Life's Essence

Life’s Essence

We think we’re so smart

Yet we really don’t even know what life is

Sure you can boil and pipet

You can microscope and experiment

You can hypothesize, theorize

We can discover

Oxygen, carbon dioxide, glucose

Neurons, mesons, electrical processes

DNA that tells us everything

Fourteen complex reactions for every photon

Processing it into vision

A hammer and nail, tapping morse code

Turning it into electricity and then to sound

We know all of this

Yet we can throw it all into a bucket

And not have one nanogram of life in the mix

All the ingredients

Simple, complex

But not one ounce of spirit

All of this material can exist in a corpse

But cannot regenerate itself anymore

So what is life? What is it for?

The scientists and philosophers have their own ways of knowing

But I like the poetic answer:

We don’t know

But it surely looks and sounds and smells and tastes and feels

Like love

8/24/19 kdc

Great Ones

Great Ones

There are many great ones on the earth

Not because they are known

Not because they are wealthy

Not because they are influential or powerful

But because they care

Because they love

Because they live life the way a human being lives life

Loving one another

Loving those that cross their paths

Whether that be another person, an animal, or a tree in the forest

These people are the ones that quietly move about

Changing the earth one moment at a time

They are never applauded

They are never written about

Most may be never noticed

But they are seen and known

They are honored and praised

By the lives of all, by the land

Let’s give these folks a hand….

2/23/19

Stay

I typically write free verse poetry. I can write the classical styles of poetry, but I’ve just always enjoyed a more free style of writing. Today, though, I had a song going through my head. It was Bruce Springsteen’s “Philadelphia.” I’ve always loved this song, and my favorite part of it is the captivating and haunting tune and rhythm of it. So as I had it going through my head, I had some lyrics come to me and I thought, “What the heck. Let’s write a song.” So here is “Stay” and it goes along (mostly) with the tune of “Philadelphia.” 

If anyone out there has some good tunes that need lyrics, let me know. Once I have a tune in my head, I can make the lyrics fit. Who knows? Maybe we’ll win a Grammy some day…

Stay

I wake up to the sunset

The day was dead and gone

I thought about the hills

That used to be my steadfast home

As the daylight of my eyes 

Slowly slipped away

I thought about the future

Thought about yesterday

But couldn’t stay in this moment

Couldn’t stay in this moment where I am me

Couldn’t stay in this moment

Couldn’t stay in the place where I am free

The darkness seems to tumble

Through the bright and golden fields

It seems to overtake everything in its wheels

I know I cannot dwell in this place

This place that isn’t home

So I gather up my children, prepare to roam

Can’t stay in this moment

Can’t stay in the moment where I cannot see

Can’t stay in this moment

Can’t stay in this place where I’m not free

Don’t know where this road is going to take me

But I know I share it with you

Don’t know where this road is going to take me

But I know that here with you, here everything’s new

I sense the shadows falling, the coming of the rain

I can feel the cold and listlessness of the autumn rains

I stare into the doorway, looking for the shore

But all I see is sunlight and nothing more

I’ve gotta stay in this moment

I’ve gotta stay where I am me

I’ve gotta stay in this moment

I’m going to stay where I am free

Going to stay in this moment

Going to stay in this moment

Going to stay

Perched

Keepin' it short and sweet today. Happy Fourth!

Perched

It must be nice to be a bird

Always able to change your perspective 

Always able to fly over obstacles

Always seeing from above 

Like love

Because

Because

Because 

Your love brings music to my soul

  Passion to my doldrums 

  Peace to my chaos

  Serenity to my wind tossed seas

  So in gratefulness to my knees 

  I bow

  And ask you to marry me 

   all over again

   Again and again

   And again and again 

   To call you my wife, my lover, my friend

   Is the most beautiful sound that I know

Within these tunes and tones our love does grow 

Into the hum of the mighty mountains

Eternal

Strong

Sentinel 

Beyond

What anyone could ever hope or wish for

That is what this gift means to me

So that is why I give it to you

To hear the sounds of our love travel across the lands

Across the seas

Into our gardens

Amongst our trees

I am forever home with you

The Day After the Best Day

The Day After the Best Day

It’s funny how I want certain days to linger

Almost drowning in all of the goodness

Exhausted from the fun

Yet, a night of sleeping later

I awake to a sense that all of that is now a memory

There is stillness in the now

Unknowing in the future

I reach back to see what’s left from yesterday

And find much treasure there

Yet I know I cannot dwell there

Missing the treasure of today

The hope of tomorrow

I find that gratefulness keeps the memories whole

Fresh amongst the newly blooming flowers

Gratefulness keeps me right where I need to be

In the center of all of God’s goodness

So I take this moment in the right here and right now

I thank You for bringing me here

Everything has turned out for good

Just like You said it would

I am so thankful

The Throne

The Throne

You know

I could drone on like the typical sad poet

But then I thought, “today

I don’t have to do that at all”

Yes there is darkness, evil, and ugliness

But there is also light, good, and beauty

I get to choose which one to focus on

Even in the midst of the chaos

I can settle right into the midst of the order

Even in the midst of death

I can choose to continue to live

And love

For that might just be the key

To love in the midst of everything

Might just be the source of all freedom

The source of all light, all good, all beauty

So I want to rest there

I want to run there

I want to sleep there

I want to dwell there

The place where I choose love over all other things

Might just be the most powerful place in the universe

Outside

Outside

Im glad to hear children playing outside

Their laughter permeating all walls and barriers

Breaking through the barricades

Tearing down the bleak tirades

Of shortening days and greater distances

Greater distances that must be spanned

With great tenacity, greater veracity

All contained within the sounds of children laughing

I place my head on pillows soft

Gazing through windows, mineral-flaked, aloft

The power lines cutting through the gray skies

Golden, red, and fading-green leaves

Holding on for dear life

Even though death has clearly already come

But has it really?

Doesn’t the tree still stand?

It’s roots gone deeply into the life-giving land

Though the visibilities show death even still

Death cannot overcome life’s greater love-will

All this I see outside the window sill

The window not covered with stained interventions

Just deposits from the lives spent and gone

I lie here in the comfort of this throne

To overcome and to span the greater distances.

Shadows on the Parking Lot

Shadows on the Parking Lot

I walk along during the late afternoon

The sun still high enough to make it like mid-day

The geometric shapes of shadows line the bay

They have changed

But yet they still are patterns

I wonder why all these patterns

All these equations

All these predictabilities 

Come from One Who is unpredictable

From One Who has no form

No shape, no patterns that He would ever fit into

I wonder what would I say, what would I do

If I ever had the chance to meet Him

Right there, in my face, in my person

What would that be like?
I’m sure it wouldn’t be like these dark and quiet shadows

Shifting with the angles of the sunlight

I’m sure it wouldn’t be predictable

Though likely predictably incredible

Awe-inspiring, shaking, thundering

These geometric shapes have changed

Yet still there is a pattern

Maybe there is message here

That the methods can change

And change with time

Yet there is always the pattern of love

The geometric shapes of shadows line the bay

Yet the sun is still high enough to make it like mid-day

Sensing

Sensing

I have sensed the poetic

Yet I have yet to engage it

That delight seems to flit around in great whimsy and flight

When I try to approach it with determination and might

It surely just whisps away

Or possibly I might squash it like an annoying ant

Under the padding of my thumb

I cannot enter the world of numb

I simply, simply cannot

I must feel the joy along with the pain

I must imbibe the sunshine along with the rain

Because both are essentially life-giving

I’d rather hurt in the land of the living

Than be eternally numb in the realms of the dead

I touch the fear, I feel the dread

Yet this fire within me will consume it

I will not take it for granted, nor will I assume it

To be ever present, though it always is

I rather yield to the waxing flames

I listen for the lightning names

To sound off in the dark distances

In dark divorce, in stark romances

There is ever still the light, the heat

The love that sits on supremacy’s seat

It is love that will aways guide me

I am sensing the poetic

Alight

I posted this poem in 2013 but I felt it was a good day for reposting. Hope you enjoy it!

Alight

I’m ready to float right out of this universe

Alight onto another 

Far more distant than this one

Yet closer than the breath of my lungs

I breathe the same air as the warlords, the bright ones

That spread love and peace and happiness and battle

The ones that make their swords all rattle

As they drop them into the ground to plant some life into it

Beings placed Deep into the brown, soft earth

Reddened by another’s blood

Watered by a steeping flood

Of submitted will and alabaster

The full moon just fills the fanning window above my head

Reflected light overpowering the lingering autumn darkness

Leaves unchanged as of yet

Yet we know that all is coming

To the sounds of soulful lutes and lyres

The coolness brings the smell of fires

And a thousand thousand drops of rain

I lift my head again and again

To see if there is yet any difference

No matter how many times I lift my head to see 

It is my heart that feels the breezes

I am reconciled, I am reconciled

Like a favorite blanket to a crying child

There is a restoration forming in this quiet soul

That is surrounded by harsh and disruptive raucous

Yet nothing but stillness deep within

A stillness so deep, unfathomable, restless

Its movement changes worlds

Its vibration lifts the earth

Setting it, vast, into a different place

Where freedom never dies

An inkling, a nature, a persistent cry

Does drive us into that galaxy wide 

That is so narrow many miss the smile

Could it be that we are all so worthwhile

That on us love alights?

I foresee again, I foresee again

The friendless and forgotten do know a friend

Who smiles again as does a brother

Whose embrace is that of gentle mother

Simply warmth and grace and good and love

A place where I can truly know enough

Where a reality exceeds my expectation

Is there ever an end to this disrupting frustration?

Or is this simply the fuel that feeds me on?

In all of this weakness, through all of this brawn

I simply seek on for the firelight

Realizing my alabaster wishes have pierced the night

So the sky is overwhelming in its shadows

Clouds so immense they dance

with the movement of the moistures

They grow in ever increasing cloisters

Bringing a realization into the mix

Could it be that we are so worthwhile

That on us love alights?

Celebration

Celebration

Can you sense new dreams arising?

Can you feel a radiant hope anew?

Don’t you feel there is a new day dawning?

Can’t you hear the morning dew

Singing a new song?

A song your heart has been singing all along

Yet it seemed there was no one else to hear it

But now it’s been heard

It has risen to the heavens like a hummingbird

And has fallen to the earth like an eagle

Powerful and windswept

Magical and momentous

Your hopes and dreams have come alive again

The colors and lights and sounds are friends

That have joined with you on the journey

I am glad to be watching this happen

A river from heaven overflowing its banks

No longer will we walk the planks

Of harsh and bitter judgments

No

No, we will walk through meadows of poppies

Baby’s breath

Fields of lupine and gold

A greater story will begin to unfold

As we walk on through the color fields

No sword, no vine, no thorn, no shield

Will keep us from the heights

We will dance and sing with all our might

For all our might will be easy

The sounds, the lights, the smells all pleasing

Will be the order of our days

So won’t you join me in this fray

This raucous celebration?

I’d really like to be with you for at least another hundred years…

2/13/17

Inspiration

Inspiration

Sometimes I wait on inspiration to write

Sometimes I can’t wait any longer

That’s when it is called “work”

And work it is

Grimacing over every word and idea

Fighting off the demons of criticism and lack

Wishing that the winds would come

Lifting me into the heavens

Where everything is easy and light and free

Or is it?

Could it be that work is where we really find God

Instead of all of those angels

Could it be that in the wrestling

We meet the greatest One of them all

He might cripple us for the rest of our lives

But He just might meet us right in our need

Teach us something new

Give us something bright

Something no one else will ever understand

Nor will we ever want them to

Because it is ours

So keep moving along

Keep writing the words of your living song

You are making a world of difference

And it is very, very beautiful

2/8/17

Dedicated to my wife, Melissa, the hardest working person I’ve ever met.

Specter

Specter

I am a specter of my former self

Holding joy at arm’s length

Often further

I do not understand it

When there is disease and poverty and hate and death

Dealt out with pain so harsh it steals one’s breath

Yet maybe joy is how I deal with it all

Laughing amongst the killing fields

A flower thrown in amongst the shields

Which defend all sorts of un-imaginables

These things, this lore, of what is not tangible

These things are so difficult to grasp

I have to open my hands, open my heart

Open my ears, accept the dart

Of tension and paradox and mystery

This is the way to jump into the fray

And still dance all along in the fury

I might just not be 

I might just not be done with this wonder

This is the seemingly torrid truth of it all

I never get to the answer

I always dive deeper into the question

I never dream, I never dance at the ball

So full circle I’ve come

Full circle I’ll go

Until the gravity fields pull me right out of my row

I have looked upon all this circumstance, 

and found

This is not where I dream, that is not where I dance

I must learn to be kinder to myself

I must learn to take hold of the unknown

Cuddle it like a puppy sleeping, safe in my arms

Knowing one day it could grow up and be vicious

But it could also grow up and be bold

Beautiful, warm…

If I’ll only love, if I’ll only love…

I’m not sure I am any longer a specter…

1/28/17