each stalk of grass is hollow and barren this time of year skeletons of viridescent pasts like raw leafless trees memories of living and of dying the pulling back the cocooning of life in silent night, darkness chambers, interiors of many plants and animals teaches us all about the death and the rebirth of life, light so that we won’t fully despair
Deer Creek. Image, my own.
The Return
the light returns this morning with the owls they call from tree to branch, as sun
pinks surely over the charcoaled horizon kilned through night, and sealed in the new, cold light
of this winter morning where I’m aghast at the magic, memory magnificence, majesty transitive verb
of the whole thing where I am present when the light is seven minutes old and each
photon graces my retina with the reminder that the light always returns until it doesn’t
until the whole sky is bathed in numinous halogenic possibility the presence of the now
as the light returns may we remember the power of the darkness the importance
of slow, intentional rest, the rejuvenating properties of sleep for a world that simply needs to listen to
the magic of the intransitive verbs of owls
Christmas Windmill. Image, my own.
Dark
Enfold me in your blackness, I don’t want to be afraid of the dark In fact, I want to embrace my shadow Shadows of all that I thought would Suck the marrow out of me, but instead Offered me a respite, a resting place A hallowed breath of solace and silence Dark, the thing that so much incandescent Luminosity is meant to fight, to ward off, as Humanity wilts under all this light
Tamarisk and Gray Skies. Image, my own.
Space
Maybe the most surprising thing about poems is that they take a fair amount of space and time The words are often all there, waiting on the lip, the tip of consciousness, but flow takes room Takes open-ended realities, wide skies like altars in the arcing air, vast closenesses and distances Which the heart contemplates, the healing place, the hell, the compassionate lengths to which a Human will go to tell a truth, a peace, a playful nothing, a love, a life, a poem
The Road. Image, my own.
Don’t Die
when it began, I’m not quite sure, but as of late my son has a new post script for nearly every exchange, “don’t die” he tells me as I start the engine of the car, “don’t die” he encourages as I head off to work “don’t die” when the rain is falling in sheets that darken each atom of exposed earth, he must understand something about the nature of life
Beloved and Time. Image, Aubreigh Parks.
Celebration
sometimes the celebration will be the growing of the light minute by minute over the horizon, moment by moment in our children’s eyes. Sometimes the celebration will be the sleep, the forgetting, the separation and the longing which brings deeper communion with the divine, the place, the way, unsure, the path, the journey, one precious step at a time. Sometimes the celebration will be the growing of the self, the yearning, expanding, nearly cracking open of your sternum with the enlarging, ever-beating heart, the lungs full-burdened with life giving nitrogen plus oxygen, exhale the heaviness and grief, inhale, close your eyes and let go
So here we gather On this bright and Dark day in the Fresh World, to see if there Is a turkey of love Between us– siblings, cousins, lovers, parents, Friends. And there it Is– LOVE– carved out For us in some miracle Since the creation of the Cosmos scuttled us All together on this blue- Green blessing of a planet Quantum journey, accidental Adventure, maybe in another Life we don’t know one another We haven’t stood witness To one another’s joy and Pain. But here, now We are the people we Know and love because Of particles of song shared Between us, and mud Fights on Thanksgivings Long ago, and stories that Have connected us all Bringing us to this Moment– to Gather to Settle softly into miraculous Gratitude. Thank you I love you. Forgive me, I forgive You. I love you. All love.
Art Center. November 2024. Image, my own.
Other Ghosts
So now there are other ghosts The angels of the past have Come to comfort and protect, To bring peace and stability I don’t know how I know, but Others feel it too, they enter They awe, I feel the ancestors In the daily spirals of My existence, the soil of My backyard, the song of The trees and birds in the Ancient ash. Many others feel them, too, and tell me They are near, they are Present. I know that I am Not the only one who has Ever been separated from My alter, my shelter, my Building, my dreams torn For a vision of the future I could not ascribe I’m learning each day That each ancient has Been sent as a guide The present and the Beyond, they’ve become one
Fall-Winter Bridge. November 2024. Image, my own.
One
Of the most powerful Things happened to me And I can both be humane And protect myself against Smiling scoffs, unkind people Who would make a mockery of Pain, I am so glad that I can live My life wild and free, I was Given a second chance at Love, at happiness You too? I will never take that for granted, My joy– that joy will go on to Fill me, myself, my people And all the rivers of song
Community Garden. November 2024. Image, my own.
The “Last” Great Thanksgiving
That’s what the menu read And then they were all gathered In one place—humans—with the Most similar genetic makeup of Any group of sapiens on planet Earth. Siblings. And it was good
Woods– lovely, light, dark, deep. November 2024. Image, my own.
i. Vivace The Body and Brain create a near-constant concerto, Orchestral ensemble that one piece of the body May be tasked with– the soloist, for a moment– The violin of your legs stands in the spotlight Lifting the bow back, striking the perfect legato When you lift each leg to strike the pedal: rising, falling, Rising, falling, in perfect détaché, the synchrony, Breathtaking, a veritable martelé, up and down, Crescendoing, up and down, faster and faster, Staccatos building as you climb that little kicker, Beast of a hill, every note separate and distinct and Purposeful and achingly beautiful, melody in movement
ii. Largo The reality is that the soloist, The part of the brain or body that is on display, is Accompanied by an orchestra of other reactions, Symphony, an entire production of body-brain actors Breath increasing as you crest the top of the climb Then wide, expansive sucks of air through your lungs as you Descend, behind the soloist your legged String instrument, a complex array of bodily musical Tools, exchanges of sensory information via energy, chemicals, Afferent and efferent neural fibers, we know this But to experience it is so much more vivid, vibrant, Actual art an afferent neuron gathering signals from
iii. Adagio The skin like the finely tuned drumhead of the timpani You’re pedaling along at a rapid pace and your Neurons are sending each breeze that crests your Quadricep, each flexion of your fingers as you Reposition your palm to the vibration of your handlebars You begin to really circle, pushing, leaning into the Pedals with more and more force, lifting your Foot up to keep time and pace with the peloton This is where the sensory experience really Begins to take off, you’re in the pace line driving Your muscles pumping with blood, efferent signals, Through the femoral profunda, spiccato of oxygen
iv. Finale Feeding the whole quadricepal system: vastus medialis, Vastus lateralis, vastus intermedius, and rectus femoris Don’t forget the glutes, rich, ringing riot of brain-body orchestration, molto crescendo Coming in hot… finish line, and stop!
Ramón u Cajal, Neuron, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales
Polyphonic Technicolor Synesthesia
this is how it feels to be in an autumn wood at sunset, the entire mountain set ablaze, a conflagration of color in that warm waning light, each leaf in stark relief to something visually near– brittle topaz bark, white aspen trunk, every
sense housed in neon-rich sculptural portals a magpie cackles from a scrub oak turning amber its wings that look so black in flight reflect a deep maxixe beryl, oceanic opalescent contrast Paul Klee’s Polyphic Setting for White
poets, mostly, long for synesthesia so that they can produce that contrast that catch of the craw between all worlds– senses coming undone in an autumn wood or at the very least they’d like to produce it on the page, certainly the experience
might be so disconcerting as to be horrible but if you could see autumn lanced by a sunset or a taste a technicolor leaf as it fell in a stream of wild wind, maybe if you’re there long enough in the woods, the colors begin to have
a particular flavor, like the brown dry leaves of wyethia amplexicaulis, mule-ears become tiramisu in the mushroom undergrowth they take on a shape in your psyche like a rhombus with the sun setting above the far angle, always forty-five degrees
Michigan City Public Libaray, Michigan City, Illinois. Architect Helmut Jahn, 1977.
Thin
i do not know what it is about now, every- thing just feels papery a little thin around the edges, a little dry and flat
Billings Public Library, Billings, Montana. Will Bruder Architects, 2013.
To Write a Poem
to write a poem is a lot of staring out of eyes through windows
Desert Air Motel, Sanderson, Texas. Built in 1960, restored, 2022.
Send Your Kids Weird Texts
Send your kids weird texts Tell them that you’ll Give them lunch money If, when you are really Old, almost gone, they Will let you run your Papery, age-spotted hand Through the thicket Of their hair Make them pause Question the sanity Of your replies Make them promise So that your five bucks Is paid forward in your Elder years, it’ll be worth it To give them a future Imagination of how Much you will Always love them
Synesthesia as an Image, Public Domain.
Abandon All Solutions
One of my good friends Heard this in a dream Or in a wakened state Where she was contacted By the Universe, So the advice wasn’t really Given directly to me, But it has come to mean Everything
Lawrence Public Library, Lawrence, Kansas. Gould Evans Architects, design John Wilkins, 2014.
Four little poems for your day. Happy, Merry sweet humans. xx MM
Central Park bathed in sunshine (June 2024).
….
Flow
flow can be the essence of knowing the power of prescience the smell of petrichor the smooth surface of an ocean tossed pebble, translucent amber the great wave of goodness but flow can also be the tumultuous spume, the glassy, wind-bereft waters, the deep, dark, depths the void, the unknowing don’t forget that flow has many ways and many waves
….
Into the Green
There are more words, expressions, descriptions of green in human language than are intoned for any other chroma
when you are draped in green golded and guilded in green it is completely obvious why this hue
green captures the eye grounds the heart breaths through the body as you realize that you’re respirating
at the same rate as the statuary oak next to you the ash is breathing out a sigh of joy, just as you do
The cottonwood leaves glittering green, making a magical cacophony of nearly silent whispers which crescendo into a forte of breezy, winsome refrains
aspen, largest living organism, holding ground in root and spear as they shiver and rattle in green all their own a sort of awe and wonder at once
alluring, regenerative, stable, steady, cholrophyllic music, all love-mixed whimsy and reality each leaf a hard-earned medallion, sign of life
….
Reverberation
It’s impossible to feel alone soaking in the reverberation of humanity ringing through the great halls of civilization. The echo. The sound. The deconstructed interplay of all those expressions and explications bouncing and bounding around in the domed, arched architecture. Dancing over the simulacra, art, massive and tiny, representative of nothing and everything. The absolute alacrity the beatific joy of each repercussive utterance. Jazz. A fusion of improvisational auditory stimuli. The resounding transcendence of humanity in the envelope of a space. Astonishing.
….
Tuesday
On a Tuesday in December Life will eventually present you with the fact that you have absolutely no answers not one
I don’t use that word lightly—fact
On a Tuesday in December, You’ll be opened wide by the love of the people who have offered you a life raft,
A golden, glittering net—a light, a torch.
You’ll come to the understanding, the conclusion, that life brings you many endings, many beginnings to teach you
that life has no end no beginning
it simply is this beautiful imperative this open, pulsing opportunity at love that you will never receive again, this moment this is it
Oregon coast putting on a glorious show. (June 2023)
The first rays of an orbital sunrise break through the Earth’s horizon. NASA iss066e099389 (Dec. 30, 2021)
Friends,
It’s certainly a gift that I feel I can use this moniker to describe each and every one of you. If you don’t feel like I’m your friend, will you please reserve that judgement for hallway talk? Or see me after class so that I can assure you of my care.
Here’s the thing, when you stepped through the doors of this classroom, somewhere around August 17th, 2023, I was already determined and committed to create a space where we can and could all safely explore concepts that require a fair amount of nuance and maturity.
But here is the other secret I happen to already have known: you have the prerequisites to be successful in this kind of open, thoughtful, argument-based inquiry and exploration. You see, everything, at its core, is an argument. Some arguments are petty—not worth engaging in. Some arguments are about cleaning toilets—your choice. But most arguments simply surround the differences of perspective, experience, and ways in which we’d like to control the world around us.
Now beyond argument, there is a field, and I’d like to call this field TRUTH. Many of the arguments we engage in as humans can be extrapolated into our desire to discover, uncover, find, know, and live in Truth. (Something I think is innate to our species.) And truth has taken a real beating in our society and culture as of late. As the information age and technological age have chaotically clashed and melded together, not unlike the birth of a new star, we have a constant stream of data that is both driven our way and so effortlessly accessible at the click of one key stroke or touch digit that we forget how far humanity has come on this examination of truth before you were even a gleam in your parent’s eyes. (You can google that idiom after class if you don’t know what I’m talking about.)
But if there is one thing I am certain of, it is that Truth with a capital T still exists. There is truth to be had and found in the world, and I hope that your research, your writing, your thinking and pondering on the subjects you have chosen this year (including your “self” in your personal narratives) have caused you to invest in this examination of the world with the intent to find truth. Don’t let the algorithm and the horrific car-crash videos you watch take that quest away from you. Don’t let AI rob you of the opportunity to figuratively bend the squishy matter we recognize as brain in coruscating synapses and ever-more lovely electrical exchanges of action-potential through your very own neurotransmitters. Use your sublime brain for your and humanity’s betterment. Promise me.
Things I have learned that don’t matter: being swoll or the hottest person in the room, being cool like above all comment because your persona gives off such a vibe or drip-and-smack that you are inaccessible (most of the time I’ve found that those who are “cool” often remain inaccessible to themselves); being “right”, this one is huge, and there is absolutely no honor in it. There isn’t one correct way to do things, and once you free yourself of this constraint you’ll live much more happily. And living too much in either retrospection—the nostalgia and glow of the past; or prospection—the lust and thirst for a future that hasn’t happened yet.
Live, my beautiful friends, with your eyes wide open in wonder. Live with your arms thrown apart ready to receive both the pain and the joy that life will bring you. Live so that you are constantly, even doggedly, learning more and evolving as a human every. single. day. Live the questions. (That’s Rilke. You can look it up, too.)
Now it’s all well and fine for me to offer you this “advice” but please don’t think I can even live the half of it myself. However, I’ve also learned that the more you practice these modes of living right here, right now, being present, sitting in the packet of time you’re fixed to and watching the experience unfold as you settle in– allowing you to determine how you can love more, reciprocate better, and evolve with grace, and seek that capital T truth– the better off you’ll be. In fact, the some of the best advice I’ve ever received comes from Lori McKenna’s song “Humble and Kind” from her album The Bird and the Riffle. (Also covered by Tim McGraw who is a little more famous.) She reminds, “When you get where you’re going, turn right back around. And help the next one in line. Always be humble and kind.” And then, just like that (snap), it’s gone. And you are moving on to the next moment, episode, or lesson that life offers.
Nothing can make a human feel more small and insignificant that taking just a moment to ponder on the infinite. Or the eventual dissolution of the infinite into entropy (still infinite, I believe). As the physicist and writer Alan Lightman, in his book, The Transcendent Brain, describes, “I believe that the spiritual experiences we have can arise from atoms and molecules. At the same time, some of these experiences, and certainly their very personal and subjective nature, cannot be fully understood in terms of atoms and molecules. I believe in the laws of chemistry and biology and physics — in fact, as a scientist I much admire those laws — but I don’t think they capture, or can capture, the first-person experience of making eye contact with wild animals and similar transcendent moments. Some human experiences are simply not reducible to zeros and ones.” There simply isn’t an algorithm that can capture the human experience.
One day this will all be gone, we will all be gone. Just like Macklemore says in his song (“Excavate”, Gemini). And there will be some kid in the hallways of Wasatch High School, like L. Daines who is looking for herself or himself in the sound of her/his music (also Macklemore), “Because music is a mirror…” Let’s not make our eventual death the reason we live. Instead, let’s live between these two great mysteries within whatever searing, glittering moments we’re presented with. And then turn and give our help, our hands, our brains, and our hearts to those other humans around us who make OUR world go round. That’s it. I think.
Once upon a time, I sat at the California Academy of Sciences in their astronomy hall underneath a false sky filled with tiny pin-prick light bulbs made to resemble stars, and listened to the smooth baritone of Tom Hanks narrate something like the advent of the Universe as though it was a nighttime story. Goodnight Moon, but better. When the camera moved from focus on our Milky Way Galaxy to an increasingly anamorphic lens, I, and the rest of the audience, could see that galaxy after galaxy after galaxy after galaxy… it really did appear to go on forever, infinitely.
Just like those galaxies, star upon infinite star, there are so many things that go into making up one single human person. The innumerable number of atoms, the constantly functioning systems. Just breathing, for heaven sakes, takes… do we know how many systems are engaged in one human breath? None of this has to matter to you. But I do hope that you’ll continue to put your best brain forward in every moment, every breath you are part of.
Today is one ending. You’re leaving, you’re out of here. But tomorrow, a new day will dawn. You’ll have the chance to gaze upon another sunrise. And if you’re not into that, to watch the death of another day as dusk moves us into night. Beautiful, either way. A new moment will rise, and you’ll be given opportunity after opportunity to make the most of your life. I hope you’ll take and treasure each one.
And when you realize that you’re rushing on, your attention is whacky and divided, or you’ve gotten trapped outside yourself and the road is dark and the path is winding, and you don’t know the way home, I hope you’ll consider thinking about the way/ways you can share your gifts with others to reorient your true heart. So I’m going to leave you with this poem. A gift from my true heart to yours. Don’t forget that for each end, there certainly is a new now. A gift of beginning.
The End From the Beginning
Endings, they definitely aren’t my favorite. A bird in the hand… they claim. I’m better if some things never change. A feather in a vacuum, only acted on by gravity Falls as fast as anything. This fundamental of physics makes my head spin. Like that janitor who left all of his fortune to the library where he shined the broken tiles day-in and day-out. Here. Now.
Refined + Rugged 