Life Signs

short and sweet today!

https://songsfromtheriver.com/2020/05/17/life-signs/

Rose Garden

Rose Garden

There is a real hope

And it hurts.

To lean into it,

No, to dive full on into it

Is the destiny of humanity 

But there within its living form are so many thorns 

Painful, hideous thorns

Disappointment, disillusionment 

Failure, rejection

These are the thorns on the roses of hope

And they are perilous, 

So perilous indeed

So what do I do?

Do I merely admire from a distance 

Or move just close enough to know the scent?

Or do I take the biggest risk

Put my hands in the midst

And grab hold

Not just to grasp it for me

Maybe never just for me

But in order to give it to another

My hands are bleeding 

It was worth every pain

2/26/19

Winter Blahs

Winter Blahs

It’s difficult to write poetry

When you’re dead inside

Everything is lifeless

Everything is irritating

I’m not sure how that happens

Feeling irritation when you’re dead

But that’s when it seems to happen the most

Every little thing

Is like a huge boulder

Dropping on your toes

Over and over again

In some kind of cruel repetition

I hate writing things like this

I hate words like hate and cruel and irritation

I don’t want those kind of contrasts in my life

I don’t want that dark background

Making some supposed light seem brighter

I simply want to enjoy the sunlight again

I simply want to feel the air against my skin

I simply want to feel, feel something

Besides all of this negative bombardment

All of this shrapnel of violence irate

All of this smoldering backwash of hate

I want to feel something besides this

So maybe a death is quite necessary

Maybe a death to all of these things

Will bring forth a life where everyone sings

Everyone plays

Everyone dances

In love and war and long romances

Everyone is who they are to be

Not stuck up in this hollow tree

Hearing nothing but the sound of me

2/18/19

Stillness

Stillness

I need days like today

Quiet

Dark

Raining

Cool

Pain surging through my lower back

With every little move

So stillness is the order of the day

No frenetic activity

No urgent motion

Just quiet sitting listening to the waters flow

Just listening to the heartbeat grow

Toward a restful anticipation of good

I sense these things amongst the woods

The forests of soul and spirit 

I hear the beckons, I might be near it

I might be far away

Yet I would know nothing of anything this rainy day

Without the colors of the quiet

Autumn leaves outside my window

Bright reminders of brighter days

Shorter, still

I gaze out from the windowsill

There is always a spring after the winter

My soul for so long broken, splintered

Now the humus is ready for growth

Up into that never seen, never known

Up into all that has been known by the ancients

Up into all that is made to be me

I see the stately redwood trees

Are still with steadfast smiles

They’ve never moved an inch, a mile

Yet they know the vastness of the oceans

Because they understand the life of stillness

Quiet

Dark

Raining 

Cool

I have a day in wisdom’s school 

I have a day in the stillness

And I am so grateful for it

11/27/18

Hope

Hope

Today I felt the heavy pain of the land

Entire forests burned, charred

Entire mountains with blackened scars

The leaves of the valley oaks dulled orange

Not from autumn skies

But from death

Demise

Destruction

Yet then there is this

An angel in the skies bringing life

Color

Salmon and periwinkle

Coral and slate

Her arms outspread to tell us all

All is not lost

In fact, Nothing is lost

The light shows nothing but goodness

Displaying it clearly

A clarion picture of sweet restoration

Suddenly all the pain turns to hope

Hope lifts up joy

Dancing together to the sounds of new life

The flowers are coming

The forests are coming

The animals are coming

Light and life, they are coming

Nothing can stop their singing, their songs

We have felt the dark stinging of smoke for so long

Yet here we are in the crimsons

The blue

The incredible hue

Of sheer beauty

Everything will be restored

Better, even better than ever before

The songs will always carry over the waters

11/3/18

Empty Train

Empty Train

I was sitting in the park today

Reading a good book

Watching my young children play

I heard the sound of the approaching train

Off in the distance

Beyond the river

The train came by

Crossing the river on the great, high bridge

Making quite the commotion

Stopping the traffic

Turning heads

No longer reading, I felt a notion

Then I noticed something

The engines were pulling nothing

Nothing but empty cars

No goods

No solutions

Nothing, nothing at all

Just empty car after empty car

Disrupting the placidity of the afternoon

At first I thought

“What a waste,

What a waste of time, of resources

What a waste to haul nothing around at all.

All this nothing cacophony disturbing our thrall.”

But then I thought, “What if they are returning the emptiness

To the place where it can be filled again?”

What if wisdom, our eternal friend,

Is trying to teach me to see things in a whole new way?

What if wisdom is trying to say

“Don’t assume all of this emptiness is a waste”?

Sometimes I have to give up the less I’m holding onto

In order to grasp the more

Sometimes I have to carry my emptiness

To a place where I can be filled again, implore

I must cross the rivers, traverse the mountains

Find someone with whom I can be a friend

Make plenty of noise for all to know

My emptiness is there for fulness to flow

The Hope

The Hope

Poetry shouldn’t be forced

I’m not sure anything good comes from coercion

I’m so impeded, the words won’t come

They are there in my mind, in my soul

Yet there is this dark blockade

Anger, fatigue, self-doubt, irritation, impatience

These are the bricks in the wall

I so often wait around for inspiration

Inspiration is too fleeting, too fickle

I might be sitting on this rock for ages

Moss growing all around me

Growing on my face and eyes

While waiting to be mesmerized

The sun completes all its seasons

So I search for more, I look for reasons

Why all this is the way it is for me

Instead of resting along the trees

I wander off into the bramble

Thus the reason I mumble, ramble

Along the sidewalks of the mysterious plodding way

I still don’t know quite what to say

I still don’t know quite what to pray

Or how

I must go deeper than my brow

Maybe I must go higher

My skin has tired of these annoying briers

That daily scratch my skin

I wonder if my past, the lives of my kin

Have gone these overgrown life ways?

No, I cannot go backwards, that makes no sense at all

I set my eyes for the ambers of fall

Knowing there will be a winter

Christmas is coming

Walk

Walk

Can I walk with a pen?

Can I take steps along paths unknown

Along the ways of wisdom known for ages?

To see what has yet to be seen

To hear what has yet to be heard

Words that have always been spoken

Do I have eyes to see, ears to hear?

Do I have a heart that yearns to endear

Or am I even supposed to worry about myself?

Maybe I should just take the steps

Put the pen to the paper

Walk the walk, talk the talk

Holding on to all things eternity

Breathing in all things eternal

I lift up my simple life, a kernel

And die.

The first step is taken

Now I await for life to awaken

Within

Without

Despite the dark and the lingering doubt

The birds are singing in the branches

Movement in Pi

Movement in Pi (π)

It is a poet’s most dreaded moment

When there is nothing to write

The entire world within is dead

Which makes all things without the same

Even though the sun shines brightly

Even though the grass is being mowed

Even as the wasps and bees swirl around the window panes

And the ceiling fan just quietly keeps going around

I am much more like that fan right now

Though I don’t think dead things go in circles

So maybe there is a hope after all

Just the fact there is a movement in pi (π)

Is enough to bring a spark of life

So once again I see the plan

That even in the midst of the dreaded death

There is nothing to write, but there is nothing but life

I just love the Circle

The Role

The Role

How I see facts

May not be how reality sees facts

So what I see, what I experience

Might not be the truth at all

It might be a part of the play

The key point in the drama

Where the antagonist is in the midst

There just might be a turn in this plot

Rising up on the horizon

So maybe I will wait here for the sun to rise

Before I embrace the darkness of the night.

Each Life

I'm posting this poem today in honor of our son Isaiah's "Gotcha Day."

Each Life

This is what it’s all about

These are smiles of heaven’s shouts

This is life that sets one free

This is life as it’s meant to be

This is a picture of the kingdom of God

A picture that was taken on this earthly sod

This is a picture of heaven on earth

This is a picture of what love is worth

This is a sight of the look in God’s eyes

This is the cost of the most priceless prize

This is the world in the way it should be

This is the way that we set the world free

Each life makes a difference

Restore

I wrote this poem for a patient of mine. She was an infant with a terribly progressive terminal disease. I guess you could call this poem a "statement of faith" if you wanted to, but as a physician I despise when it seems that illness wins and my patients and their families lose. So in light of what most would call a hopeless situation, I decided to do the only thing I could do: write hope. 

I read this poem again tonight as I was going through my journal, and I felt like I needed to share it. I feel like there are lots of people who need hope, and if you are one of those, then this poem is for you. If you know of someone who needs hope, then please share this poem with them. I think it makes the world a better place when we take something born out of great tragedy and pain, and then help to turn that around for great good. Thanks :)   . 

Restore

The very things meant to destroy your hearing

Will be used to spread the sounds of heaven everywhere

The very things meant to destroy your vision

Will be used to reveal the colors and the beauty of God

The things meant to destroy your soul

Will bring healing to the nations

God has spoken, it is true

Those things brought as destruction against you

Will be the very things that lift you higher

Higher than one has ever been before

So keep looking for the door

Resting in the Embers

Resting in the Embers

I’ve grown tired of this introspection

This circumspection

A rambling on about emptiness

Seeing everything

Feeling nothing

Putting it all down on paper

Wanting to crinkle it all up

Throw it all away

Yet the digital age holds on to everything

So it seems I can’t let anything go myself

Thoughts placed here in the memory banks

Blitzing through the silicon

Making way through the binary codes

A million decisions at a time

All of them seemingly ineffective

Or maybe even just plain wrong

I’ve heard I get to decide the path I’m going

I’ve heard I get to fight on until the end

Yet it seems to me there truly is a game

That never names me as a friend

That always sees me as an enemy

A botulism

That takes all their power away

So stay away

Stay far away

From this land of milk and honey

I drone on

Like a honeybee drunk on vesuvial cyanide

Making up words that don’t even exist

Simply to fit into the rhythm,

The meter, the beat, the blinding heat

That makes all else just meaningless apparition

My god, I never knew such deep ambitions

Could lead one to such a dark and quiet meadow

I’m told to hold on, I’m told to let go

To the point where my sagittal suture is splitting

The time it ticks, and keeps on ticking

Yet I don’t own the newest Apple watch

So I drift out into the sea

Never to be heard from or seen again

There I go, there I go again

Turning all of this vitriol into all about me

It’s no wonder I drift out onto the open sea

With nary a life raft to help me

I wonder how long it will take me to sink

I wonder more who will even notice to miss me

Time for another drink

Time for another still

Time for another evaluation of my will

To see if I have what it takes to simply get off of this couch

And plant my feet onto the carpet rug

I am pushed, I am pulled, I am torn, I am tugged

By these millions of mere distractions

My hope, my will, my faith, my actions

Are all upon the judgment stand

I open my heart, I lift my hand

I place it all on this paper of an altar

I watch it burn

Only what is beautiful will stand

All I see are dying silhouettes of grave clothes

Drifting through the night skies

I often wish I had closed my eyes

To these things that seem to blind me

I look back to the fire that is ember now

I see a faint glimpse of beauty

That I have not ever seen before

I see a coal, an open door

That rests inside the embers

Hope

I see a land of blue skies

White clouds

Just beyond the lands of smoke and plume, beyond fire and lava

Steam and flame

This place where no one knows my name

Nor does anyone care to know it

I see a land beyond

Yet

These ancient trees stand at the entry

They speak with arms all outstretched

They say, “You cannot pass. You shall not enter here.”

I feel an old companion, fear

Begin to rise up inside my chest

I look to the ground, I take a breath

I realize there is always another way

I look up to the trees, leafless, barren

I speak

“There are things one sows, those same we reap

I have sown love and passion and honor”

As I smile, I weep 

and say,

“I will see the lands of my ancient fathers.”

The trees they scoff at such a line

They do not budge one inch.

I hear the calling of the finch

I begin to walk to the singing

“Where do you think you’re going?”

The gnarled garrison barks in unison

“I am going to the song.” I reply

And I leave them in confusion

My feet are anxious to walk in the newly fallen snow

My heart is anxious to begin to grow

So that it might hold all the beauty that is before me

1/9/17