dmdubay

Walking on the beach at sunrise with a brother and sister is a gift that will keep on giving. It’s a time to collect and recollect. A gift glistens in the sound of the waves. Incessantly the waves come and go, washing away the missteps the mistakes of our past. It is a cleansing sound. The deepness of the ocean is not so frightening at the shore; although the power of the waves makes me feel small. I wonder, at the edge of this great mystery of the sea, from where have I come and when will I return with the lessons this life has given me? Does this family reunion prompt such thoughts? It seems that as we return to our family of origin, we can never be who we were. We can only offer what we have become. We have been formed in our separate existences. Our life choices have brought us to paths of dangers and blessings. But somehow, what we make of our unique happenings has been pre-formed by the common clay of our childhood. It is good to reconnect to that.

A Reunion Tanka

Seashells on the shore

Skeletons once full of life

A wounded gull limps

But he can still fly and swim

The shells are not so lucky.

2/6

Forget-me-nots smile,

On the trail beneath my feet.

How could I forget?

2/7

The poems flow on.

Seemingly they write themselves.

The muse smiles on me.

2/8/2015

Sunrise on the beach

The gulls and dolphins are up.

Do they ever sleep?

February 4^th

We sit side by side

Zooming through the slippery air,

Strangers—friends for now.

I never knew his name as we sat together side-by-side, smiling, laughing and telling stories. I’ll probably never see him again. What does a chance encounter like the one that occurs thousands of times a day above 30,000 feet mean?

February 5^th

Battlefields now cold

Sunshine brightens lonely graves.

Was anything won?

I walked on the battlefield at Averasboro, NC today. It is where the second to the last battle of the civil war took place. In the sunny fields and woods I imagined desperate soldiers fighting, wounding; doctors struggling to save, severing limbs too injured to save; boys just barley big enough to shoulder muskets full of hunger, fear and pride. How did men in this in-between place decide for whom they would fight? Brothers, sometimes on opposite sides, wondering if it was their actual brother they had just felled. But aren’t we all brothers? For what would I kill?

Tanka for February 3rd

Quiet in the night

Owls fly on silent wings

Even frogs keep still.

The moon sails high above us

Secrets told that no one hears.

arctic cotton

As promised, here are my first two poems for the month. Also, I couldn’t resist including a saying from Rumi. His wisdom is beyond words.

Haiku

It’s February,

The month of lovers and friends

Spread some love today.

Pantoum

Everything looks small from here.

Hills are flat as glass.

Travel—effortless and light.

I am above all struggle.

Hills are flat as glass.

Crossing rivers—easy as a thought.

I am above all struggle.

Flying is the only way to go.

Crossing rivers—easy as a thought.

Travel—effortless and light.

Flying is the only way to go.

Everything looks small from here.

Rumi

You knock at the door of reality

You shake your thought-wings

Loosen your shoulders

And open.

Looking back over the month, I am amazed at how diverse ideas somehow come together to make it a whole. Examining my thoughts, values, failings, joys and fears, I believe, gives meaning to seemingly inconsequential, unrelated things. I’m learning a lot about myself—a life long pursuit for any seeker of truth.

My goal for February is to write a poem a day. I want to try different, challenging forms: free verse, limericks, haiku, Tonka, pantoum, and, if I get brave enough, I might even try writing a sonnet. Haikus are deceptively easy—that is, easy to write but almost impossible to master. But I’ll try a few. In the meantime, I am putting together a book of poems that I have written over the last twenty years. That, too, is a learning experience. I am trying to find some sensible order to very disparate ideas in my poetry. Maybe I’ll just let chaos reign.

cathedral floor

It is nearing the end of January and again, I feel as though I am just beginning to explore the theme I chose for the month. Something new…I have tried to not only try new things, but to look at old things in a new way. A poem I wrote quite a few years ago says much about how I view newness and change. It’s fearsome, but in the end it is always expansive—and good.

Centering

Change and growth

The constants that mean life

Fear of them lies deep within my heart

I know the me I think I am

And cling—with all my strength

To keep my balance, stasis my desire

Bit by bit I loose my grip

Change overwhelms and joys my withered soul

Oh, ecstasy of falling to the center

Creation always new, yet ever good.

Lost Lake reflections

“The harvest of justice is sown in peace for those who cultivate peace.” James 3:18 When I read that my mind immediately jumped to cultivating. Being a farmer at heart, I imagined a tractor pulling a cultivator and preparing the ground for planting. It breaks up the hard clods and mixes up the soil. But cultivating also means to promote, encourage, improve or enrich. If I put those meanings together and try to see how that is true in my life, I know that to work for justice in the world, I must sometimes break up the hard clods of my own firmly held attitudes. Only then can justice be sown in peace. It doesn’t mean that I ignore the difficulties and in a “Pollyannaish” way embrace the idea of peace that means simply the absence of conflict. I want the real deal. I long for peace and justice in the world even if it means cultivating deeply the hardness of my heart.

grasses

We went for a ride today—a Sunday drive. I was reminded of short flights we often took in Alaska. On those flights we had no particular destination, we just wanted to enjoy the fall colors, or see the sunset or see how much snow had melted. We would fly down wide rivers as though they were roads with the trees whizzing by above our wings. The sensation of speed was intoxicating and we felt like soaring birds. Our flight today had that same feeling. We simply checked out things from the air and noted relationships of places we had previously known only from the ground. It’s amazing how things look so much easier from above. A trail we had hiked appeared easy to traverse—the hills gentle slopes. What we had struggled to climb—up close and personal—was flown over without breaking a sweat, in less than a minute.

Going for a ride

Maybe that’s what heaven will be like. Huge insurmountable obstacles here on earth will be smoothed out and passed over and their true beauty will be seen from a totally new perspective.