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Tag: nature

Obviously Lefty Frizzell

Published on October 28, 2005

I’ve always been obsessed, thematically, with silence, journeys, and the contexts in which real “life-changing” epiphanies occur. It seems to me that one of these places is on the road touring (and it seems to be backed up by what I’ve read of folks who spend a LOT of time on the road). You either figure yourself out, or lose yourself, somewhere out on the interstate.

The title is an acknowledgment of Kris Kristofferson as a motivating force for me as a songwriter. It’s a Dylan-like off-the-cuff expression, yet intended as an homage to a type of singer-songwriter that really no longer exists.

In the back of the bus
watching cigarette butts in the ashtray
as the lights from the middle
of nowhere recede in the night
There’s a song on radio, softly it’s playing,
while some local preacher continues his praying
but forgiveness comes slow
to those who believe they are right

In the back of his mind
thoughts collide with the words that he’s forming
as the melody reaches
a sleeping form in the next row
There’s a song on radio, maybe he wrote it,
Maybe the next time the gun won’t be loaded
but memory serves only those
who believe it is so

In the back of his head
his eyes turn to observe through the window
As the fly-over country he’s crossing
slips under the road
There’s a song on the radio, sales figures pending,
It’s all about paying for years of pretending
but time sure ain’t money,
you never get more than you owe

In the back of the guidebook
it mentions a beautiful cavern
As the ice ages ravaged,
it found itself left underground
There’s a song on the radio, selling its wonders,
And out in the night there’s a brief clap of thunder
But hearing a warning is not much
like heeding its sound

In the back of the bus
with the strings of his guitar still humming
As the slow dawn approaches
and opens a wearying eye
There’s a song on the radio, worn out and faded
From one more lost cowboy who thought that he made it
But thoughts are the last thing you need
when you’re trying to get by

Stage lights just prove
that you came from the shadows.
They’re never a permanent high.

1998

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Human Nature

Published on July 23, 2005

Why must “human nature” be
considered some mad blasphemy,
an otherwise repulsive state
save for its chance to teach us fate

and providence are not without
a sense of humor, lest we doubt;
and if not heresy gone wild,
the beast corrupting meek and mild

behavior we think suits us best,
that soothes the fire within our chests
and bids us be compliant, mute,
despite our nature’s wish: pursuit

of happiness, right here and now,
unsatisfied with learning how
this world is just a proving ground
devoid of anything profound

or sacred. Human nature begs
us not to settle for these dregs,
but to enjoy the life we’re in.
There was no fall. There is no sin.

23 JUL 2005

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At the far end of the canyon

Published on June 9, 2005

At the far end of the canyon
where the road fades into dust,
and the remnants of old wagon trains
have dissolved into rust,

where the touch of high society
has left no lasting mark,
and no streetlight marks your way
if you’re out walking in the dark,

where there’s no hum from the engines
far off on the interstate,
and there’s not much use for fences,
iron bars or cement grates,

where the flowers bloom through summer,
their scent filling the night air,
if you come when dusk is falling
chances are you’ll find me there.

09 JUN 2005

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No one stole the moon

Published on May 9, 2005

No one stole the moon from us
by force. Instead, they bade us sleep;
in that little death our memory
faded, and our Mother’s song

(not the sing-song lullabies
or product placing jingle-jangle
from an artificial moonlight
like an android babysitter,
but the rhythm of our organs,
constant hum of blood in veins,
synchronized with breath and being)

was lost. And seeking to remember,
in a simple act of faith,
won’t erase the hurt and sadness
of our Mother, so long gone.

Why should she accept with open
arms children that spurned her love?
Why would she be wrong to need
a sacrifice from us to prove

that we were really looking, this time,
with our ears ready to hear
the song she taught us, now forgotten?
Where have we been all these years?

09 MAY 2005

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The Roots Must Lead

Published on May 8, 2005

The roots must lead us further down;
it does no good to taste the fruit
unless we first have knelt in shadows
there among the rotting leaves.

The kneeling first, and then the crawl
along the coursing, mottled bark
that starts to thicken as the trunk
breaks through the soil that gives it life.

Among the worms that churn the muck,
the beetles and the stinging ants:
there where the humus is still moist
and cakes to concrete on our hands

we find the source, the Mother core,
like buried treasure from the deep,
between the fingers of the oak
splayed like a hand clutching the earth.

The grass between your toes, so soft,
gives only hints and subtle clues;
to find the Mother’s hidden love
cast off by culture’s mad distain

requires the digging, dirty knees,
and scratches drawing your own blood;
a desperate scrabble down and down
past patriarchy’s well-kept sod.

Her love is buried, long-forgot;
and proving ourselves worthy, work.
If you would make your half a whole,
man, woman, child: dig deep.

08 MAY 2005

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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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A Path of Wildness

Published on February 18, 2005

I chose to walk a path of wildness;
though these modern city streets are paved
and seem to revel in a blindness
that believes the urban sprawl has saved
us from what nature could remind us:

somewhere beneath all this black and gray,
behind the masks that progress may wear
as it fumbles through lines of a play
it has not written, and does not care
to find meaning in what those words say,

there is an rough edge to our control.
Beyond that border the feral earth,
that patient presses diamonds from coal,
in each single instant gives birth
to the strange chaos that feeds our souls.

Where the sidewalk ends and turns to vine
is never clearly marked on a chart;
and your map is not the same as mine,
even if we would pretend to start
from the same place at an exact time.

What’s more, both paths may appear the same
(if anyone still took time to look)
and like gods often bearing false names
to confuse those who insist on books,
will merge at times; they are not to blame.

Instead, it is our pride that deceives;
we do not seek to balance, but rule,
and as a despot king we believe
our road divine, and others for fools
unfit to share the glory we perceive.

But it is there; the wildness can’t be tamed,
nor trimmed and manicured for too long
before it tires of such polite games
and flexes its muscles, lean and strong,
to escape the gilded picture frame.

I would go after, where it now stalks
amidst the dark, thickened underbrush;
sometimes just at dawn I hear it walk
right under my open window. Hush!
Can you hear it too? It likes my block.

18 FEB 2005

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