You breathe one breath and repeat.

It all comes from the one original breath.

Whatever that is, however you define it,

Try to explain it,

Worship it,

Curse it,

Dismiss it,

Or relish it.

At one point there was nothingness.

Somehow one breath of life breathed.

There is no real technology,

No real knowledge,

No civilization,

No war,

No peace,

Just the one breath that we as individuals,

Solely and collectively manifest.

One original breath of creation.

Breathe it in and repeat.

You’ve gotten to the point where you didn’t care anymore,

Or couldn’t care anymore if one more thing went wrong,

Because you felt like it would be the end,

Your well had run dry,

Your supplies had been exhausted,

And your collapse seemed imminent,

Whatever that would have meant for you.

And you know you’ve felt that, and maybe you worry that you could feel it again,

Or it’s never left you completely,

Or it comes back to visit you,

More often than you’d like,

And stays longer than you’d like.

Sometimes I meet the ones for whom that one more thing went wrong,

And for them all that could break was broken,

And I hear it in the sad words they’ve spoken,

And I realize that there is both a lot and a little that separates us,

And I can’t know their pain,

Nor can I overstate mine,

But I know that what separates me from them is not my strength,

Not my patience,

Not my smarts,

Not my heart,

But luck.

It has occurred to me that nature

Does not serve me the way it served Mary Oliver.

Surely it calms me, and transports me,

But only sometimes advises me, guides me, to my true peaceful purpose.

No, I get absorbed by music.

Not every time I hear it, but often enough to know,

That in the way Mary examines each petal of the rose

And attribute to it natural happiness and then breathes that into her own heart;

I enjoy a great song.

The other day I heard an alt country song on Spotify Joe Ely Radio.

At one point, an accordion filled 8 bars, followed by a steel essentially echoing, followed by the accordion and steel together.

I loved with all my heart the similarities in the notes by each musician,

But marveled at how the tones of the instruments themselves created a unique beauty that

Spoke to my heart,

And I breathed it all the way in.

And I felt a little more free,

A little more transported,

A little more like I can usually find joy,

If I really want it.

Your grave site serves no purpose for me yet.

The bench with your name and your funny quip sits without my having sat.

I think often of the side trip on the way to work

Or of eating myself full before or after at the enormous portions breakfast stop.

But then I don’t go and I don’t stop.

Nearly 18 months have gone by.

I wonder if I am neglectful.

As if I’ve forgotten,

But most days it’s still like you’re here.

Stopping on my own volition,

I think would take that away.

In a strange way, I’m glad that sometimes we’d go days without speaking,

and weeks without seeing each other.

Without those empty spaces,

I don’t know how I could survive

This large,

Cold,

Empty space.

I feel old today.
The ache in my bones that feels ordinary as I age
has turned angry creating a physical and emotional limp.

That which makes me feel energized is gone.
The hope for a brighter, much brighter future in my lifetime
which has naively sustained me
no longer burns.

However delusional I have been, I am no longer.

Neither me nor my children will see the hungry fed.
Or the homeless housed.
Or the despised loved.

I will go forward
looking to the sunlight and ignoring all around me,
as I have done for nearly sixty years.
Except now I know that in my remaining years
that is all that awaits me.

I will do my part to find peace in my meditation.
I will do my part to help others as I have always done.
But the notion that someday my good works will be done
and the world will be better as a whole
is
extinguished.

I am not surprised that is true.
I am surprised that it has knocked me on the head so ruthlessly.

Today

Here in the woods by the ocean,

I look for my brother’s presence.

I am willing and able to see signs where there are none knowing that he is with me.

155 Sundays have passed since the ordinary Sunday became so sadly different.

What was supposed to be a visit before he went home turned into a chaotic last goodbye.

I saw a deer disappear in the brush and his brother watching, wondering if he was safe.

“Brother, I’m gone!”

I had a bunny run around me on the path to avoid me, only to return to the space he was working.

“Brother, I’m right here!”

 

The dust will not settle for awhile.
In all likelihood, more will be reduced to dust,
to ash, to ruin,
At least for some.

While the middle tries to hold on to a slightly higher quality of life
than the middle of thirty years ago,
who held on tightly to a slightly higher quality of life
than the middle of thirty years before,
who moved out of comfortable tenements to small single family homes
and then worked two jobs
and left their children alone more often
neglecting them 50 weeks a year
for 2 weeks at the beach
and struggled to keep it all within reach
and called it progress
until the real bosses, the invisible ones, realized
that the good work of the two loving but nearly absentee parents
could be done by another couple down south
or further down south
or to the east
and the invisible bosses could make real money
while the middle sagged.

The sad cycle of who is placated just enough to feed
the beast of gluttony.
The illusion that the piece of the pie has gotten bigger and more delicious
as we merely are just temporarily
getting fattened
for the slaughter.