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Tag: connection

Something about a city on a river

Published on April 9, 2013

There’s something about a city on a river:
it could be near the ocean’s coast
stuck like a tick on the business end
of the delta,
or somewhere upstream
where the supply ships send
their soldiers, sorghum and saltpeter
for distribution
to the land-locked plains beyond.

There’s something about a city on a river:
it has less in common with
its inland neighbors,
though mere minutes down the road,
than with far-flung places
on the map that likewise
play corpuscle to some continental vein,
bringing back a tired
and worn out nation’s blood
to its life source.

There’s something about a city on a river,
especially one that finds the sea:
it tends to mix its metaphors
like the colors and creeds of its visitors,
who seek to strike a balance
between old and new,
the known and strange,
finding in diversity a strength
that land-bound armies
cannot know.

There’s something about a city on a river:
evolving with the ebb and flow
of tides beyond mankind’s control;
and those who make their homes there
find a way to bend and shape,
to seek and touch a truth
that in a desert well
or hidden lake
one only gets a taste.

09 APR 2013

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Song within: a cyrch a chwta

Published on May 5, 2011

The human voice was made to sing;
and to the dull roar of life, bring
a force that grounds us in all things.
From the soprano, giving wing
to angel’s tones gone traveling,
to basso, low and rumbling:
the song connects us, soul and skin,
to what within us keeps living.

05 MAY 2011

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Grounding

Published on June 3, 2007

To find again the solid ground,
the pulse beneath the surging song
that lends its subharmonic sound
to all that hear and sing along;

To seek the strings that touch the heart,
that plucked, would shake the listening spine
and signal for the dance to start,
to find grape deep within the wine.

To sense the beat within the vein
and chart its course from start to end;
so feeding soul and bone and brain
with food that causes hurt to mend.

To find again the fertile earth
where roots run down and deep, unseen,
for nutrients that may give birth
both to what will, and what could be.

03 JUN 2007

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Firm Foundation

Published on January 17, 2006

A note to whom it may concern:
fortunes may change, and tables turn,
adversity may try and get you down.
The world is often hard and cruel,
it makes the wisest men just fools,
and fashions from its gold a thorny crown.

The more you try to get ahead
The more you find yourself misled
by summer confidants and so-called friends;
and when your health and money’s gone,
the bread and circuses move on.
There’s only one thing on which to depend:

Build your house on a firm foundation,
look for rock buried under the sand,
find a place for your roots right beneath your old boots,
and connect to the place where you stand.
It will improve your whole situation
though in ways you might not understand;
’cause the universe works in mysterious ways
and fate laughs at those who make big plans.
Let your word be the code that you live by,
let your hand lend itself where there’s need;
and despite of the strife that comes throughout this life
You’ll have true happiness guaranteed.

A note to whom it may affect:
misfortune comes, and through neglect
the strongest love may turn to bitter hate.
The world is strange and can be wild,
it turns a man into a child
who doesn’t grow up until it’s too late.

The more you try to find your way
The more you’re tempted, led astray
by soft illusions that too soon are gone,
and then your life has come and went.
Be sure your time is more well spent;
invest in something you can depend on:

Build your house on a firm foundation,
look for rock buried under the sand,
find a place for your roots right beneath your old boots,
and connect to the place where you stand.
It will improve your whole situation
though in ways you might not understand;
’cause the universe works in mysterious ways
and fate laughs at those who make big plans.
Let your word be the code that you live by,
let your hand lend itself where there’s need;
and despite of the strife that comes throughout this life
you’ll have true happiness guaranteed.

16 JAN 2006

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Seed Thought: Page 43

Published on April 26, 2005

I wonder why it is that the folks over at 43 Things picked the number 43. Could it be related to my favorite David Crosby song?

Page 43

Look around again
It’s the same old circle
You see, it’s got to be –
It says right here on page forty three …
That you should grab a hold of it
Else you’ll find
It’s passed you by

Rainbows all around
Can you find the silver and gold –
it’ll make you old
The river can be hot or cold …
And you should dive right into it
Else you’ll find
It’s passed you by

Pass it around one more time
I think I’ll have a swallow of wine –
life is fine
Even with the ups and downs …
And you should have a sip of it
Else you’ll find
It’s passed you by

— David Crosby, Stay Straight Music

David Crosby, in the liner notes for the CSN boxed set, says about his song “Page 43”:

It’s about the mythical instruction booklet to life that we all wish we had and don’t. An optimistic song nonetheless.

While I agree that the song does present an optimistic outlook on life, particularly if you adhere to the “Be Here Now” philosophy as espoused most popularly by Ram Dass (a.k.a. Richard Alpert), I think that far too many people on this earth feel that their particular “instruction book” is somehow applicable to a wide range of individuals with which they have little, if anything, in common except their humanity and the natural milieu upon which their lives are dependent and inter-related with (which in fact is quite a lot, when placed into perspective against their cultural and societal differences). In any case, it is my philosophy that each person must write their own guidebook, and that “book” must be by default more a memoir than a practical “how to” reference. You can investigate and evaluate the memoirs of others, hoping for a bit of insight into some of your commonalities, but, as they say, the Divine is in the details, and there’s where it’s always necessary to stray from the recipe. Then, too, Mark Twain commented once that if you truly want to describe a person so that another would recognize them without question, you cannot paint them using only their good points as a reference. The individuality of humankind is determined by its flaws, the aberrations from the norm that make us each unique.

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A Sense of Touch

Published on April 23, 2005

Reach down to touch the waiting earth
that there beneath your feet, alive,
in constant movement hurls through space
and yet seems solid in the place
where through your bones, like vibrant roots
its energy expands and shoots,
infusing marrow, flesh and bone
with strength from every tree and stone.

Reach up into the far flung sky
that just beyond your tiptoed grasp
becomes the wind that pulls you on
and turns to clouds, and then is gone
until you slowly breathe it back
to watch the gap begin to slack
between each molecule of air
until there’s only one space there.

Reach in beneath your surface skin
under the epidermis where
a million cells each pulse with life;
dig deeper, like your mind’s a knife
that probes each inch of sinew, vein,
and stretch of bone from toe to brain,
until you find your inner core
that will live on when you’re no more.

Reach out just past your fingertips
and touch the edge your sense permits
where science teaches your range ends
and leaves to faith what there begins
connected by some unseen thread
that spins between the live and dead
transcending time, and thought, and space
in patterns saints and madmen trace.

Reach all around, hands outstretched wide
and offer out what is inside
Push up what fills you from below
Pull down an armful, then let go
Expand in all directions, free,
Beyond logic and sanity
Past expectations, good and ill
Grasp all of life. Come, get your fill.

23 APR 2005

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Galileo

Published on April 5, 2005

The stars are fixed; they do not move.
Instead, what we call firmament
is just a shifting lens that’s bent
to suit the seasons. To approve
or disapprove such things is vain
and futile; our whole history,
that we would carve in stone and brick,
is but a wisp, a palimpsest,
that the next epoch writes anew.

And gods, if such are said to be,
perhaps employ more lasting inks
yet too will fade to faint indents
and leave no greater marks than men.

What once was center is now freed
and to circumference lays the lie;
great spheres of thought that wise men hold
more dear than life itself, deflate.

So what of fate, no more ordained
and best left to the seer’s glass?
What purpose do those notions serve
that would enslave the yearning mind?

We are in motion without end;
there is no point at which, full-stop,
the world could even for an hour
reflect upon its then-new state
so that an unseen force could smile
and praise his finished handiwork.

The stars are fixed; they do not move.
Instead, we hurl through space and time
in some eternal dance of life;
and no stiff doctrine made of men
has power to change the truth of it,
nor outraged, claim as heresy
what they, while blind, deny my eye.

05 APR 2005

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