His eyes were incredibly distant
as if I didn't exist
or anyone
He was large, huge really
his mottled skin and comb-over familiar as a family memory
He didn't yell or posture
But was quiet for long stretches of time
melting into the ambient noise
I sat beside him at a large conference table
with people milling around us
but I paid them no attention
He asked me to come up with a plan
to attend a Cal football game;
I worked away at the only medium at hand
a football program dense with photographs and text
offering little white space,
so I scrawled in margins and between pictures of colliding bodies
until at last he leaned over, looked at my cramped words
and said "I thought it would be something like that."
He was not pleased.

When I took a detour to urgent care
I didn't doubt I'd again see my fully-branched redbud tree 
But when I returned after three long hours
a large branch had fallen
in a quiet rain with little wind
covering the sidewalk in a leafy mass
and leaving behind
a jagged crack.

Suddenly it was clear to see
my tree had needed urgent care more than me.

We're all damaged goods 
adrift in time
fractured by experience
you and me and the redbud tree
its branches unfortunately susceptible to split
and so are we, 
after many a trip and fall
splintering limbs, shedding blood like sap
and what have we left
after all of that?

how shall we spend the days and hours
they didn't have
who died, 
at Fallujah, Gettysburg, Thermopylae, Khe Sanh,
Midway, Stalingrad, Salamis, and the Somme, 
Passchendaele, Gallipoli, Verdun,
an endless list,
MacLeish's young dead soldiers who do not speak?

we, whose days are numbered too
but still have time and scope to seize the day,
to rue the losses, honor those who paid
and build a better world upon their graves.

Birds don't wish to fly, they just
                                                            do
                     swooping, soaring, 
          plunging sometimes earthward
    like small feathered rockets,
                                     feeling the air rush over/under
                                                      their wings
watching the world unroll below
                         like a Technicolor memory.

Gradually, then suddenly
an empire stops looking and feeling imperial
forgets where it left its glasses
or its founding principles
loses track of important things
loses wars
but pretends not to
loses friends
but pretends it doesn't care
or that they weren't friends to begin with
can't find its wallet or keys
looks old and tired all the time
but takes lots of pills and supplements
forgets how it became an empire
forgets who it is.

 “What a piece of work is a man, 
How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, 
In form and moving how express and admirable, 
In action how like an angel, 
In apprehension how like a god, 
The beauty of the world, 
The paragon of animals. 
And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

But man, proud man,
Dressed in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence—like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep..."

Words stripped down 
to basics
their essence laid bare as an old doorknob
not glamorous but real,
as real as dirt or the small kernels of wind-blown 
juniper seeds that covered the back patio this morning
the same morning two crows landed early on the grass
in search of breakfast worms and grubs,
under a gray sky.
It later turned bright blue with cottony clouds composed
of water drops and tiny bits of ice.
One crow slurped up a gray-white worm like an oyster
and trotted off in search of more.

Babies learn it bit by bit 
people or things disappear, then return
as if by magic.
A game of peekaboo teaches the lesson perfectly:
yank the towel or burp cloth, remove the fingers,
and Mom's face reappears
from behind the temporary veil.
It happens again and again until you see the pattern.
Toys too can be lost or hidden, then rediscovered:
Remarkable resurrection!
Later we learn other, harder lessons:
People vanish, never to return.
We move from beloved homes, lose beloved friends, even those closest to us,
unimaginably at first,
until the grim pattern makes itself clear as the coldest glacier.

Cruel age takes away, as does cruel history.
Cities and towns, destroyed by war or altered unbearably by change.
Democracy lost by inattention.
Civil rights yanked away like an afterthought.
Certainties grown uncertain.
Suns explode
Galaxies shift place
Even universes have life spans.
Finitude binds us, like babes, to what is or was.
We struggle to comprehend it -- this endless round of hide and seek 
loving and losing
impermanence lurking, ghostlike & insubstantial
within all that seems solid and secure.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live
and yet we don't last long.
We waste away or vanish in an instant
all of us, time's mini tragedies
whether in distant lands under distant stars
or at home in our beds.
We are fragile creatures
of flesh, blood, bones, tendons
seemingly solid
but always a moment away
from oblivion.
My father died so many years ago, disappearing
into a January night,
my mother followed years later 
her last ragged breaths lessening until they stopped
altogether,
my brother and I listening in the early morning darkness.
No wonder we tell ourselves tales
so brave and foolish
words tossed into time,
tragedies of comic proportions
or vice versa.
"Let me tell you a story," we say,
hoping that words whispered into the whirlwind
will somehow matter
that someone will listen and remember
the tale and the teller,
when brute logic suggests otherwise.
A very human enterprise, 
one thing, at least,
the robots can mimic but not yet manage.

seashells on the shore do not incite
anyone to murder or commit
mayhem.
they whisper of time and its ravages
the sea's timeless power &
life's stupefying fragility,
nothing more.

redbud trees are full of small pink blossoms
Portland is ablaze with flowers and flowering trees
and the war drags on
reckless, willful, senseless.

the mad king grows ever more mad
angry at the world and everything in it 
as if everything exists solely to threaten his fragile ego.

so the weird, reckless, unnecessary, ridiculous war drags on
distracting us, intentionally
from the mad king's own crimes and corruption.
there's a simple solution, though:
pull the plug on his reality show --
our mad and maddening King must go.

when I vanish into history
no documentaries will document my steps and missteps
I'll leave traces 
in hearts I hope
bits of remembered laughter and connection
occasional inspired silliness
a mountain of no-longer-read journalism
as high as Kilimanjaro
trapped in a now
that has disappeared already
into time.

strange that I feel now more me than ever
more here
more placed
but that's a trick
a con
mountains aren't here forever
or oceans
starfish or rhinoceroses
or even stars.

like a pile of unread books
a chorus of unsung songs
this world will forget I sojourned here
under disappeared stars whose light outlived them,
glimpsed waves crash
loved and wondered

will my memories survive
caught like bugs in amber
captured in a cosmic database of forgotten longings
a zoo of lost emotions?

while I'm here lingering
in time
I'll launch myself into sunlight
capture moments like fireflies 
or musical notes
drifting through a dazed and dozy afternoon in central Edinburgh
ignored by history
while birds sit on Georgian battlements
and banter.

I am almost afraid to open the front door to look upon the world we have made
to walk among Portland trees and greenery and a riot of spring flowers
and know what I know about us.
I was 10 or so when I first discovered and pondered 
Hitler, the Holocaust, hatred of the Jewish people
and the oddly compelling nature of complicity
in such things.
Asking my Catholic God why He allowed such things to happen, and receiving no answer.
But the questions remain, and grow in intensity
As so many fall into complicity's twisted circle
And babies die in the ruins of schools and cities
And families are split apart
And the last African lions in the wild may be gone in 20 years
And for many empathy is a dead letter
And cruelty is rampant
A religion unto itself
And America, my America
is on the side, it seems, of darkness and dark complicity
and the flowers bloom in bright and cheerful beauty
appearing to mock or comment disapprovingly on our conduct.
And sun and moon and stars shine on the just and the unjust.
And the last lion is about to roar.

I remember fragments
his salt and pepper hair, cut short
that he wore khakis and short-sleeved shirts
in the San Diego or New Mexico sun
never jeans, never sneakers, never shorts.
But the exact color of his eyes eludes my memory.
Dark brown or hazel, like mine?
I've never been good with details like this, but still,
what gives?
And photos of Dad, especially in color,
are vanishingly rare.
Small details like this are escaping into the past, 
Just as he disappeared one January night
so very long ago.

It’s difficult to imagine spring amid winter storms
peace in the midst of war
or renewal when corruption runs rampant.
But spring offers guidance,
singing its songs
offering up its brilliant colors and sweet aromas
without regard for history's grim lessons.
When its time comes,
We feel it in our bones and in our blood,
a current that overwhelms all obstacles.

We live in an empire run by thugs.
We can change this
if we’re brave & lucky & persistent.
But until we do
this is where we live.

My father was the smartest man I've known,
in many ways the wisest,
and yet he too was foolish.
He knew multiple languages
learned ancient Greek in middle age
understood Plato and Sophocles, John Donne and T.S. Eliot
yet continued to smoke cigarettes too long
to live into old age.
He knew well the dangers of arrogance
the fate of nations or city states
like the Athens he held among the highest of man's accomplishments
yet knew better too, he seemed to think, 
than his doctors and their directives.
He wrote brilliantly, in prose that rose above its academic peers
and left scribbled notes in books
penciled in tiny graphite strokes,
that wondered, like Socrates, about fundamental things
and their causes,
asked 10,000 questions.
And yet he left us, left me, too early,
and even before his death,
for the safety of his study and the succor of his books.
His patrimony was a mountain of memories & stories,
odds bits of knowledge -- and a deep hole never to be filled
or plumbed.