Category Archives: image

image, love, marriage, photography, poetry

The Gift of An Exquisite Love – the Fifth Lineage Poem

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The Gift of an Exquisite Love – the Fifth Lineage Poem, on Valentines day no less! We were eighteen years old, in our freshman year of college in a small town in Michigan. I’d borrowed the money from my girlfriend (a long story) to take her out to an old-school, no-alcohol coffee house called “the Troubador” in Kalamazoo Michigan.

The room was full of cigarette smoke, and we were with three other couples, all there to hear a band who’s name I’ve long forgotten. Between sets, we all ordered coffees and the talk was fast and loud. She was seated directly across the large round table from me. Thinking of nothing much at all, I happened to look up and straight into her impossibly large green eyes.

And I was done for. I fell in love in that instant, and have never stopped loving her.

The Gift of an Exquisite Love

A love that I’ve never relinquished. A love that has sustained me now for over forty years.

These poems were written a very long time ago

Each one came as a completed poem

Each was a gift

The Gift of an Exquisite Love

the gift of an exquisite love
those impossible green eyes
I felt myself break


I felt myself break

and drift back
and back, and down

to settle here
forever

on the deep green floor
of your eyes

And the second, once that gifted love had begun to breathe. 

the soft, soft sleep of dawn


I awoke this morning
to the brush your lash
on my neck

like a light
on the still darkened stage
of our bodies held tight 

and heavy and warm
in the soft, soft sleep
of dawn
my Love, my Sara

Link to the first Lineage Poem (the ground):https://oldbonesnewsnow.com/2022/01/09/a-joyful-noise-root-music-of-the-heartland/

Link to the second Lineage Poem (father dying):https://oldbonesnewsnow.com/2022/01/16/on-the-way-to-heaven-2nd-lineage-poem-over-ohio/

Link to the third Lineage Poem (burying my father): https://oldbonesnewsnow.com/2022/01/24/a-father-returns-home-welcomed-by-the-land/

Link to the fourth Lineage Poem (missing a mother):https://oldbonesnewsnow.com/2022/02/01/a-mothers-love-a-sons-regrets-fourth-of-the-lineage-poems/

And a closing link to the incredible Pablo Neruda, Love Sonnet XI:https://hellopoetry.com/poem/9927/love-sonnet-xi/

fathers, image, links, love, photography, Reflections

Welcomed by the Land – A Father Returns Home

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The third in a series of Lineage Poems: Welcomed by the Land- A Father Returns Home. My father left Hancock County Ohio after the war and barely looked back. But when he died in 1986, there was a plot waiting for him there. A farmers’ cemetery tucked among the cornfields, rows of family names eroding into nothing up a small hill. Later, my mother would join him there, but this poem is about his journey home. And the Redwing Blackbirds in the fields, and the ribbon of asphalt leading there. About an Oldsmobile, and the memories of a boy, now a no longer young man.

Click here for the first poem in the Lineage Series: https://oldbonesnewsnow.com/2022/01/09/a-joyful-noise-root-music-of-the-heartland/

Click here for the second poem in the Lineage Series: https://oldbonesnewsnow.com/2022/01/16/on-the-way-to-heaven-2nd-lineage-poem-over-ohio/

photo credit – the Audubon Society https://www.audubon.org/

A Father Returns Home:

redwing blackbirds

redwing blackbirds 
flash like fire in the sun, the Olds 
sailing and sailing over waves of blacktop

clicking past fenceposts, the boy 
peering from the back seat trying to count 
but it’s too fast to keep up 

such a small hole for a man that size 
tough to fit eternity into a space like that 
maybe space like time is collapsed by death

they say at the margin space and time 
are the same thing. tell me, if you could choose 
would you disappear in order to last forever? 

maybe it’s better to spread yourself out 
catch the wind and let it swirl you as ashes
straight to heaven. or maybe get an Olds

hold the jar out the window 
and go sailing over waves of blacktop
pop the cork and stream out the long dusty cloud 

that’s now filling your mirrors as you drive 
catching now on the wind, filling the sky 
until the sun itself goes black 

until the redwing blackbirds 

disappear



© 2022 jafink/oldbonesnewsnow.com

Back to the Earth
africa, image, leopards, lions, photography, wild dogs, wildlife, www.jfinkimages.com

African Wildlife Photo Collection- Botswana Part 2 (Okavango Delta)

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Wild Dog Stretching Before a Hunt

The second of three Collections of photos from Africa this last October is now up on my photo site, Jfinkimages (see the link below.) This is a larger set of images from the Okavango Delta in Botswana. While there was still water in the Delta, much of it was pretty dry. Nonetheless, we were still able to spend serious quality time with a wide array of of wildlife, highlighted by encounters with three groups of predators: African Wild Dogs (including witnessing a kill,)  a  brother and sister pair of Lions, and the most beautiful female Leopard I’ve ever seen!

Here’s the link: https://www.jfinkimages.com/p305060048#hdf04ccea

The link will take you directly to the Collection where you can either click through image-by-image, or click the “Slideshow” button in the top right – personally I like to run the Slideshow in full-screen, but of course, I’m biased!

Many thanks to Rob Barbour at Epic Private Journeys for orchestrating yet another “once in a lifetime” safari experience (https://epicprivatejourneys.com/) and for Mapula and Tuludi Camps for their terrific hospitality and expert guide services (https://www.okavangodelta.com/the-okavango/)

Enjoy

Jeff

image, photography, poetry

Murmuration – her small voice rising like a brand new day

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her small voice rising - 18 months old, beginning to find her voice, arising spontaneously from space
her innate wisdom, a flock of freshly hatched words, rising

Murmuration

her small voice rising

in the dark above the bars

of the crib, a morning

murmuration

beginning, spinning, rising

a flock of freshly hatched words

still translucent and damp

where did she come from?

this spontaneous consciousness

this ascending double helix

of intelligence – pulsating, spiraling

wave upon brilliant wave

of innate wisdom, elaborating

her sweet song, a spark

radiating across the unending space

of possibility, coming now

to crack open the darkness

like a star

like the first soft light

of a brand new day

© 2021 jafink/oldbonesnewsnow.com

image, photography, poetry, Reflections

Wordless Love – the Sweet Experience of Loving an Old Dog

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Sweet Jackson, the old black dog, asleep by the fire

Wordless Love

in this light-shortened night

I draw near the fire

with my old black dog.

neither of us

can keep our feet warm

anymore.

I place my hand on his ribs

and watch them rise and fall,

feel the beating

of his precious heart,

and know then the sharp dread

of the beginning of ending

of dissolution, of the warm

moist breath of emptiness,

of loss, of the exquisite fragility

of this simple, bottomless

wordless love

© 2021 jafink/oldbonesnewsnow.com

image, photography, poetry

Steps – this exquisite girl, rising on her tiny toes…

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will rise again on tiny toes
rising on her tiny toes

Steps

our son called this morning

to let us know she’s okay

that it was only a passing fever

a bit of a rash, the hours in the ER

notwithstanding

we kept our cool throughout

my wife and I – seasoned baby vets

unflappable

despite the fact

that the medical folks don’t know a thing

just that the fever has finally

broken

so soon

this exquisite girl

will rise again on tiny toes

and resume her accelerating steps

into tomorrow

while we

will resume our shuffling steps

toward our destined places

at last

as vaguely comic characters

from her dimly remembered

past

© 2021 jafink/oldbonesnewsnow.com

image, photography, poetry

one sunday morning

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my granddaughter

is not permitted to get sick

I forbid it. her smile

is too crooked and too beautiful

to rest in a fevered face

she’s highly likely, of course

to be just fine

in a day or two, a random

pediatric bug. of course

she will be fine.

so I’ll look to care for my old dog

who isn’t eating this morning

“off his feed”  they say

as happens to us oldsters

every now and again

so I’ll boil up some rice

mix in a little chicken stock

and give us each a bowl.

we can eat together

ever so carefully

in silence

while we wait for the phone to ring.

image, photography, poetry

pray for rain

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drivingtoWhales.iphone-2

 

pray for rain

 

we had no rain

 

for the month of May, weeks on end

of the warming winds of spring

drying the trees, the grasses, the earth

into tinder just waiting for a spark

 

these mountains

rounded by time, looming

over the cities, each one burning

scattered across the darkened land

like dying stars

 

the poets are overmatched –

so many viruses sweeping the world

 

at once

 

the breadth and scale of human stupidity

cruelty, burning and burning

 

we look to the eyes of the children

and see the depth of our failures

all of our fine words turning to ash

on our tongues – how

will it ever end?

 

listen deeply

 

beg forgiveness

 

lift a shovel

 

pray for rain

 

 

© 2020 jafink/oldbonesnewsnow.com

 

 

image, photography, poetry

it means we made promises

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

edit wedding.5309

 

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.

 

 

 

© 2020 jafink/oldbonesnewsnow.com