Poem: Suddenly Young

Suddenly Young

You watch as the young boy stands at the crest of the hill,
arms raised to the heavens, singing, conducting
his private symphony of joy,

no attention paid to the storm clouds
dark against the horizon,
he is content with his moment of sun

and imagination, content
with the memory of songs and spring
that dance with him.

You cannot help your smile, watching his joy,
and your legs, tired from long miles
of hiking up and down ancient mountains

have a sudden urge to dance,
suddenly young again, filled
with the almost forgotten joys of childhood.

==========

The picture was taken along the Appalachian trail, near Troutville, Va. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: The Truth of Healing

The Truth of Healing

It is easy to think you cannot heal,
to make light of spring after the bitter winter,
or fresh green life after a forest fire.

Easy to believe the there is no return
from the loss of death or heartbreak,
no coming back from pain, but

that is only if we believe healing
is simply the return to what was,
to some imaginary perfection that can never be,
and likely, never was.

It that is how we define healing,
then no, it will never come.
But

if we understand the truth of healing,
that it is not a return, but a transformation
to something new, and different,

vital and alive, scarred even,
yet more precious for it's survival,
then we know,

healing can come,
will come,
has come.

===========

The picture was taken today, while my son and I were hiking on the Appalachian Trail. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: A Guide to the Overwhelmed

A Guide to the Overwhelmed

Stop.
Find a flower, a single bloom.
Focus on it.
See it's amazing colors,
it's texture.

Touch it.
Breath it,
the soft perfume of a summer's afternoon.

Take your time,
for the flower will die
in a day or few
and this moment is all you have,
your one opportunity
to drink in God's gift of perfection,
to enjoy the very moment of glory it was created for.

Look at it's leaves,
rich, green, perfect cappillaries
bring life and beauty
from the earth, rain and sun
to the blossom you hold gently in your hand.

Months, years even have gone into this moment,
from seed, to this crescendo of color,
seasons of death, of cold and rebirth.

And after it's death?
More seeds. More Life. More beauty.
Life renewed,

a life full of such moments.
A sunrise.
The crisp taste of apple pie on the tongue.
The tenderest touch of a lover.

All reborn like the flower,
sure as love,
sure as your own glorious beauty.

So waste not the moments.
Let them fill you,
and push aside your troubles.
If only for now,
find peace.

=====================

The title was blatantly stolen from one of the links I love, Think Simple Now. I saw the title and dropped everything. I just KNEW there was a poem in there. Only later did I actually read the post. It's well worth reading, less lyrical, but probably more useful to the overwhelmed than my verse.

The picture was taken in Dorset, Vermont last weekend. In a greenhouse of course, since winter's still dancing around those parts. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: Morning Thievery

Morning Thievery

You sip coffee
as the morning people,
and those who are not,
pass by,

all in a rush,
a familiar group of strangers
that have populated your morning ritual
for years.

You know them by their gait,
by their choice of daily caffeine,
by the look of sadness or joy or boredom
that infuses their eyes, day after day, as if

their lives were a tale told over and over,
without escape, while yours
seems to blow like a leaf in the autumn wind,
a speck of color lilting to and fro,

sometimes caught in the light of joy,
someteimes in the dark shadow of life's clouds. Ah,
but to those strangers who know you in the same vague way,
by your sitting in the first window table,

with a cup of the house blend,
and the small black book where you write each morning
without expression, so they can not know
you are a pirate, a poet,

stealing the day's treasure of moments,
the rise and fall of life's light,
the quiet tender embrace of God,
and the devil's dance.

==========

The picture was taken at Mill Mountain Coffee and Tea in Daleville, Virginia. You can click on it for a larger version.

Poem: The Power

The Power

When you see the picture,
long after the lessons,
and you see with your own eyes
how your words

stayed with him,
how a few brief phrases
passed from you to another
to create such beauty;

you realize the power
and the importance,
of each word, and the understanding
delights, and frightens you, both.

==========

My 10 year old son took this picture a couple of weeks ago, after sitting in on a photography class I was teaching college kids at my church. In this one shot, he synthesized most everything I packed into a 30 minute lecture. Who knew they actually listened? You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: Hothouse Flowers

Hothouse Flowers

The flowers were grown in the greenhouse,
their blooms vibrant
months before their cousins outside
will open and show their color.

You enjoy their fragile beauty,
aware that they could not survive
outside, where it is still winter
no matter what the calendar might say,

where piles of snow rise high
along street banks,
and the Vermont wind turns frigid
each night.

You breath deeply the hothouse air,
moist and too warm for the season.
You feel sweat on your chest.
The stickiness of your clothes is uncomfortable,

stifling, and part of you wants to leave,
to go outside where the air is brisk and real,
but you tarry, longer than you had planned,
your eyes soaking in the color,

remembering it like love,
it's memory carrying you
until the change of seasons
comes.

============

The picture was taken at the Mettowee Mill Nursery in Dorset, VT, in one of their greenhouses. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: Prelude to a Dance

Prelude to a Dance

This house, once so full of life,
is empty for you now,
a museum that bears only a surface resemblance
to the place you once dwelled,

with no pictures on the walls
or warm flames in the abandoned fireplaces,
no laughter in the halls,
nothing but a single chair in each room

like a surrealist painting,
yet real,
a place for strangers to sit
when they are tired.

You sat there once,
a stranger in your own house,
confused and passive,
waiting for the color to return,

until you understood
that the color was around you,
outside and beyond,
and you could wait no longer, until

like a child on the first day of May,
you could not help yourself, but ran
outside, and danced the wild dance
of dandelion seeds in the warm wind of spring.

===============

The picture was taken at Poplar Forest, Thomas Jefferson's less famous home in Forest Va. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: Standing in the Wind

Standing in the Wind

The wind sweeps across the mountaintop
and one tree, bent and enduring
a lone survivor silhouettes the sky

and you are not sure
whether it is the last gasp of life,
or a reason to hope
that this hilltop can bec0me a garden.

You climb, marveling that what once seemed
a soft, green mountain is so steep, so rocky,
so tiring to conquer, and you wonder

if it is truly so brutal,
or if it is age and the storms of your own life
that tire you so, until

reaching the summit, you stand
and feel the weather pull at your shirt,
knowing you must now make a decision,

to stay, and plant a garden,
or to succumb to wind and fear of wind.
You hesitate, then facing the sun,

and feeling it's warmth, and the promise of spring,
you dig.

==============

The picture was taken in Belize. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: Road Trip

Road Trip

The road has beckoned you for years,
as you sat on your porch and read
of far off places,

places not just of geography,
but of the heart, of the soul.
And still, you stayed here,

in your place of comfortable sadness,
gazing at the road, envious and afraid
of those that traveled far

and found treasures, risking....
what? More pain? More sadness?
More of the same?

Until finally, on this cold March morning,
you went inside and packed,
prepared to travel

and see for yourself
what is really there.

============

The picture was taken on !-81 in the Poconos in Pennsylvania, while on a business trip. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: The Auction House

The Auction House

You can find lifetimes here.
Far more than furniture and lamps,
knick knacks and books,
if you look closely

you can discover secret passions,
weaknesses and hidden truths,
all yours for a few dollars,

all yours to add to your own
secret place, where things have lives
and stories, generations

of them, now lost,
but with the raise of your hand,
begun again.

================

The picture is of an auction house in Townshend, Vermont. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: Intimate Spring

Intimate Spring

Yesterday the berries were encrusted in ice,
bound by winter's brutal beauty, but
this morning, the last of the ice has melted,
and awaits the change of wind

to pull the final reminder of the season,
and drop it to the spongy ground below.

You watch the limbs whip in the wind,
sharing this intimate moment,
this passage of seasons, experienced
in a vague way by so many,

experienced so acutely by you in this brief
unveiling of beauty before your eyes.

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The picture was taken in Rupert, Vermont. You can click on it to see a larger version.

The poem was inspired by something I have begun to notice about new visitors here. There are patterns to what poems titles or subjects people search for that bring them here. For instance, the first of the year, most new visitors were looking for poems on "sin" more than anything. No matter where in the world they were, that was by far the number one topic of poem that people searched for. Why would that be? Something about the new year?" Something else. I have no idea. I just know it's so.

This past month, the huge majority of searches that bring people here have been "sunrise" and "shoes". You try to make those two make sense.

But that got me thinking about how, somehow, there is some universal things we experience - love, loss, victory, the seasons, and yet, we also experience them very, very individually. And from that random thought, this poem.

Tom

Poem: The Coldest Season

The Coldest Season

Ice. Snow. But beyond that, the blue
of a sky clearing,
making way for spring

in such unexpected color
that you cannot begrudge the last gasp
of winter,

for you know, even if it is in denial,
that the coldest season
cannot last.

And so you watch on this frigid day,
taking in the white earth,
allowing it this one moment of power

that cannot survive,
aware that this lonely moment in your life
will melt away, sure as spring.

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The picture was taken near Mount Jackson, Virginia. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: Washington's Wineskin

Washington's Wineskin

The old wineskin hangs on the wall,
it's leather warm and dusky,
the veteran of campaigns
born of war and the aftermath,

always held close
against the time of drought
that comes to all lives.
You reach out, knowing it is forbidden

to touch the artifact hung so artfully on the wall.
The the draw is irresistible,
as if his energy, his ability to endure failure
and suffering to emerge finally

as something more that a survivor,
can be transferred, like those who touched
Jesus' robe, and were healed.

Your fingers brush the leather
and there is no magic, save
another reminder that you can, and you will,
live.

============

The picture really is of one of George Washington's wineskins, from Mount, Vernon, Va. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

PoemL A Change of Wind

A Change of Wind

Three short days ago, there was snow here
and underneath, grass so brown and dry
that you could hear it crackle as you walked
over the soft blanket of white.

There were no birds, and the brook barely whispered -
another March day in frigid Vermont,
where even the sun burned icy
and the wind cut your skin.

But then, a change of wind, and warmth
and in a rush of melting,
the brook began it's gypsy dance,
and from nowhere, life awoke,

and the grass became a carpet,
and like love in middle age,
Spring was on you, and you lay in the grass,
and breathed deep, crying
in joy.

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The picture was taken last spring in Botetourt County, Virgina. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: Love in a minor key

Love in a minor key

A blue note wafts from the nightclub,
love in a minor key,
painful, sad, full of promise,

echoing in your heart,
releasing tears
for love lost,
for love's phoenix rebirth

and the reality of it,
each memory a wail,
lonely and hopeful,
like a saxophone at midnight.

=====================

The photograph is of some flowers my daughter's boyfriend gave her, after they had died and dried. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: Love Lies Sleeping

Love Lies Sleeping

You watch her sleep,
calmness in every line of her body,
a peace as palpable
as the soft rise and fall of her chest,
calling you to kiss her,
wrestling between passion
and the desire to let her peace
continue beyond dreaming.

==========

Like I have a picture to illustrate THIS one. Fat chance! But I liked the poem when I was done writing it.

Poem: At Home in Strange Places

At Home in Strange Places

You open the door to a new place,
to new smells and silences,
where there are no familiar paths
and there is fog, everywhere.

You step onto the porch and wonder
at the magnitude of change, realizing
this is not just a move from one house to another,
but a move of spirit

where, for a time, everything will be shrouded
in the fog that surrounds you,
where the internal compass that has become so comfortable
from fifty years in the same place
now spins wildly, and there is no certainty.

Your eye scans for a horizon, and finds none;
for landmarks, and again... none
save a lone tree in the distant field,
bare and stripped by harsh winters
a faint and grey beacon.
You button your coat against the cold,

and walk boldly into the morning of mist,
unsure, but unafraid, sure only
that God's March morning will, in her own time,
reveal all.

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The picture was taken in Rupert, Vermont. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: The Face in the Window

The Face in the Window

The face stares out of the window,
distorted, too large for life,
a reminder

that few things are as we see them,
that our truths are often ours alone,
our vision distorted

by time, heartache, and joy;
by lenses of pain and circumstance
that color all we see

with a wash of emotion,
and that the hardest thing
is to see what is

not just for ourselves,
but others, to realize
that the face staring back at us

is likely our own,
no matter who
we think it is.

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The picture was taken at the Swinging Bridge restaurant in Paint Bank, Virginia. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: The Humblest Flower

The Humblest Flower

It rises on the side of the road,
blue, vibrant and calming,
the humblest flower,
too often unseen,
like love in the late summer
of life.

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The picture is of a Batchelor's Button. I love formal gardens and all the rich colors of spring and summer, but Batchelor's Buttons are my favorite flower. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: Crystals of Love

Crystals of Love

The strongest love,
like crystals,
grow in time
to become at last,
eternal.

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The picture was taken at the Science Museum of Virginia. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom