Month: September 2002

The Feeling of Love

The feeling of love is something passing
And mine is so impure
And yet
Like a rock that keeps on floating
Somehow my heart
Keeps on reaching for the air

I am not afraid
Of some mindless trepidation, but
A genuine concern:
I’ve given up so many times
So many times, my metal’s bent
My blade’s gone dull
Am I rusting?
What will purify my soul?
I want so much
But can I give?

What if my mind begins to wander?
What if feelings fade?
What if night supercedes the day?
Can I count on mere commitment
To keep me in the way?

Driving Through the Irish Mountains

I do not care to travel much. It’s not
So much that I don’t like to see the sights
And feel the shock of fresh experience.
I do enjoy that rare experience,
But in my mind these things take time, and time
Is rare on trips like this. We rush so fast
From place to place that all we really see
Is our reflections on each other. We
Can only survey our environment:
The study is what we are learning of
Each other.

In this rush, the mountain view,
With all its waterfalls and windswept crags,
Is lost. It flies so fast and vasty green
That it can only hint at treasures far
Beneath. My inclination then is just
To run as quickly as I can — to hide
In some secluded, quiet place, far from
The maddening crowd, and hold me deathly still —
To mine for what is hidden, what is real.

I often fail to find it, whizzing down
The mountain roads, but always there’s a hint
Of something beautiful: the way the pubs
All close at ten, or how the Irishman
Says, “now,” to mean a process is complete;
The sight of all the hills denuded of
Their trees and filled instead with sheep.

The sight
Of barebacked mountains has a holy feel
To someone raised on tufts of grass and clouds
Of dust that stretch beyond the skyline. Plains,
They call them, furling out another world
Away, and furling always in my heart
And mind.

And so it always shocks me, when
I see variety. It feels just like
My first time driving through a city filled
With trees: The things amazed me, how in just
A little time abandoned plots could be
Transformed into a checkered wood, and grow
So thick and lush with pines and firs and vines
Of every species. Trees were everywhere,
And every angle that I looked, it seemed
So deep and rich, enfolding you into
The trees, the way a mother holds her child.

But once a little time had passed, the trees
Grew old on me. Eventually I longed
To see the sky again. I have no way
To tell the sense I have for going home:
Again to feel the Oklahoma wind
And gaze into a great big Sky.

And this
Is how I come again upon this row
Of mountains jutting up against the bus,
My window sometimes flecked by giant ferns
And grasping trees. The road seems almost out
Of place, so smooth and even is its keel.
The clouds are flowing rapidly, a breath,
It seems, above the humbled mountain peaks.

I like to think that from those points, my eyes
Could grace a hundred valleys rolling far
Beneath, and see a thousand stone-walled fields,
Littered full of grazing sheep. I lift
My eyes, and looking up, I feel myself
Surrounded by the heavens: bits of home
Inside me, reaching out to every place.

Dreams Come Up

Hurled into a sea of doubt
The patent swimmer waits
Til every breath is terminated
Dreams come up, the final breaths
Of drowning men, bursting to the surface
In strange unrealistic shapes
And when they break, they vanish
Though they lie forever
On the horizon of the deep
They are seen and heard no more

Then, confident in something invisible, but
Just as real and more expansive than
The ocean, the swimmer springs with hidden strength
Breaking through the surface of the deep

He gasps and drags down hope
Forcing the insubstantial into him
Then lying on his back he grasps
Imagination, and begins to swim

Plan

There is a short list of words that do not describe me. Regular, for one. And organized. Steady, stable, organized.

Don’t get me wrong. I do accomplish things. And you can usually count on me to do whatever it was you asked me to. Just not exactly when I said I would. I have this incredible incapacity to do things at a regular pace. I do everything all at once, or not at all. Writing, for instance. One day, I may get a short story and three poems, and then, for the next week, nothing. Or I’ll get a song and never bother to write it down.

So, this is my excuse for not writing but once last week: I’m not lazy, just irregular. It’s all in me head, these big plans for my little website, but it’s going to happen at my pace, which is to say, in spurts and fits.

Of course, it doesn’t help that my vast storehouse of creative writing was lost forever a few months ago. I’m slowly tracking it down, piece by piece, but it’s taking a while. Then I have to organize it, re-edit everything, make quality hard copies so it never happens again, and re-enter everything into the computer. But in the mean time, you only get them as I write them, and I’m about as steady an element as plutonium.

Here’s the current plan: I’m going to try to put something up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Very likely, that will mean quite a few blogs of the diary type. I those, but everybody else seems to like them, so we’ll probably all be quite happy. If I can’t keep up, I’ll move down to Tuesdays and Thursdays.

On a side note: My school has thought up a very creative way to get people in the dorms to become more acquainted. We have these card-access Laundromats in each dorm. Last year, everybody got a card with a number on the back of it and it was written down in a computer somewhere which number went to what person. Everybody was constantly losing their card. You tell yourself, “Self, I’m going to take the card out as soon as I select my washer.” Then you put your card in the machine, you start the machine, there’s a slight delay, and in that delay you get bored. You decide to go ahead put the clothes in. Then, since you’re already there, you decide to put the soap in and turn on the machine. At this point, you’ve completely forgotten that you didn’t obey your own orders and take the card out immediately after selecting the machine, and you wander off toward your room. Your poor little card is stuck in the machine with a sniffle, saying, “she doesn’t love me.” It’s very sad.

The problem was, when the next person comes and tries to put his card in the slot, there’s already a card there. He takes it out and the only ID on the card is 01148. He has no idea whose card it is. Worse yet, he’s already lost his card in the same manner, but doesn’t realize it until he reaches into his wallet and pulls out… nothing. He then takes the card that was already in the reader, with the thought of, “well somebody already did it to me. This was probably my card in the first place.

Well, we’ve fixed all that now. Now, when you lose your card in the machine, your NAME is written on the back (somebody was brilliant). This means that whoever finds a card left in the reader, now can tell exactly whose card it is, and somehow feels obliged to return it. This is very easy, since everyone’s name is written on their door. We get to meet all kinds of new friends this way. The trick is, only the first name is written on the door. I just found a card named Ashley. There are three Ashleys in my dorm. All of them are at class. I put the card on top of the reader.

Last of all, here’s you a poem:

Who is Master of my sorrows?
Who is Lord of all my grief?
The Same Who is my Savior
The one who delivers me.