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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5390 Posts |
 Posted - 06/01/2008 : 09:01:04
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What she made in her body is broken.
Now she has begun to bear it again.
In the house of her son's death
his life is shining in the windows,
for she has elected to bear him again.
She did not bear him for death,
and she does not. She has taken back
into her body the seed, bitter
and joyous, of the life of a man.
In the house of the dead the windows shine
with life. She mourns, for his life was good.
She is not afraid. She is like a field
where the corn is planted, and like the rain
that waters the field, and like the young corn.
In her sorrow she renews life, in her grief
she prepares the return of joy.
She did not bear him for death, and she does not.
There was a life that went out of her to live
on its own, divided, and now she has taken it back.
She is alight with the sudden new life of death.
Perhaps it is the brightness of the dead one
being born again. Perhaps she is planting him,
like corn, in the living and in the earth.
She has taken back into her flesh
and made light, the dark seed of her pain.
Wendell Berry |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5390 Posts |
Posted - 06/03/2008 : 17:37:29
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AT A COUNTRY FUNERAL
Now the old ways that have brought us
farther than we remember sink out of sight
as under the treading of many strangers
ignorant of landmarks. Only once in a while
they are cast clear upon the mind
as at a country funeral where, amid the soft
lights and hothouse flowers, the expensive
solemnity of experts, notes of a polite musician,
persist the usages of old neighbourhood.
Friends and kinsmen come and stand and speak,
knowing the extremity they have come to,
one of their own bearing to the earth the last
of his light, his darkness the sun's definitive mark.
They stand and think as they stood and thought
when even the gods were different.
And the organ music, though decorous
as for somebody else's grief, has its source
in the outcry of pain and hope in log churches,
and on naked hillsides by the open grave,
eastward in mountain passes, in tidelands,
and across the sea. How long a time?
Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide my
self in Thee. They came, once in time,
in simple loyalty to their dead, and returned
to the world. The fields and the work
remained to be returned to. Now the entrance
of one of the old ones into the Rock
too often means a lifework perished from the land
without inheritor, and the field goes wild
and the house sits and stares. Or it passes
at cash value into the hands of strangers.
Now the old dead wait in the open coffin
for the blood kin to gather, come home
for one last time, to hear old men
whose tongues bear an essential topography
speak memories doomed to die.
But our memory of ourselves, hard earned,
is one of the land's seeds, as a seed
is the memory of the life of its kind in its place,
to pass on into life the knowledge
of what has died. What we owe the future
is not a new start, for we can only begin
with what has happened. We owe the future
the past, the long knowledge
that is the potency of time to come.
That makes of a man's grave a rich furrow.
The community of knowing in common is the seed
of our life in this place. There is not only
no better possibility, there is no
other, except for chaos and darkness,
the terrible ground of the only possible
new start. And so as the old die and the young
depart, where shall a man go who keeps
the memories of the dead, except home
again, as one would go back after a burial,
faithful to the fields, less the dead die
a second and more final death.
Wendell Berry |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2684 Posts |
Posted - 06/03/2008 : 18:35:52
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THE JOYS THAT STING
Oh do not die, says Donne, for I shall hate
all women so. How false the sentence rings.
Women? But in a life made desolate
It is the joys once shared that have the stings.
To take the old walks alone, or not at all,
To order one pint where I ordered two,
To think of, and then not to make, the small
time-honoured joke [senseless to all but you];
To laugh [oh, one'll laugh], to talk upon
themes we talked upon when you were there,
to make some poor pretence of going on,
Be kind to one's old friends, and seem to care,
While no one[O God] through the years will say
The simplest common word in just your way.
-CS LEWIS |
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aussiedave
Rocker
Australia
472 Posts |
Posted - 06/04/2008 : 04:59:58
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a
greater love
hath no woman
than to have
only ever loved
just the one
man
AD |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5390 Posts |
Posted - 06/04/2008 : 22:48:28
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THE BOAT OF THE BROKEN MOON
Today I am going to climb a step-ladder and wipe
clean the tops of your cupboards, am going to pry
open that trap door under the carpet and lift
the cobwebbed trunk from your secret cellar.
This afternoon I will roll the stone from your garden,
reveal to you the broken arrowhead Red Cloud
buried there before his blindness, show you where
the pouch of butterfly wings is hidden.
Tonight I will dig far behind your oven to unearth
a fire pit that's gone unlighted since E. Pauline Johnson
revealed the sacred naming of the Qu'appelle Valley,
and from that darkness untie a sleeping birch canoe.
As we float together in the boat of the broken moon
I will balance cool coins on your forehead, braid your hair
with prairie lilies, dragon leaves. In the most quiet hour
you will know the goodness of dying this slowly, this well.
DL
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Bree Wilson Stone
Swinger
USA
882 Posts |
Posted - 06/04/2008 : 23:20:06
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What Used to be
As man walks down his city streets
and he's hot and weak from all the heat.
With only a concrete building to shade him
and he thinks about what used to be.
With poluted streams and choaking air he wonders why didn't anyone care.
And as time grows short for man he dreams about what used to be.
For all he has now is a world where man and nature fight each other
Where men go to war and destroy each other,
Can this be, we call ourselves free
can we ever bring back what used to be.
A young man cries out to his flag as he takes his last breath
for he has fought and killed now he is tasting death.
Within the walls of my soul my spirit cries out for love instead of hate.
Do something about this world before it's to late.
Bree Stone age 13................
Bree Wilson Stone |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5390 Posts |
Posted - 06/06/2008 : 11:14:49
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BENEDICTA
She reminded me that day of Benedicta, who died before
her loveliness traveled far enough to be bruised, to fall
from the trees and roll in the peat. Her soul had returned
to dance, nakedly and wantonly, among the crowd
at her own funeral.
Baudelaire, it was, whose character so loved her naivete
that, when he saw her likeness at the grave, swaying
with slack virago glee, stomped his foot so hard his leg
descended into the loosened dirt up to the knee.
For many years he was trapped there at her tomb,
more a victim of his admiration than she ever was.
The other day, the girl whose loveliness I had adored
became a woman, and there is no compass to help
one recover from that storm. Today, one leg trapped
and soaking in the ground, I list here under the wide elms,
among the rotting leaves, my iron memory chipping
the enormous rock of the ideal, reducing her mystery
to the shape of the actual.
Her changes drape my shoulders like belts of iodized kelp
now that I live such a long reach from the sea.
Long after her passing, Benedicta circles my dark house
with her taunting, salacious moves, amused at my seriousness,
her spirit teaching me the sacrifices that go
with growing up, learning how to love.
DL
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2684 Posts |
Posted - 06/07/2008 : 12:34:42
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I sat in the dark in the back of the saloon, saving the world...
I could smell the fear, the loneliness and the desperation in the room.
And that was just me.
OK, just kidding. I wasn't afraid.
The other two things just sorta grew on me,
like hunger, no, that's not exactly right;
more like lines on a man's face.
After years of not looking,
one day they were just there.
Loneliness and desperation were okay,
but what with what I did,
fear was not, I thought
as I reached for the green bottle
and looked at the gun lying next to it...
One for the lonely, one for the fear;
The desperation I let go it's own way.
Like hunger, it helped me keep an edge...
It was good for business...
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5390 Posts |
Posted - 06/07/2008 : 22:45:40
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Strange how people who suffer together
have stronger connections than people
who are most content.
I don't have any regrets.
They can talk about me plenty when I'm gone.
You always said people don't do what they believe in.
They just do what's most convenient.
Then they repent.
And I always said, "Hang on to me, baby,
and let's hope that the roof stays on."
Bob Dylan
"Brownsville Girl"
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BarbraG
Windchimer
1797 Posts |
Posted - 06/10/2008 : 22:32:13
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Sometimes, I come in here and just say nothing. Saying nothing
says a lot sometimes. And, saying a lot sometimes says nothing.
I just kind of made that up. I like it. It's true.
BGee
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Edited by - BarbraG on 06/11/2008 00:44:42 |
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aussiedave
Rocker
Australia
472 Posts |
Posted - 06/10/2008 : 22:38:54
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| love it |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2684 Posts |
Posted - 06/13/2008 : 19:32:22
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I made dinner for my parents tonight. As my father said the prayer, I was still cooking, but I looked over and mom had reached over and they were holding hands... After 60 years together... Just liked that.... alot....
~*~ |
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Karen Runk
Firefly
USA
4902 Posts |
Posted - 06/13/2008 : 21:35:42
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You are so lucky to have them, Hank.
God bless you all
Karen Runk |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5390 Posts |
Posted - 06/14/2008 : 07:26:06
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Evenings of days when the sun had gotten so hot it made
the clock give up its hands. We'd go down the street and sit
in the veranda with old Moxie Manuel, great ambidextrous Jew
of the Cotton States League, almost blind now, who'd pitch
both ends of a double-header and drive back to Baton Rouge
after the games like it was nothing.
Sit there in the heat with him telling broken bits of stories,
his petite wife in the kitchen making mandelbrot, the smell
of the almonds, the sound of her expertise as she took the baked
bread out, sliced it, flipped it, and baked it again with
the cut side down. Later, when she'd bring it to us, Moxie
would open a piece under his nose, inhale that citrous heaven.
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2684 Posts |
Posted - 06/26/2008 : 19:50:56
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I'm listning with my mind
But hearing you with my heart
I dream of all the days and nites
We won't have to spend apart.
There's too much time behind us
To miss what's up ahead
I remember waking up
And watching you in bed
Hours beyond hours
And miles from your arms
I'm following all my habits
and losing all my charms
There needs to be an answer
And we've still got time for trying
We started almost underground
But we're never far from flying
I'm listning with my mind
But hearing you with my heart
I dream of all the days and nites
We won't have to spend apart.
There needs to be an answer
And we've still got time for trying
We started almost underground
But we're never far from flying
Hank Beukema revbuckman music 2008
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BarbraG
Windchimer
1797 Posts |
Posted - 06/27/2008 : 20:17:34
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That's AWEsome, Hank. Truly.
BGee |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1440 Posts |
Posted - 07/06/2008 : 18:10:10
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| Their bare feet come together at the edge of the Sea of Cortez. Their borrowed names, sunburned, underlined in red. July again. |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5390 Posts |
Posted - 07/10/2008 : 16:15:19
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"There is a grace approaching
that we shun as much as death,
it is the completion of our birth.
It does not come in time,
but in timelessness
when the mind sinks into the heart
and we remember.
It is an insistent grace that draws us
to the edge and beckons us to surrender
safe territory and enter our enormity.
We know we must pass
beyond knowing
and fear the shedding.
But we are pulled upward
none-the-less
through forgotten ghosts
and unexpected angels,
luminous.
And there is nothing left to say
but we are That.
And that is what we sing about."
~ Steven Levine |
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BarbraG
Windchimer
1797 Posts |
Posted - 07/12/2008 : 00:10:21
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There is a tree growing in Rockledge, Florida. It's one
of the most wondrous things I have ever seen. No one seems to
notice that it's there .... it's just ... there. It's roots
are buried deep, and as it comes out of the ground, the trunk
lies close to the ground for about 3 or 4 feet, and then ... it
just curves straight up and into the sky, with a beautiful shroud
of leaves forming something beautiful.
I could walk by it a hundred times a day and never get over the
wonder of it.
It's right across the street from where my Kristyn is now living,
and I was quick to point it out to her. She had never noticed it.
I thought, "how sad".
BGee |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2684 Posts |
Posted - 07/12/2008 : 21:44:39
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We are too new to know.
We are sure we are the only lovers
that have ever felt this way [we think]
We are getting sicker of the modern world evry day.
We are sure they're running a game on us.
We are so tired of it all.
We are getting better every day even as we get
closer to death.
We are misunderstood and overlooked
and
underhandled and overbearing.
We are too much to take
except in small doses.
We are finding that the ways to live without
drugs and alcohol are all boring and that
we were cleverer and funnier stoned.
We are pretty sure the line before is bull****
and the devil talking.
We are tired of everybody dying on us.
We are pretty sure that's the way
it's always been so get used to it.
We are certain there is always
something left to lose and
nothing to gain or maybe it's
nothing left to lose and
evrything to gain.
We are bears of very little brain...
Hank Beukema
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The Nightly Vigil