‘Tis brightness to be young
And in love with your beauty.
‘Tis power to be young
And in love with your strength.
‘Tis laughter to be young
And in love with your future.
‘Tis easy to be young
And in love with your reflection.

‘Tis grace to be old
And in love with life’s beauty.
‘Tis courage to be old
And in love with your scars.
‘Tis bold to be old
And in love with your history.
‘Tis brightness to be old
And in love with your love’s reflection.

Sad sentinels
Alone and lonely
The encampment long gone
That once their ancestors guarded

Where now the bears, the wolves
Antelope, elk, moose
And the people
Who hunted them
Lived on their bounty
All gone

The mountains remain
High on the horizon
Beyond these new hills
These strange straight crowded
New hills

Rank upon rank
Of these new hills
And the once new people
Who made them

Felling the forest
Killing the old people
Burying their land in concrete and steel
Until only these few remain

These sentinels of memory
Hanging on
Never thriving but
Never dying
These city trees

I have navigated the rapids
The tumbling thrumbling
frothing foaming
raging rapids of reproach
paddling hard
bladed oar twisting dipping
first right then left
(You are to blame, I am to blame)

I have twirled
in endless eddies of self-doubt
(I am no good)
Leaning far forward to escape

I have scraped myself raw
on ragged rocks of regrets
(I could have should have done better)

I have bumped thumped
into black boulders of despair
(Nothing again will ever be good)

I have bloodied myself
on sharp-edged rage ledges
(You, you, damn you, hurt me)

More than once I capsized
panicked trapped in my kayak
blinded I sucked in hard water
until
digging deep
I remember the hip thrust
the precise paddle turn
to roll upright

I survived my waterfall of grief
when
breathless
out of control
I plummeted
through cascades of tears
submerged in mourning
twisting turning head over if onlys
I breathed the bitter waters of my despair
Bottomed on blind boulders of no more

 
Battered, bruised, confused
I had no choice but to find
my fragile tough kayak skin
climb back in
and go on

Now I drift through quiet waters
content with the murmuring current
carrying me through tree-lined lowlands
large leaved shrubs dark chocolate alluvial soil

My shoulders still ache
My scabs peel sometimes, and bleed
When the sun is hot, I burn
My paddle lies across my lap
ready
The weather could turn stormy
Open waters strong surf could lie ahead
But for now I drowse and drift
Content to have survived.

Time and again
it begins
the same…

First I remember
or half remember
a line from a poem
or part of a line –
or is it several lines –
probably jumbled

“To see the world in a grain of sand
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand”
Is that right?
Whose poem?
Yeats comes to mind
but I know that is not right.
Coleridge? No – Butler? Absurd
Is Butler even a poet?
Where did that name come from?

Then I remember the title:
Auguries of Innocence
Ah, yes, of course,
not Yeats – Blake

Never can I easily remember
William (I think) Blake

Blake’s Auguries of Innocence:
I have loved it long
read it often
memorized – and forgotten –
parts of it

A favorite poem:
One of the first
that made me feel
deeper depths
stirring, beckoning
in an unexplored ocean

I had waded in Poe’s easy rhymes
splashed in cummings’ enticing verses
trickled Invictus through my soul
dabbled in Shakespearean sonnets
watched Columbus sail with no chart
witnessed my Captain’s ship come to port

But not until Auguries
had dared I
dive
kicking for a bottom
deeper than I
suspected

And yet, even so,
I forget
time and again
the lines
the poet
the magic
the grace

And so
I have
time and again
the bittersweet pleasure of
rediscovering
re-finding
that treasure chest
those scattered jewels
among those grains of sand

Sumer is icumen in
Write boldly, cuckoo
Poems grow and stories bloom
And our words spring forth anew
Write, cuckoo!

The poet bleats after her verse
The novelist lows after her plot
The memoirist prances; the readers fart
Merrily write, cuckoo!

Cuckoo, cuckoo
You write well, cuckoo
Never be quiet now, ever!

Write, cuckoo, now; write, cuckoo!
Write, cuckoo; write, cuckoo, now!