There Was This

2026

Fifty-nine years ago I was eighteen.

I remember that like it was just

fifty-nine years ago.

I was a high school graduate

washing dishes in a nursing home,

wondering, What about my life?

And today, for everything I can remember,

there are gaps before and after.

Memories stumble over empty spaces,

and dreams mingle with memories.

Which is which?

To my knowledge that’s nothing new.

I conjured plausibles to fill the gaps,

but that was never satisfying.

They are not lies, but not quite the truth.

It was merely a convenience

to avoid tripping through a story.

Since I’m past seventy, it’s easier to say 

that I don’t remember this or that

and I’m okay to let it go.

No one seems to mind.

From: Ponder: Dreams, Memories,

and the Imagination

Unpub. MS p. 26

Inside Out

In every person’s eyes,

where all geography is dismantled,

what rests is never a matter of simple silence.

Inescapable tragedies and betrayals, 

and desires for revenge

are never worth that kind of effort.

Our vision is softened

by the migration of gentle shadows,

lovers’ whispers, babies’ laughter,

and friendships that lift us effortlessly.

Things seen and unseen,

rainfall and lightning,

births and deaths,

the transit of Orion,

the passage of time,

and doors opening to the sacred

all have their own pulse,

their own resonance and coherence,

and their own music that sings

of starry-starry brilliance.

From: Memories of Things Left Behind

Unpub. MS p. 23

A Wilding Dream

Yellow seasons, red clouds,

drinkable dawns and wine— 

we certainly indulged.

Then an orchestra,

sprawling, treacherous, and lavish

with wilding percussion,

rainy brass, nervous strings,

and chatty woodwinds.

A growing dissonance of voices

on top of the deep roar of traffic

and sirens, a scream for help,

the crash of cymbals, bossy and jagged,

tumbling down concrete stairwells,

cutting through all things fearful,

then quiet but for the breezes sighing

through the barb’ wire fences

and over the range grasses.

In the discomfort of chaos,

another glass of Syrah, 

a Brahms symphony,

and a found book of Psalms.

From: Ponder: Dreams, Memories, 

and the Imagination

Unpub. MS p. 47

Something Or Other

I am not a lunatic but madness might be a factor.

Do we wait for a savior, or bring one into existence?

Music resonates in consonance with the creator’s voice.

What isn’t transformed by fire is eaten by envy.

Many Boomers couldn’t get enough of the world;

everything opened, everything poured in, then too much.

One day, several years ago, I realized everything had changed.

Inner voices were unhinged by my confusion. Ageing does that.

Innocence has become more important as I have gotten older.

And I have wondered if idealism is another form of innocence.

Little by little, while on the road, a new voice

emerged that I came to recognize as my own;

the extraneous bits of life fell away.

There is no language for that,

only the surge of the soul 

and the swelling of the heart.

from: Buckle Up! A Boomer’s Meandering Musings on

Innocence, Time, and Love, From Then to More Recently

Unpub. MS p. 39

Blue Horses

Inspired by Mary Oliver

Now and then,

when a human event intercedes,

what seems necessary is not necessarily so.

Betrayed by a lover, poetics seem a ramblescat,

a mere caption, phony, like, who would want to know?

In a near wilderness where Blue horses, 

out from colorful dreams, 

are messengers from another world,

their watery movements and desert patience

have brought solace and taken me on quiet rides

while the grassland is softly sensuous

and I awaken.

from: Ponder: Dreams, Memories,

and the Imagination

Unpub. MS p. 31

On Knowing Nothing

I know that I know nothing.   

                        ~Socrates

It’s easy to walk into this,

a swirling mist,

and remember the stories

of no words, from the beginning,

the ones no one could tell us.

It’s the realm of the Great Unknowing,

of wordlessness and silence,

where mythic truths come to us

to reside in our hearts,

notoriously and sensuously,

intangibly and mystically.

We are nearly perfect here,

remembering a world

that was the impulse of wonder

and imagination, 

living from our hearts,

breathing the wilderness

where nothing is explained 

but somehow known,

where fragrances are seen,

flavors are heard,

but our tears will remain salty.

from: After All the Years of Gravity

Unpub. MS p. 4

What I Mean to Say

One afternoon in therapy

Eternally emerging,

from what I was 

into what, I don’t know.

There were times I thought I knew.

Then there were times I thought I knew nothing,

but actually did know something.

Some days it was ‘Yes.’

Other days ‘No.’

And other days, ‘Maybe.’

Contradiction.

Paradox.

Unsettled.

Nothing gone from ourselves

is gone forever.

Knowing too much?  Oh sure.

What do I lack?  Nothing but that ‘one thing’

(I thought I would find it in The Moody Blues).

Or do I have too much of one thing,

not enough of another?

I have a reservoir of love, sure,

everyone says so.

(Who cares what everyone says, right?)

Or are they full of crap?

Tomorrow I’ll see a world differently,

or a different world,

small as they both are.

As always, there is tomorrow.

from: After All the Years of Gravity

Unpub. MS p. 3

Notes to a Man

Do you remember the first time

you realized the world was new,

when words had their places?

They didn’t always 

work the way you wanted them to.

When others used the same words,

you were disappointed,

but you learned to use them to leap 

into clouds of the unknown.

And remember your first truly passionate kiss?

The one that made your body vibrate,

closed your eyes, sapped your strength,

weakened your knees.

Your body became a furnace,

your sanity became chaotic,

the crackling madness of love 

made a strange kind of sense.

When you saw the world

through the eager eyes of your children,

through their questions and wonder,

through their gestures of offering you water,

you realized everything has its purity,

old and new, coming and going,

a colorful world after all,

and that you were an ordinary man

blessed by an intangible mystery

that made you something more 

than you would have ever expected.

from: A Preface to the Universe:

Love, Nature, & The Mysteries Within

Unpub. MS p. 9

Good Men

When I turned sixty-three,

memories of such things visceral, 

prickly barbed, smelling of sweet,

sweaty landscapes, unvoiced,

still clamorous of families and children

strewn within my bones,

my head and teeth, and in the iron 

of my blood, unseen, but certainly felt.

Then the unpacking.

Sometimes a reminder, a trigger,

the snap, and we wonder, 

What if…? or Why this...?

Where on earth were we going

with all those things, 

with all those attitudes?

Was it somewhere 

beyond everything littered here?

It’s a new thing this age.

We cannot minimize 

the truth and sadness of the things 

and people we left behind.

When men have learned

finally how things work,

how to live with the notion of our

sensitive male ego,

how to talk with our eyes,

how life should be lived,

how we understand mercy, humility, 

and a little something about women,

we realized fully the pain of achieving wisdom,

our souls laid vulnerable to the vast unknown.

from: A Preface to the Universe:

Love, Nature, & The Mysteries Within

Unpub. MS p.5

Old Juan

A painting by Wood Woolsey (1930)

Phoenix Art Museum

Phoenix, Arizona

You have had your time in the sun.

Your hands, stiffened by hard work, 

are now at ease on your lap.

A cane helps you get around.

Memories are thinned and uncertain.

Are there old friends still alive?

Do you have children?

Who helps you day to day?

Your magnificent gray beard hides

the shape of your lips,

the jut of your chin;

your pants are ripped at the knees;

your boots have trod many miles;

your large, well-worn hat covers your head

to your eyebrows, 

but it’s about your eyes, old man,

a weary, world view of life you can’t hide.

You have been through dust storms of all seasons.

How many miles did you ride with the herds?

followed how many roads?

pierced how many lies?

Was there one great love?

One great loss?

Whatever it is you left behind,

you know you can’t go back.

Would you even want to?

But you have wisdom no one else has.

It matters, yes, but who is there to listen,

to take heed of the lessons of an old man?

Your weariness has caught up with you.

It’s your turn to sit in the shade and rest,

to watch a world go by with some disdain,

to nurse the silence of your final years

while a plant in the yard 

sprouts into new life.

from: Memories of things Left Behind

Unpub. MS p. 52

How Is Where About The Blue Round

 The child within the child within— 

I have questions:

How is the sky?

How is an egg?

How is an egg a sky?

What is the eye roundabout?

But...how is round?

Just round?

Or is the eye a round sky?

Or a blue egg?

Or a planet?

Where is the all get around?

Round, round get around like that.

Rabbits and quail especially get around.

How is especially?

Does it run and leap great distances?

Walk on muddy paths in bare feet?

Is a yawn an especially?

Or a speciality?

You mean like Javelinas and Coyotes?

How is madness?

When I saw you for the first time,

reason went mad.

Where would reason go?

When are the mountains invisible?

How does faith go to cry?

What is the how of a horseless horse.

Who is a roundabout 

stuck with the we of God.

from: A Preface to the Universe:

Love, Nature, & The Mysteries Within

Unpub. MS p.2

Silence

To some of us the world is blue with silence,
because silence is bright yellow, bright green,

and silence is wide and narrow,

full of prayers, full of good and evil.

And following along are the thunderous silences,

like empty sports stadiums, closed race tracks,

and shattering cruelties that surround us in red.

There are curiosities of silence, of the strong, silent type,

the quiet ones, those children who have been too quiet

for too long; the silence of the sulking, depressed, lonely,

contemplative, guilty, puzzler, wanderer, and lover.

There is the silence of love’s hidden work,

the burning silence of sunrise and sunset,

and when the music begins, silence deepens it.

For the troubled: outward silence; inward screams.

Make room for silence; live in the mercy of silence.

When you are in the noise of nature and you hear 

your footsteps and breathing, bow in that holy place.

Let silence be an art we practice.

from: Finding My Way: One Man's Quest for 

the Divine Presence  

Atmosphere Press 2026  p. 2