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

bonesnsnowdeath, family, fathers, life, love, photography, photos, poems, poetry, relationships, sons Leave a comment

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

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

January 9, 2022Uncategorized

A Joyful Noise- Root Music of the Heartland

bonesnsnowfamily, life, love, photography, photos, poems, poetry, relationships 6 Comments

siting on hard pews and harder teachings

The end of the year always turns my thoughts to family, lineage and those who came before. A Joyful Noise- Root Music of the Heartland – the first in a series of “lineage poems,” words of origin and reflection, of receiving and giving. My parents, both born in the earliest part of the twentieth century (1915 and 1917,) met in a no-stoplight farm town in northwest Ohio. Bred of simple stock, firm in their protestant faith, the kind of belief that’s simply assumed, stitched into the fabric of a life.

Root Music

on my days alone, or late
when the day’s light is going 
I can often hear their voices 

the thin black line of the old songs 
wavering like smoke above the fields 
the sad soul songs of simple white churches 
 
I can see old white women, the knotted hands 
of hard lives passed in good work
of cold mornings and long days 

I can see old men bent stiff into their one black suit 
restless children, sitting on hard pews 
and harder teachings

I was raised by voices 
planted in the flat black dirt of Ohio 
the granges and barns of a world expired 

now, when the sun has worn itself out 
and the heat of the land begins to fade
I like to sit and listen as darkness falls 

listen to the birds settling home
listen for the hymns as they begin to rise 
from the land 

listen to my own jagged life 
beginning to round

© 2022 jafink/oldbonesnewsnow.com

the first in a series of “lineage poems,” words of origin and reflection, of receiving and giving

December 11, 2021buddhism, karma, love, photography, poetry

Karma – Poems On Anger and Redemption

bonesnsnowbuddhism, dharma, karma, life, love, meditation, photography, photos, poems, poetry, practice, relationships 1 Comment

one act in anger

lifetimes of merit fade – flames

devour the land

———————————

———————————

As Pema Chodron said (more or less)

(https://pemachodronfoundation.org/)

“All these years of practice, same shitty old mind”

It’s said that Samsara, the endless cycle of birth, old age, sickness and death, is subtle, grinding and pervasive. And so it is. Recently, I had the “opportunity” to look directly at my own root klesha, that of anger (kleshas are the habitual behaviors that keep us stuck in Samsara, lifetime after lifetime –https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleshas_(Buddhism).) On a recent trip with my wife and dear friends, I got triggered and without thinking acted out of irritation and anger. In addition to directly harming someone most dear to me, I could instantly feel whatever merit I may have accumulated in years of meditation practice completely drain away.

In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, “merit” is said to be accumulated through practice and is essential as fuel for further practice on the path to awakening (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merit_(Buddhism)

It’s also said that a single act of anger can destroy lifetimes of merit. And so it felt.

Actions cannot be undone, only addressed by subsequent action. We practice, we stumble, we get up again and resolve to do better. Perhaps, with grace, to soften the karma of this earlier action. And so it goes,

around and around and around…

Two poems then, the haiku above and the poem below, speaking to the experience of action and remorse – may they be of benefit

Jeff

———————————

Karma

anger, rising like a flame, 
brief yellow, white hot
and she’s hurt

this girl you’ve always loved 
completely. thoughtless, 
you’ve burned her to white bone.

actions refuse to be undone.
whatever merit you’ve gathered
turns to dust, blows away
on the icy winds of hell.

dedicate whatever days remain
to her.
breathe only love and loving kindness.
you will fail

but at least you will try.

prostate and purify
collect mantra like dreams
offer incense, the tendrils of smoke
rising into heaven. your hair

beginning to burn.

March 7, 2021image, photography, poetry, Reflections

Wordless Love – the Sweet Experience of Loving an Old Dog

bonesnsnowblack dogs, death, dogs, love, mortality, old dog, old men, photography, poetry 2 Comments

**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

May 31, 2020image, photography, poetry

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.

September 24, 2017image, photography, poetry

message

bonesnsnowdeath, distance, friends, iceland, life, Loss, love, photos, poetry, rain, relationships, tears Leave a comment

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

March 9, 2017image, poetry

Home

bonesnsnowchildren, family, future, home, life, love, parents, photography, poems, poetry, relationships, wedding 2 Comments

This was written for the wedding of my oldest son last month. Life…

Home

the man on the radio

said children first learn

there are three dimensions-

height and width and, of course

length, like a shoebox, or a house.

and only later do they learn

of the fourth dimension, time

the one that lends meaning

to all the others – standing here today

as we watch you prepare

to begin building your life together

I am acutely conscious of time

of how the immediacy of youth

can ripen of its own accord

into patience

of how we begin by thinking that love

is something that happens to us

like a bee sting, or an unexpected fall

and only later do we see that love

is something organic, that if we’re lucky

is something we might grow

to inhabit, like an atmosphere

or more, something that might

come to infuse us, like blood.

the older I become, the fewer things

I take to be certain. But some few things

I do know. I know that keeping score

is never helpful. I know that love

for one another is cultivated

through an appreciation of small things.

I know that even amid the uncertain winds

of this life, in this you might find shelter —

that if you are willing to work together

with patience, and with love,

and perhaps with some small measure of grace,

you must certainly succeed

in constructing of your lives a home.

May 1, 2016image, photography, poetry

first sight

bonesnsnoweyes, karma, love, love at first sight, photography, poetry, reincarnation Leave a comment

do you believe in love at first sight,

they ask? ascending this endless ladder

of lifetimes, each has once been the mother

of the other – and so too must we all then

have been lovers across these countless lives.

how else to explain this knowing, this too-

intimate recognition, this glance from the woman

on the bus that draws the air from your lungs

extracting your heart as she rises and goes

the accordion doors slapping shut behind her

leaving you with nothing but the memory

of those luminous eyes,

never, in this lifetime,

to be seen again.

March 20, 2016photography, poetry, Uncategorized

wet dogs

bonesnsnowcold, dogs, loneliness, Loss, love, photography, poetry, winter 2 Comments

maybe mornings like this

are the price we pay

for all those years of compromise

of being barely close enough

to each other. We’ve survived,

at least we share that, such a thin

blanket to cover the cold spots

on cold mornings such as this.

Yet I do like grey winter days

when the wind rattles the leafless trees

and the world turns without shadows.

heading out, my dog looks daggers

up at the clouds — he doesn’t understand

the rain, why he should have to endure

these cold tears falling from a sheet metal sky.

Neither of us has ever been very good

with cause and effect, or the subtle attributes

of time. What choice is there but to carry on,

as we always have, sniffing at the rotten snow

heads down, shaking ourselves dry, nose

to tail as we go – just cold, wet dogs

searching for a place

that’s safe and warm and dry.

February 28, 2016poetry

love and death

bonesnsnowdeath, jim harrison, love, poetry, reading, rexroth 2 Comments

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?

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old bones, new snow

poetry, images and time

Tag Archives: love

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

Over Ohio

A Joyful Noise- Root Music of the Heartland

Root Music

Karma – Poems On Anger and Redemption

As Pema Chodron said (more or less)

Karma

Wordless Love – the Sweet Experience of Loving an Old Dog

it means we made promises

message

Home

first sight

wet dogs

love and death