searching for familiar faces

you can no longer see; I wonder

if I will ever see you again.

gathering speed, we begin to climb,

both of us passengers, rising

alone, separately, together,

rising

on differently feathered wings,

rising

into radically different heavens.

May 10, 2020photography, poetry

that i would do better

bonesnsnowfamily, humanity, life, mother, mothers day, parents, photos, poems, poetry, prayer, relationships, women 2 Comments

hand colored high school photo, circa 1933-34.

Margaret Ruth (Draper) Fink, 1917-2004

that I would do better

how much of my life

would I look to retrace?

not the thousand small decisions

that built to a course

I may have mistaken for true,

nor the loves and the lost loves

and shouldn’t have loved’s,

but you whose ears

have now passed beyond hearing,

who made the milk that fed me –

that I would do better.

if you could only come here and die again,

here, where this time I would hold you

as you once held me,

here, where we’d cry over parting

and joy at the end of pain.

here, where I would hold your gaze

as the light sifts from your lovely eyes,

and then close your brown eyes

with kisses.

May 2, 2020photography, poetry

enough

bonesnsnowAging, death, dying, family, happiness, joy, life, photography, photos, poems, poetry, prayer, relationships, sadness Leave a comment

my only brother, Joe, died the day after I wrote this, at age 78. perhaps this is why so many of my poems recently have concerned death. voyage well my brother…

enough

a poem arrived last night

so heavy with death I couldn’t lift it

and I couldn’t in good conscience

drop it on anybody else.

so for now, there’s just this –

an unseasonably warm spring day

robins building a nest on the porch

the constant quiet joy

of the good woman I married

nearly forty years ago. And for now

this is enough.

enough to hold me warm at night,

enough to allow me to ignore,

for a time, the pulsing sadness

that flows beneath the surface

of this happiness,

like blood beneath the skin

carrying its own form of richness

throughout this aging body,

even though I know that one day

this blood will stop, and with it must end

all of the sadness, all of the joy,

leaving only a space,

a sharp inhalation,

then a long vanishing sigh.

	Sharon Sams on what he taught me – esse…
	bonesnsnow on just a dog – on the loss…
	Chris Roon on just a dog – on the loss…
	bonesnsnow on just a dog – on the loss…
	Leslie Kelen on just a dog – on the loss…

old bones, new snow

poetry, images and time

Monthly Archives: May 2020

it means we made promises

such a fool

rising

that i would do better

enough