Poetry: More Mundane Mental Meanderings

STELLAE

Your light glances down
Giving incredible visions
Of eras long past
And gallant worlds beyond our own.
As a symbol, you have been
The Inspirer of Legend,
The Director of History
Your movements have guided the smallest
To the largest of tasks.

Oh stars, how many questions
Have been raised to you
As you sit knowingly, eternally
As a demigod of lightening
Powerful and indestructible?

Yet the merest wisp of moisture
Erases you from the heavens.


CORONA

The ones you wear are not of your choosing
Had you known, fear might have been
Your overriding emotion
Or curiosity
Masked as that insatiable desire
For knowledge of the unknown
Thrust upon you in the wink of an eye
None would have chosen your fate
You did not
Whether you know it, or care
You bear them well.

(Written in honor of the crew of the Challenger.)


REJECTION

The ocean bid me welcome
     though I was far
     from our usual meeting place
We had struck up quite a friendship
     the sea and I
So I ventured down
     to sit by her side
     for a time
But a fierce storm blew up
     from the south
     before I could arrive
So I sat
     not caring to venture
     from the warmth and dryness
     of my car
     gazing at the water
     pummelling the beach
Reaching out with my mind
     to embrace my friend
But the ocean
     like a wounded lover
     concealed her thoughts
     from me.

(Written while I was stationed at Tyndall AFB, on Florida's Gulf coast.)


DESOLATION

The wind and
lightening
symbols of
loneliness
(inescapable)
so far from home.
Searching for
friendship
companionship
Yet living
without a glimpse of warmth
kindness.
All I see
is the top
of one lonely tree
out here
(awful expanses)
on the prairie.

(Written while stationed at Tinker AFB, Oklahoma.)


THE FINAL DECISION

It wasn't always evil
Many came to meditate by its side
To play in the waves
To cool themselves from the summer sun
Its face was often benevolent
But when its obvious temper flared
Humans stayed away
Unknowingly wise in their fear
For they lacked the insight
To read the water
And often trusted it
When it did not deserve trust
For it was sly
And demanded occasional offerings
A rogue wave caused
The excitement it craved
Much time had passed
And it grew tired
Of the playful beings
Who frolicked in its surf
So it puffed itself up
Deciding it was time
And while his children watched
It killed the man whose back turned
Toward the waves.

(For Thomas Barton, my high school Advanced English teacher, who was killed by an ocean wave while on vacation.)


THE SECRET PLACE

Oh, to be all alone
amid the wood and wind
Where solitude lives and breathes,
becoming a welcome partner
in the pact
sealed before birth.
To wander over the years
always returning
to my secret lookout
over the beautiful horseshoe lake.
I brought my parents here,
my loved ones,
And my friends,
we sang a hymn to its beauty,
And met the One to whom I give all.
And finally
at my twilight I come
to the place
Where surrender means
to become a part of the mountain
In the only place
that yet has meaning.
To die here
alone
on Whiteface Mountain.

(Written either in Grad School or during summer "music camp" with the Gregg Smith Singers.  Both locations are close to Whiteface Mountain, the summit of which is one of the most beautiful places God ever created.  If one has to die, which we all do, I can think of no more beautiful place to do it.  What a great final visage it would make.)


BEAUTY
 
What is beauty
      if it is not the warm haze
     of a summer's day
     delicately lodged between
     the unwavering mountains
Or the rainbow
     cast against the backdrop
     of angry thunderheads
     still charged and alight
     with frightful bolts of lightening?
 
What is beauty
     if it cannot be seen
     in a blade of grass
     ebbing its way forth from earthen cracks
     in the stained sidewalk
Or in the dancing leaves
     on a lone tree
     growing between immense stone constructs
     in the heart of the city?
 
Even a child's tear
     pristine and moving
     as it is wiped away by one
     who cares enough to surrender all
     to protect his innocence and breath
     offers insight into
     a heavenly beauty
     incomprehensible by human understanding.
 
Through His gift of free will
     the universe lies wide before us
Our gift to Him
     our inner eyes which see beauty in all.
 
For by His hand
     all the beauty of the world
     was released from darkness
By His voice
     eternal silence was shattered
     by the vibrations of celestial music
And through His eyes the vision of a universe
     all encompassing and complete
     was released from His thought.  

(New York City, 1985)