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
a brilliant day
mountains, flowers, lakes
then a red truck pulls out blind
no time for thought,
tires screaming on hot blacktop,
the car sliding, too fast, too fast,
no room
a white face in the window
a man turning, surprised
we bear down, burning fifty
to zero in thirty feet and somehow
we slide right,
rock to a stop
just
short
the whole thing flashes faster than thought
the face glares at me,
slams his truck across traffic
and disappears
we look at each other
seemingly fine
no harm, no foul?
driving home, my right arm
shakes like current
sizzling in a frayed wire
in the dark garage
I close my eyes,
the hot engine ticking down in silence
our lives continue
© 2020 jafink/oldbonesnewsnow.com
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.
© 2020 jafink/oldbonesnewsnow.com
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.
© 2020 jafink/oldbonesnewsnow.com
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.
© 2020 jafink/oldbonesnewsnow.com
(a partial inventory of things for which I grieve
in this time of pandemic)
Hugs and hands and friendly kisses.
A bar of soap in the dish, unremarkable and dry.
Going out to breakfast, pancakes and eggs, bacon
chatting with the waitress while waiting for you.
Driving to a meeting in town, boring, endless,
ordinary. College basketball. Baseball season.
Missing easy shots in tennis and losing my cool,
as if it mattered. Golden mornings passed
in silent meditation, my feet cold
on retreat, loving and being loved,
the soft sound of all of us breathing together,
as if it mattered. Being cold, being hot, wind,
rain, snow and sunburn. Sacred places,
Yosemite, The Grand Canyon, Dolomiti skies.
Cinque Torri at sunset, then again at dawn.
Parisian museums. Parisian meals. Parisian coffee.
Paris.
Venice in the morning. Eating gelato in Rome.
Eating more gelato in Rome.
Aging simply but still feeling young.
Not being classified as vulnerable.
Not being classified.
Not needing to sanitize the keys in order to loan the car
to my son. Seeing my sons. Holding them.
Seeing my infant granddaughter. Holding her
even if it still makes her cry.
The illusion of safety.
The familiar smell of my personal cocoon.
Never having to consider case counts, respirators
or exponential curves.
Believing myself to be harmless to others (or mainly so.)
Belief in a particular future.
The future.
The freedom to ignore a simple cough.
Taking a single breath for granted.
Believing that time is continuous, endless and free.
Ignorance of the gray man stalking the streets
counting breaths.
A committed belief in Death
as an abstraction.
© 2020 jafink/oldbonesnewsnow.com
we recently lost a friend to cancer, a death that prompted a number of close-to-the-bone poems for me. some so close that I don’t feel like I can share them without causing pain to her family. perhaps this, about a dinner we shared with her husband along the way, might touch on it without going too far…
he should get out some, she said, but how?
out of what? into what? knowing as we do
that her disease
is consuming their lives together.
that she’s at home slowly dying
while we sit here, sharing a meal.
we spend the evening speaking of birds
of the intelligence of crows.
of how she would watch the eagles
over the lake hunting the ducks.
of how she always sided with the ducks
though they rarely survived the attack.
of how birdsong at morning
differs profoundly from the songs of evening.
of how darkness seems to swoop down
and swallow the final notes.
of how in the deepest dark of night
countless birds are said to pass overhead
through the highest of heavens,
following the ancient ways north, and then south
and then north again. of how this migration
of souls passes completely unseen.
of how, in the end, there is so very much
that each of us must ultimately take on faith.
© 2018 jafink/oldbones.newsnow.com
for jessica, who showed us all that gentle does not mean weak…
Message
we got your message in the morning
that she’d died the night before
on the other side of the world. tears
mixed with iceland’s rain. so cold
so very far away. Every one of us
is so very far away
© 2017 jafink/oldbones.newsnow.com/jfinkimages.com
all afternoon
I’ve been touched by light
the fabric of the clouds
on the leading edge of a storm
the afternoon sun
on the red-gold veins
in the stone floor, touched
as if there was someone there
just beyond my sight
someone saying here, now, look
you have far less time
than you’ve ever imagined
© 2016 jafink/oldbones.newsnow.com
I spent the afternoon
reading poems before the fire, alternating
between Rexroth on love and Harrison
on death – one after the other, first love
and then death, and then love
and then again death – but then
I began to cheat (as I sometimes do)
going from love to love when I’d had
too much death, or death and death again
when love had become too much. love
and death, diastole and systole. I wonder
if I just keep reading until the poetry
exhausts itself, will this all end with death?
or will death’s cold hand yield in the end
to the exquisite supplications of love?
© 2016 jafink/oldbones.newsnow.com