As the New Year starts, how about a resolution to think and live in a slightly more poetic way?
As introduced here, I will be sharing a couple of poems from my new book here on Meridian regularly. I find it a good way to start a new work week, and hope you do too!
Here are two poems for this week, both about family and both with a sylvan metaphor, but let us begin with a short verse from T. S. Elliott as a preface:
“But there’s no vocabulary
For love within a family, love that’s lived in
But not looked at, love within the light of which
All else is seen, the love within which
All other love finds speech
This love is silent.”
(T. S. Elliott, The Elder Statesman)
Trunks
I walked in the English wood today,
200-year-old Beech Trees towered a foot for every year.
High, delicate branches cutting and filtering the slanting sunlight,
As it illuminates the green of every blade of grass and clump of moss.
I’d gone there to think about my family . . .
To access
How they were doing . . . and how I was doing
As a father,
As a husband.
At the crest of the hill I met a larger Beech . . . a patriarch with
A trunk 8 feet through . . . so imposing that
I sat down, back to a smaller tree, and listened with my eyes and mind
For any message the patriarch might teach.
Its trunk was like a hundred round, strong cords
Each as big as my leg, curling up from a root and swinging out above
As a branch.
The trunk detailed the connections between roots and branches.
The trunk was the connection.
(I am a trunk . . .with roots and branches.)
The branches gain nourishment and strength through the trunk from the roots.
The roots, in darkness, take light from the leaves.
They each give . . . the deep wisdom of the roots, the fresh wonder of the boughs.
(I am the trunk.)
Each lives because of the other.
Neighboring cousins help too because trees cross-pollinate.
There is harmony and beauty in a tree . . . and joy.
I am a
Trunk,
I am a
Trunk,
I am a
Trunk,
I am a
Trunk.
Roots
I wake up this morning looking out at the Temple,
Dawn almost fulfilled, but spire lights still on,
And into my empty, beauty-filled mind
Comes Grandma Swenson—Margaret,
Humble, meek, serving, praying, crying,
Carrying with her a peace, a faith, a holiness,
Spirit-dominated mental/emotional/physical/social
My mind winds to the other three—what each gave me,
Dan, artist, craftsman, woodworker, architect, gardener,
A teller of jokes, a sense of humor, a twinkle, a listener, a Bishop,
Living largely off the grid with little need for money,
A poet!
Athleen had style and sass, control and rules,
She made her boys get it right,
But tender and amused, never anybody’s fool.
A manager!
Howard blustered along,
FDR Democrat, Black and White,
Save money, invest it, go first class,
An athlete!
Potentially, I got the best of all of them,
And I’m grateful,
Deep into my roots,
Which are them.
