Category Archives: Reflections

Dharma, poetry, Reflections

A Joyful Circle – the Final Lineage Poem

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A Joyful Circle – the Final Lineage Poem. And so we come full circle in this series of Lineage Poems. Like medieval astronomers who took the earth to be the center of all things, so does our ego create the illusion that this individual life is the central point of reference in the infinite sweep of time and generations. Past, future, and at the fulcrum, this single life. And I suppose it couldn’t be any other way, however flawed this cosmology of self.

As I write this, I’ve been down for two weeks struggling to recover from pneumonia. It’s honestly been a frightening time. In an earlier post, I mentioned that my only brother died a short time ago, of lung disease as it happens (https://oldbonesnewsnow.com/2022/03/19/sunrise-and-sunset-the-wheel-of-life/.) So losing the ability to breathe triggered both fearful memories and simple animal fear. Just today, it finally feels like my breathing is softening, and the air is beginning to flow.

And also just today, our next grandchild has begun the long, messy, painful, risky and extraordinary process of pushing into this world.

A joyful circle. I wouldn’t have missed a minute of it

And I pray that I will have many, many, more to experience

Little boy, I weep with joy at the prospect of meeting you!

All love,

Jeff

Grandson, Son, Husband, Father, Father-in-law, Grandfather, Ancestor

backcountry touring in Canada February 2020

Two closing poems to bring this home, the first from several years ago

old man

in the wild untended fields of my heart
sits an old man. the day is late but warm 
and the low-angled light spreads like butter 
over the tall grass. his beard is white

gone beyond gray, and his hair, long and thin 
shifts with the wind. he wears a multicolored vest 
stitched with threads of silver
and his boney white feet 
sit bare upon the land

his hands, held still on his long legs, bear the scars 
of a lifetime of choices -- he sits beyond judgment 
beyond expectation -- he’s been waiting 
for a very, very long time 

he breathes as I breathe

his blue eyes are clouded now 
from having witnessed a life 
while in the distance the witches’ voices 

rise in round to the beating sound of his heart
he has always known this song
 has always known all 
of the songs 

we are each of us sorcerers 
all singers of one single 

deathless song
with Sara atop Kilimanjaro, October 2020

And a final word written very recently

only that

they say it’s our habits, habitual tendencies
that are reincarnated, like a wind
blowing through a window left open

in a newly constructed house. and this
makes sense to me – I haven’t suffered enough trauma
in this one life to be as confused as I seem to be

so I must have swept these old wounds
into the womb with me, an intangible blanket
of familiar mistakes to keep this newborn warm 

 now, as I stare down this narrowing hall
I pray to whatever powers there be
to allow me to direct more precisely
the next go-round

when the last breezes blow
and this basket of bones finally fails
may only one thing pass into the next life--

may I carry forward only 
the tender warmth of my fingers 

as they touch the cheeks
of those I have loved most in this world

that

and only that



May these words be of benefit to all sentient beings
grandpa Jeff with his best girl Sawyer

To explore more poetry with buddhist themes, click here:https://www.shambhala.com/buddhist-poetry-a-reader-guide/

photography, poetry, Reflections

Shadow People – When the Lineage Merges and Generations Fade

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Shadow People – When the Lineage Merges and Generations Fade. It’s rather easy to look back, to be the receiver and say that “she contributed this, he offered that.” And then children emerge, and very soon you can sense it all begin to flow away, of everything beginning to pass.

When small, there’s a sense of “mine” in one’s children — “my son, my daughter.” But this is a terrible illusion.

In fact, we are theirs.

As Persian Poet Khalil Gibran said in his remarkable poem, “On Children,”

“…their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.” https://poets.org/poem/children-1

But a downstream lineage requires an injection – a partner, a husband, a wife to be inserted into this stream so it can flow onward. And right there begins the obsolescence. Suddenly it’s apparent that you no longer matter quite so much, even it takes time for this to sink in,

that you’re rapidly becoming little more than an old story

someone your child might recall years from now

and, if you’ve been very fortunate,

smile.

And while this is natural, it does bring with it the opportunity to love in a completely different way. This is not the love born of biology, nor is it a love shaped from an accumulated lifetime of shared experiences.

This is a love born of learning, of tolerating (in both directions, of course,) of getting to know, of bumping against each other, of embracing, of creating new shared experiences, and ultimately, heaven willing, of standing together to support the launch of the next generation.

Lineage. True Lineage.

And Gratitude.

the downstream begins

shadow people


they begin as shadow people
two-dimensional, replaceable
appearing only for a moment 
then fading, leaving only a name 
a story to be laughed about 
over dinner 

translucent satellites
in temporary orbit around this child
you’ve birthed and fed, the one
you’ve poured your life into, saw fall 
and stand again, then mature into the rich 

three-dimensional life you see before you 
who one day brings home another 
and suddenly you sense 
that this just might be 

“the one” 

the one that takes root in the rich soil 
of your son, the one he now turns to 
before you, the one who clearly holds all 
of his new secrets, the one who’s ear hears 
all of his dreams

and though you try to be happy for him 
and for “them” 

you can already feel yourself 
beginning to thin, to lighten, to lift 
ever so slightly above the floor 

where they now stand together 

can feel yourself darkening 
and spreading up the long wall 
as the sun drops low in the sky 
stretching the day’s last shadows 

which even now are beginning to fade 
as day inevitably progresses 

into night

In case you missed it, here’s a link to the Sixth Lineage Poem – This Father’s Imperfect Love: https://oldbonesnewsnow.com/2022/03/01/this-fathers-imperfect-love-sixth-lineage-poem/

poetry, Reflections

This Father’s Imperfect Love – Sixth Lineage Poem

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This Father’s Imperfect Love – Sixth Lineage Poem. Writing an honest poem is a profoundly private act. Making the decision to share that poem publicly is anything but. This is especially true if one is writing “about” a friend or family member who’s still alive to read it (bearing in mind that all we can ever write about is our experience of another person– it’s all we have.)

Looking over my work, it’s clear that some of my poems may never see the light of day. I sort of have a Hippocratic oath about my poems – “first, do no harm.” And I guess there’s the rub – continue to slice close to the bone without causing embarrassment or harm to another.

For example, looking back at the Fifth Lineage Poem (https://oldbonesnewsnow.com/2022/02/14/the-gift-of-an-exquisite-love-the-fifth-lineage-poem-valentines-day/) I know there are several other pieces I might have chosen that to me are very powerful, but that speak to aspects of our relationship that are too personal, too fraught to lob onto social media — sharing the intimacy of personal experience without invading the intimacy of another in the process.

dos hombres, Patrick and Nathan

So, here I turn and begin to look at the Lineage that descends from us rather than comes down to us. When our boys were born, I was so buried in career that there was no room for anything creative. It was only when I finally cried uncle and turned in my travel bag that a lifetime of suppressed creativity began to stir.

Consequently, I don’t have any contemporaneous work that touches on the joy, the mystery and the profound confusion that comes with newborns and the brilliance of little boys.

Instead, here are two pieces I wrote as the guys entered late adolescence, as they began to have a life that was increasingly invisible to their parents, as they left our family home for the world

I can’t protect them, but did I prepare them?

In a profound sense, it’s no longer my affair

fathering

as you pass the salt 
I notice how your mouth 
always tips on the edge of a smile, 
but I’m distracted by the thought 
of screeching tires

and as we talk, your curly hair 
bobs up and down (you know 
I'd like you to cut it – but not really) 
what I really want 

is for you to somehow find a way 
to protect yourself. and while desert 
is being served, I’m preoccupied 

with sheets being pulled over faces 
on a dark road I don’t recognize.

so, I can barely clear away the plates
while maintaining this pleasant conversation
in complete dread, as I am

of a decision you might one day make 
the one I won’t understand

the one I will never, ever understand

They learn to stand as children, then turn to you as men, and then they go.

And there it is.

not so little boys anymore, Nathan and Patrick

for a son


I’ve been waking in the night 
grinding my teeth – some feelings 

are so close to the bone, so fragile 
they can’t support a whole stack of words
 
like my denial that you will be leaving 
in the morning 

like my fear that I 
failed to teach you to fly

For a view of Patrick’s recent passions, here’s a link to his blog, Mountain Lessons- check it out! http://mountainlessons.com/

poetry, Reflections

A Mother’s Love, a Son’s Regrets – Fourth of the Lineage Poems

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A Mother’s Love, A Son’s Regret. Looking back, it’s clear that I’ve written more about my father than I ever did about my mother. Fathers and sons I suppose. But she was also the quieter, smaller one of the two. I always had the sense that she chose to hold herself close, always to defer.

September 11, 2001

We drove her from Florida to Chicago on September 11, 2001. The world had suddenly erupted in fire and all flights had been cancelled. We convinced Hertz to give us a van and we drove for three days across a silent, empty America. Her dementia was pretty bad by that point, and she repeated over and over and over, “Where am I going?” “Why do I need to go?” I didn’t have a good answer then, and I guess I don’t now.

A Mother’s Love, a Son’s Regrets

Margaret Ruth lived in a nursing home in Chicago from 2001 until her death in 2004 from simple old age. I’ve posted before (link immediately below) about my sadness that I failed to attend properly the end of her life, allowing her to die alone in the night when it was pretty clear that it was her time.

Here’s a link to “That I Would do Better” https://oldbonesnewsnow.com/2020/05/10/that-i-would-do-better-poetry-poem-mother-regrets-mothersday/

Margaret Ruth, age four on the far right, 1921

I own that regret. But there’s also the regret of perhaps never having really known her. So here are two pieces that speak to missing the life of one who loved and raised me. Perhaps I could only see this as I creep into my older years myself. First, the mystery of seeing off one who once had been the entire world.

When the World is Lost Forever

childish things


we stood in a circle around the grave
some read poems while some 
chose silence. the funeral director

placed her ashes in the ground
while the redwing blackbirds sang 
among the corn. we'd always assumed

that she could fly, but then we
were only children, and eager to cling
to childish things

A Mother’s Love, a Son’s Regrets

And second, upon seeing her in the nursing home, a shadow of who she’d once been and wondering if (or perhaps knowing) we’d missed something essential over all those years.

margaret ruth

old woman, what have you done with her?
she was here when I last looked. now 
there's only you, a remnant, your mind 
approaching the capacity of experience 
cycling back upon itself, the tape skipping, catching 
rewinding as we speak. your face has been chiseled, 
deep lines cut into spotted flesh surrounding pools 
of sadness in your eyes. 
                                        
I can see into the depths 
of that water -- here rest the old ones 
in images black and brown, a diminishing succession 
of farmers’ wives standing resolute at the arms 
of sitting dead husbands. here are young brides 
with radical curls, high collars and narrow waists 
holding round-faced war-babies smiling at the camera. 
here is a mother reading soft words to soft children 
in light fading into dreams—ah Margaret Ruth 
we were for each other 
and we never really knew
The author at age one with his Mother Margaret Ruth, 1958

Here’s the link to first Lineage Poem – A Joyful Noise https://oldbonesnewsnow.com/2022/01/09/a-joyful-noise-root-music-of-the-heartland/

Here’s the link to the second Lineage Poem – One the Way to Heaven, Over Ohio https://oldbonesnewsnow.com/2022/01/16/on-the-way-to-heaven-2nd-lineage-poem-over-ohio/

Here’s the link to the third Lineage Poem – Welcomed by the Land, Redwing Blackbirds https://oldbonesnewsnow.com/2022/01/24/a-father-returns-home-welcomed-by-the-land/

For more poems speaking to mothers and motherhood, click here: https://www.poetry.com/psearch/mothers

All Poems, Text and Images are © 2022 jafink/oldbonesnewsnow.com

poetry, 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
photography, Reflections

On the Way to Heaven, 2nd Lineage Poem: Over Ohio

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the author with “Big Al” in Detroit in 1963

On the Way to Heaven, 2nd Lineage Poem: Over Ohio My father died of lung cancer in Florida in 1986. Always an angry man, he was supremely bitter about his illness, feeling like he’d been robbed of the retirement due a lifetime of work. At the time, I was buried in my own workaholic haze in Chicago, flying down on weekends to see him, then going straight back to the office when I got back North.

He was in hospice when I got word that the end was near, and was in a coma by the time I arrived. This poem tells the story of a real conversation, one I’ll obviously never forget. He was a hard man who was hard on his boys. As I enter my own older years, I resent the hardness less and less, and miss him more and more. I’d love to be able to talk with him one more time.

Here’s the link to the first Lineage Poem : A Joyful Noise – Root Music of the Heartland—https://oldbonesnewsnow.com/2022/01/09/a-joyful-noise-root-music-of-the-heartland/

Over Ohio

my mother called on Friday
to let me know his time was near
that I needed to come now.

he was not an easy man
either to me or to my brother
or to himself. my mother, 

simple loyal and kind was spared this,
or so I hope. he’d been in a coma 
for days when I went to sit with him

through the night, his cancer-eaten body
rattling its ragged breaths
in the pale blue light of the monitors.

unable to sleep, I watched him breath in
the darkness, then just before dawn
he woke and wanted to talk.

I told him he was dying
as if he didn’t already know.
and he asked me how much money I made 

(so he’d know, he said, if I’d be safe)
then apologized for smacking us boys,
and I told him it was alright

even if it really wasn’t. 
I left when he drifted back into sleep
or wherever it was he’d been waiting,

and caught the early morning 
flight for home. he died 
while I was 30,000 feet over Ohio.

sometimes I wonder – 
at that moment, which one of us
was closest to heaven?

© 2022 jafink/oldbonesnewsnow.com

Big Al on the driveway in Detroit, 1963

And here’s a link to more poems about fathers from the Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/101752/poems-about-fathers

Dharma, Reflections

in this ocean without shores

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reflection3

Though the sun is out this morning, the sadness in the world right now is stunning. Probably close to a billion people in some form of lock down or quarantine, industries and wages brought to a standstill, thousands sick, thousands dead, thousands dying, thousands denying that the situation is serious

The ancient human lament – How did this happen? When will it end?

The Shambhala teachings say that when we break entirely from our habitual patterns, the tender heart of sadness emerges — and here we are, completely groundless, impermanence and dissolution manifesting in all realms simultaneously

a tenderness, a sadness so thick that we essentially bathe in it

Unable to swim home, we lie back, floating, and look to the sun, look to the vast and empty sky, rising and falling on the endless waves in this ocean without shores

without bottom,

without beginning,

without end.

 

 

photography, poetry, Reflections

remember

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On a recent African trip, we spent time at the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Kigali, Rwanda. A profoundly disturbing place, the Memorial commemorates the Rwandan genocide which was launched some twenty-five years ago. They say that over one million men, women and children died, and that as as many as 250,000 are buried on the site of the Memorial. Bewildered, overcome and overwhelmed, I stepped outside into the garden and sat, eyes closed. I simply tried to feel the energy of the place. Below is the piece that emerged….

 

Remember

 

Remember

the birds fed here

and the dogs — there are always

dogs. the dirt aches, an endless low

moan. someone laughs, but the ache

continues. the shadows here

taste like salt

 

the souls of the children

hide in the trees, watching

they do not laugh, will never

laugh. silent and alone

they wait for rain

 

 

 

note- the image above is a photo of a piece by Daniel Arsham on exhibit in the Moco Museum, Amsterdam in September, 2019.

 

 

© 2019 jafink/oldbonesnewsnow.com

 

 

photography, Reflections

treat ’em like a dog…

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happydog.5.31 (1)

 

About five years ago, I needed a dog. We’d just lost our beloved golden retriever, Abby, to cancer and I was lonely. My wife was out of town, so I stopped by the local pet rescue place to check out any puppies they might have. As karma would have it, they only had one puppy left, a seriously shy black pup who was hiding at the back of the puppy pen, trying very hard to avoid any eye contact with humans. I asked the woman at the front desk what the story was with this guy, and she said that he and two litter mates had been rescued from a “kill shelter” downstate a couple of days earlier (they’d been 12 hrs. from the gas chamber at the time.) His brother and sister had already been adopted and this little guy was left behind, mainly, she thought, because he was so shy.

 

I got down on the floor and picked him up. He wasn’t crazy about the idea and looked away from me the whole time as I tried to give him a scratch. Not exactly the golden retriever “lean”  I’d come to expect from a dog after 30 yrs. of goldens. I was bothered by this, but like I said, I needed a dog, so I told the woman at the counter that I’d take him. He wasn’t a golden, I’d never had a black dog, and I hadn’t had a male dog since high school. What could go wrong?

 

They thought he was about eight weeks old, a Labrador-border collie mix (wrong- he’s lab for sure, but also pitbull and pointer and…) Like I said, my wife was out of town, so it was just the two of us for several days. He was scared and I was sleepless, having forgotten how often a puppy needs to go “out.” Many was the time we looked at each other and asked- who’s bright idea was this?

 

I could have returned him- the rescue folks would take him back anytime up to three days post-adoption. But for some reason, I decided we’d hang on and see what we might work out. Picking up on his readiness to play and hike anytime night or day, I named him Jackson after the cartoon character from my childhood- “Action Jackson.”

 

Well, as I said, we’ve been together for over five years now. I can say without reservation that he’s the finest dog I’ve ever known. He’s smart, gentle, athletic and, in his own individual way, very affectionate. In the days, weeks and months after he came to live with us, Jack set about training us in how he wants to be loved. He still isn’t big on “cuddling,” or on direct eye contact, and please don’t reach toward his face to scratch his head. But if you’ll let him hold a ball while you’re petting him, he loves the “carwash” (scratching both sides as he slides between your legs), loves a belly rub on a sunny afternoon, and would absolutely accept an invitation onto the bed at night, though he always jumps off when its time to sleep.

 

In short, we couldn’t make him something he isn’t. He’ll never be a golden retriever. But he’s been patient with us, and over time, we’ve come to understand who he is and how to respect that. I was thinking about this history over Christmas this year as my kids, friends and family gathered in our home to celebrate the holiday. Inevitably, a human behavior laboratory like this can create frictions and irritations. No one, it seems, behaves as we’d like them to. Especially for family members and children, if they’d just listen and maybe take a hint, things would go so much better, no?    No

 

Why can’t I treat my sons, for example, as I’ve come to treat Jack? Why can’t I tune into how they want to be loved and do my best to give them that? Why, in other words, can’t I just treat my kids as well as my dog? I remember stories of students meeting with the late Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the founder of Shambhala. They say that CTR always spoke directly the basic goodness in everyone, not to their superficial neuroses. Maybe this “like a dog” thing is similar. My projections for Jack didn’t fit, and he shook them off, well, like a dog shakes off water. So I dropped the projection and began to see the real black dog in front of me. Suffering was reduced; love grew.

 

So that’s my New Year’s resolution – I’m going to try to treat everyone close to me like a dog. Try genuinely to see them as they are in themselves. Try to slap down my projections for them when they arise. Let them show me how they want to be loved, and try my best to give them that. My wife is always telling me that I give Jack too many treats — I tell her that one day, Jack is going to die (as dogs do,) and when that happens, she’s going to wish she’d given him more treats. So that’s on the New Years list too- more treats, fewer “corrections.”

 

We’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, I have a dog. A beautiful one who I love to distraction, and for that I’m profoundly grateful. By the way, Jack and I have talked at some length about this business of dogs dying. He’s promised me that he’ll never die, that he’ll stay with me forever.

 

I plan to hold him to that.

IMG_0027

 

© 2018 jafink/oldbones.newsnow.com/jfinkimages.com

photography, Reflections

From Inside the Fog Bank

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hiroshima-5

 

After my rant in the post “Why do you do that?” (Why do you do that?), it’s time to relaunch Jfinkimages.com.

I was talking with a painter friend of mine this morning about art and communication. On some level, we’re each in the fog bank of our own lives, and while we think we can clearly see each other, well, it’s often more opaque than that.

So here’s to sending up a small signal flare from inside this fog bank, from my fog to yours.

In thinking about making and sharing images, I’ve decided that my photo site will carry one or two collections of images at a time, no more.  My intention is that each collection will offer something of beauty in its own right.  Further, my hope is that one might enter the collection and linger for a few precious minutes. A bit of an anti-instagram perhaps. This won’t be for everyone. Come in and browse.

The first collection is entitled “Human Places.” Click the “slideshow” button in the upper right corner, then take it to full screen. Turn your sound on. I hope you enjoy the experience of this first collection.  From my fog bank to yours…

 

here’s the link:    Human Places

 

May it be of benefit,

 

Jeff