What Hope Brings

I have traveled throughout 

the western states, and I have seen 

some breathtaking scenery

from Yosemite, the Cascades,

Snake River, the Grand Canyon,

to the turbulence of the Pacific Ocean

where it meets the Columbia River.

I have seen magnificent sunrises and sunsets,

Roosevelt Elk grazing outside my tent;

eagles, hawks, ravens, gulls, and breeching whales.

All of these things made my chest ache,

my breath deepen, my arms stretch out,

wanting to take all of it in to my body.

I have a notion that true love,

however defined, would be like that, 

and that lovers would look at each other 

like they would look at the beauty of nature;

their chests would ache, pulses quicken,

breaths deepen, and their arms would

wrap around each other in a way 

that says, I will never let you go.

Such is my fancy, my dream, my hope,

and hope will always bring good things.

From: Small Places, Big Places, Everywhere

Unpub MS p. 44

Prayer Of Saint Francis Of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not

so much seek to be consoled

as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen

Today

It's the Sunday go to meetin',

a right we all have (I think);

we have other rights, too, don't we?

I vaguely remember something

about due process...

I'm having coffee in the safety of my home,

but isn't it true that no one is safe?

I'm thinking I can't wear my heart

on my sleeve anymore.

Would that brand me as dangerous?

How about you? 

Where is your heart?

Closed for the holidays and then some?

We can still care, right? 

For all to see Hope.

See it! Feel it!

HOPE.

And where is that bastard

who murdered Renee Nicole Good?

Sideways Through Our Eyes

Notes sent to 1967

So long ago, it seems as things go their way 

and back again to now, as always there was.

Appearances, prolific and weak, and fraudulent as are 

so many who adorned themselves as fancy, still shallow.

Even yesterday, as long a past as there is, 

not so different now than ten days or ten eons ago.

Our time past, the most egregious betrayals, 

forgiven, yet many have failed atonement. 

Such were the lessons of that time and place, of desire,

of regret, of knowing everything which meant nothing.

Seeing the mean face of reality, innocence was lost; 

to find our consciousness may take a lifetime.

Not the same faces as we today are as yesterday 

or tomorrow will be. Beware the hardening heart.

Time devours all. Redemption is how we will see.

To the center of a Labyrinth, there are no straight paths.

From: A Rambly Search for Innocence, Time, and Love

Unpub. MS p. 11

For Now (The American Dream #5 of 5)

A Warning

The American Dream?

It is hope, an opportunity to dream

in terms of possibilities,

then the freedom to make it happen.

Sadly, border walls, bureaucratic bungling, 

evil people—vicious, self-righteous, and malevolent— 

disinterested in right and wrong;

the heart of society is torn out to line 

someone’s pockets, then walking away 

with blood on their hands, smugly believing 

they have done nothing wrong, 

done for the greater good.

The Donald T’s are destroying more 

civility and social order everyday.

A polarized society has blunted 

the pursuit of the American Dream, 

but for all its conflicting perceptions, 

for all its mythic assertions,

hope embodied in the Dream 

is indestructible, as hope always is, 

but Norman Rockwell and Donna Reed 

are now barely a glimmer.

From: Searching For Donna Reed,

Norman Rockwell, & The American Dream

Unpub. MS #5 of 5

The Migrations Of No Ones

The Ships of States that lay out there

heaved a mighty sigh,

sending the No Ones scrambling—

some went here, some there, back and forth.

¡América!  De ti cantamos.

Are these the poor, huddled masses,

the tired, the wretched refuse, the riff-raff,

the dirty, yearning destitutes

scurrying toward our dim northern light?

Perhaps the Gadsden Purchase crossed them.

Someone called this a Promised Land—

Come get a new Anthem and a Waiver,

Officially written on Official Paper—

The irony of the so-called storied pomp?

Out here there is no Ellis Island;

no welcoming Madre de los Exiliados.

The kitchens are tidied by the riff-raff,

the wretched refuse mow the lawns,

the huddled masses harvest the fields.

Those Clever Foxies, wrapped in the flag,

call it The Invasion, with a clack of their heels

and a smirk on their lips and lies on their tongues.

The No Ones ask:

Where is your celebrated lamp?

Where is the golden door?

¿Por qué sea tan difícil?

E pluribus unum?

Not so much.

At that, the No Ones cry,

and no one says 

Amen.

What Do I Know?

We don’t know.

The world doesn’t know.

The world is needy.

The world is idiotic.

The world is barbaric.

The Universe moves eternally, under our feet,

over our heads, through our hearts and souls,

and I, the stumbling, fallible,

open-hearted poet of lost words

and lost worlds, mending still,

resigned to meandering,

am hoping for that one lightning bolt

that will open new doors;

listening to voices in the wind,

encountering ghosts and spirits,

and knowing stuff of other realities,

of no language, of no visibility,

that are full of colors and gloss and

sacred gatherings that I can’t explain.

At the bar in Pizzeria Mimosa in Hereford, Arizona,

a glass of wine and ordering something Italian,

chatting with the bartender or the person next to me,

penning a line or two, an edit here and there,

pondering the whats and hows of grasslands,

the wheres and whens of the Pacific Ocean,

the ups and downs of the Huachuca Mountain slopes,

the kindnesses of so many people I have met...

The world is beautiful, 

I said to no one in particular.

Just beautiful.

From: Getting There

Unpublished MS p. 39