17 Sunday Aug 2014
14 Thursday Aug 2014
Posted in Ancient ways, Nature, Poetry
27 Sunday Jul 2014
Opened the window yesterday,
from off the bay, a breeze,
cool beneath the sun’s blaze,
blew in and brought me
laughter from next door,
overhead, geese honking,
from the street, tinkling music
of an ice cream truck;
then images, like dreams,
drifted through the window to me,
the last a steep hill,
long grass blowing,
the far side of the hill a cliff
that dropped off to the sea,
beyond, the pinks of sunset fading;
on the cliff’s edge,
facing north, a house;
I live there, sometimes at peace
and sometimes lonely,
sometimes lifted
by exhilarating winds
that sing to me.
20 Sunday Jul 2014
Posted in Ancient ways, Love, Nature, Poetry, Relationships
In the movie Groundhog Day,
Bill Murray has to live the same
day again and again.
The day of sun and wind,
when we met at the Blue Danube,
would be my choice, if I could choose
one day to live
over and over.
We left and took a walk;
on narrow streets
you told me about growing up
in London, Irish Catholic;
by the beach I talked
about my life, laughing:
all my stories so sordid;
as kites soared high,
I felt free
to tell you anything.
I wouldn’t have to improve
my endlessly repeating,
already perfect day,
since I didn’t know yet
the chilly wind
meant you would soon turn cold.
Each year the groundhog,
on his day, comes out
and sees his shadow or he doesn’t,
predicting more of winter
or coming of an early spring;
I never heard this year’s prediction,
but it feels
like a long, long winter.
18 Friday Jul 2014
Montana, 1958, California, 2014
Windy sky blew a memory my way,
long ago family visit to Montana:
horseback riding with my ten-year-old cousin
Tony, born cowboy, rounding up strayed cattle;
long green grass, narrow streams
swimming with fish, huge sky overhead.
Afterward, back to my aunt and uncle’s home;
my aunt cooking supper
for family and ranch hands;
my uncle, foreman of the ranch, with stories
of life on the range; family one short:
Tony’s much older brother,
not cut out for cowboy life,
already off to the city.
Never saw them again; in my mind,
they are still in Montana that day
of glorious summer,
even though snow fell
two weeks later, and some years after,
they moved to a ranch in Nevada.
Long gone, my aunt and uncle,
none of my cousins know where Tony
is; I hope beneath a wide blue sky.
15 Tuesday Jul 2014
Posted in Love, Nature, Poetry, Relationships
Next door, the birds—now too late
to know what kind—sang in the dark,
kept me company long before dawn;
the neighbors boarded up the eaves,
told me, laughing, that the birds,
for days, kept flying, flying
against the boards.
Sometimes I find I’ve boarded
up my heart.
One by one I take the boards down,
let in the pain and love again.
The early morning dark now quiet;
I don’t know when your heart will fly
home to my heart,
and so I sing.
08 Tuesday Jul 2014
Posted in Emotions, Love, Nature, Poetry, psychic awareness
Dead air between us,
I can’t hear you, feel you.
The sycamore says
I am held captive in a cave
by the spell of my old certainty,
my first certainty:
all will go wrong,
none will love me,
the sun will turn red
and then black,
the leaves on all of the trees
will twist and turn and fall
in the dark wind.
So now I sit on a stone,
my feet put down roots;
I draw up honeyed sweetness
from the earth
and burst into leaf and flower.
I sing a song,
the dark wind passes,
and you call to me.
03 Thursday Jul 2014
Posted in Ancient ways, Dreams, Nature, Poetry, Spirituality
Painting by Henri Rousseau, The Dream
Moon in the deepening dusk
awakens a vision of harmony,
each separate thing
part of the whole,
one with nature
and the mystery:
lions, elephant, snake,
bright-feathered birds
unmoving yet vibrant, alive;
plants growing before my eyes,
flowers fed by moonlight;
woman, strong, sensual, gleaming,
listening to the black man
play an endless melody
sent from the stars.
24 Saturday May 2014
Posted in Books, Emotions, Nature, Poetry, Relationships
Tags
One day in December each year,
my elderly husband, angry
at me about something or other, as usual,
would walk slowly out to the garage,
using his grandfather’s cane to help
with painful joints;
he’d find the box of bulbs he’d dug up
months earlier, go to the garden,
get down on his knees, and plant daffodils.
Later he would come back in humming
a little song and dreaming
of spring’s yellow triumphs,
his transformation no less miraculous
than when, in The Secret Garden,
one of his favorite movies,
a weak, sickly boy
is brought out to a garden,
previously neglected but now blooming,
and walks for the first time in years.
20 Tuesday May 2014
Posted in Ancient ways, Nature, Poetry, Reflections, Spirituality
My husband, Eugene “Charlie” Chase, passed away,
age 93, four months after the event described below.
I step outside at dusk,
the long day done,
the long night just begun.
My husband sleeps upon his bed,
too weak to turn and tired
from the wandering of his mind,
the long day done,
the long night just begun.
All day I’ve wondered
will the latest drug turn him around
or is his final passage near?
I ask the dusk, “Is he headed
for death?” I look up as I say
the words and see four birds
fly west above the sugar pine,
a message from the Universe
(birds are its favorite messengers).
The Four of Wands, a rite of passage
marked, the Four of Swords,
the warrior takes his rest,
the west, direction of the setting sun,
to minds of old, the home of death.
So now I know, his soul will soon
take flight,
the long day done,
the long night just begun.
A Life in Poems 