Detested suburb, cleared barren clay-earth for post-war housing builds
For eight years prior, my sky was canopied with trees
Each spring neighbors whitewashed the trunks, puzzling painting for some
Unknown protective reason. But at the park trees remain unpainted,
A mere block away, it is stunning in its surround of trees,
Planned, it was said, by the landscape architect who–after designing
Lake Shore Drive’s matchless miles of beauty along Lake Michigan–
Dictated the design of all Chicago neighborhood parks.
Trees were all I saw in walks to the bus past established neighborhoods
From trains to the Loop and car and bus rides,
Later peering at treetop blankets beneath planes uplifting from Midway Airport then O’Hare.
 
Then, continuing to circumvent Lake Michigan, college where “The Pine Grove” provided a
Verdant outdoor study spot interrupted only by 60s gatherings to protest one injustice or another.
Lastly, my Secret Garden home, bought for its gardening potential and tree borders, not the house
Far behind the triple cordon guarding us from street noise
Until the bike path–where no cyclist ever rode–demanded the first line of infantree be cut
Including the corner lot tree, so large that three peoples’ arms couldn’t encircle its trunk:
It challenged three sawing for half a day before it bowed to earth.
 
When my life dramatically changed in the way of fairy tales,
I unexpectedly came to dwell and delight among trees randomly
Self-seeded or bird-borne decades ago in rolling top-of-the-lake dunes
Where only grasses invade the sand and prevail against strong winds
Some trees are pruned by Mother Nature’s wind or lightning push to the ground. Then we
Startle to new views of the inland sea measured in land and added sunlight. Yet for most of
Winter-fall-spring, we cannot approach the lake through snowdrifts strong winds off our lake and
Lake Superior to our north mold into impassable mounds on the boardwalk
Dictated by Department of Environmental Quality–dread DEQ–dedicated to preserving pristine dunes.
 
Trees around our home may bear strange carbuncles, cankers of unknown earlier diseases;
Big as watermelons, they shamelessly create a beauty in their ugly imposition.
Tall tree trunks we’ve stuck in a sand line marking a transition from steps to shore are dubbed
“Stags”, not for similarity to deer who roam daily as if they own the woods (which, in fact, they do)
Smelling trails their primogenitors marked, creating new ones judging by hoof prints on our
 
Long front porch, unused in winter, seldom used in summer as our eyes look lake-wards
Where often omnipresent clouds disconnect permitting a glance of sunbeams, so I follow my passion
Picking up driftwood–in the tradition of Michelangelo I seek faces in the wash-ups, and
Spend some of the eight-month inclement wintry seasons bringing angels to the surface,
Where, from my ground-level Diva Den windows, I survey evergreens filled with chickadees,
Squirrel jousts, an occasional fox crossing, chipmunks,and deer at whom I ulalate if they approach
They stare in jaded boredom now, move away in sophisticated precision from
Carefully planted rock-and-shrub gardens, as we sigh for spring-summers four months,
Known to us year-round residents as “bugs” and to cottagers and returning snowbirds as
“Company” as they welcome–or not–the predictable encampments of visiting family, friends,
Possibly strangers, as we did years ago after a 50th reunion…someone just passing through:
 
We live at the tip-of-the-top of the lake…drop in.

Some, due to personal tragedy,
remain Holy Saturday Christians
for a long time — like in Dante’s
purgatory.

The sun doesn’t rise
and the colors don’t shine,
down in the dark night
of the soul’s own coal mine.

But by the grace of God,
and that Good Friday,
Holy Saturday eventually
passes into Easter’s new day.

It’s all geared to take what is in your
wallet and put it in theirs.
So the Principalities and The-Powers-That-Be
bombard us
with advertising and messages
that begin to seem simply as what’s fair.
We are conditioned to move
from couch to car to store after store
and buy more and more and a whole
lot more.
It has to be that way the elected lackeys
to The-Powers-That-Be say.
It is the patriotic, American Way.
Their pockets are so lined,
The-Powers-That-Be achieve
a state that’s seemingly divine
while it’s not hard to tell
that 99 percent are going straight to
economic hell.
What’s the antidote to such dis-ease?
Revolution, guerrilla war, suicide and
homicide?
More and more bloodshed is seen
more and more
with blow-back on the rise — just
more dis-ease, more dis-ease.
Peaceful protest, please!
the prophets cry.
Justice, self-sacrifice,
mindfulness, the life of Jesus,
the Buddha, Lao Tsu
and other guides to the eternal, too,
if you please, if you please,
if you please,
please.

“The uniqueness of poetry
is that
it deals with the
interior life,”
he read.
That being said,
it may reveal peace,
contentment, serenity
but those words do harbor
conflict, demons, strife
in that interior life.
And, perhaps, that’s why
some embrace it
as devoted readers
or serious writers of verse
for what it will reveal
while others reject it with
a wave so terse
and run from it
for what all their life
is worth.

Unfortunately, we live in a
world of black and white —
no more thesis, antithesis,
synthesis — no more non-
duality. It’s an Either/Or
world of
fight or flight.

In reality, we are neither here
nor there but both at the time
and somewhere along
the continuum line
which curves back
on itself in Einstein Time.

So, to say one or the other,
just isn’t a “stitch in time
that saves nine
(stitches).”
We have work to do today
so the fabric doesn’t continue to
unravel, unwind
and fray.

So, let’s free up our hearts
and minds
and live with the great
paradoxical paradigm:

Jesus — divine and human,
God — one and three,
the difference and sameness
of you and me
embracing humbly eternal lumens
of the numinous Thou and Me
reveling in the Great Mystery

and accept that we are all
just part of a “Humane Society”
for humans
and care for each other
like we care for the animals from
their own “Humane Society” and shelter

and embrace our animal and divine
as we embrace the divine in the
animals we find
at the “Humane Society.”

So, kiddies, if you go on a church
Easter Egg hunt in the Arizona desert,
be sure to follow these things:
Look where you walk and where you
put your hands so you don’t get
hurt by rattlesnake bites or scorpion stings.

Perhaps someone, because the parents don’t
seem to have a clue and before any kids
get stung or bitten on their hands or feet,
should just tell both parents and church
Easter Egg planners to get lost while taking
a hike up and down Piestewa Peak.

Or, perhaps even better, the church leaders
could cancel the hunt and have the kids
fly nice, big, butterfly shaped kites
in a local park. The butterfly is a nice
Easter symbol and the parents and leaders will
save themselves from being read their legal rights.

When he turned seventy,
he thought he knew enough.
Well, as a gray beard he knew enough
to know everyone
sixty-nine and under
thought he didn’t know very much.
“Well,” he said, “So and so
and such and such
and dozy doats and
and what the heck
does all that
so and so and such and such
and dozy doats
mean?
I may not know enough
but I know enough
to know this Passover poem is more than
long enough.”
“Enough, already!
If we may say,”
his two seventy-five year
old Jewish mother neighbors
exclaimed, with a Passover
oy vey and another oy vey
and one said to the other,
“All right,
already, that’s enough
about the kids
already or to be consistent
with this goy’s
way-too-long poem,
that’s already enough.
Open the door, Richard,
and let in Elijah to have
the fifth
cup of the wine.
Four for us are just fine.
We’ve been saving it
a long, long time,
oh, boy, oh, boy.
But don’t worry.
Mogen David and
Manischewitz
last
a very long time
as very fine
kosher wine,
oy vey.”

Hair falling,
Eyes dimming,
Teeth missing,
Skin flaking,
Bones creaking,
Muscles sagging,
Faith failing.

Sun shining,
Flowers blooming,
Birds singing,
Trees greening,
Lent passing,
Easter happening,
Creation hoping,
New beginning.

He heard the poet say that
church –listening to the
preachers — led him to poetry.
He is a black man and as I
think of black worship and
black preaching in particular,
I can understand that — the
rhythm, the cadence, the
crescendos, the staccato, the
beat, the tempo, the ups, the
downs, the all arounds —
preachers as metaphor for
Spirit. I get that in a white
sort of way. The college
chaplain broke all the rules
of oratory. He didn’t look at
the students. He was down in
his manuscript and then up in
the wooden rafters; his jokes
weren’t funny but his gestures
were a joke. His arms would
flail away completely out of
sync with the point he was mak-
ing. He was Dutch so his rhy-
thm wasn’t much, but he was
all over the place – up, down
and all around, finger to nose
and then the chin and with his
message Jesus danced my heart
within. Then, the gay guy,
who had about as much rhythm
as the college chaplain and
could get his plump, pear body
hidden under robes and stoles
about as high off the ground
as Phil Michelson’s Master’s
jump, told great jokes and put
his finger to the tip of his
nose just as he was about to
offer a climactic thought be-
fore the denouement and he would
bow his head and raise his arms
and bring them down and I expect-
ed a pound on the pulpit but
he would stop just short and
raise his arms like a sym-
phony conductor orchestrating
the last note and then just walk
away from the pulpit to lead
the choir in the offertory and I
would cry the tears of Jesus as
he wept over his good friend
Lazarus stinking up the tomb
and I would cry the tears of
Mary and Martha as they watch-
ed their brother rise from the
dead. And I, too, knew those
preachers were poetry in motion.