Poem for August

Sunstruck


The soft, lush days end,
and the ground bakes.

Petals fall,
horns and spikes
of plant and light
hook our flesh
and ride us
to the next eruption,

Fed by the salt
and water from our pores,
and by our blood,
as I am fed by you.

copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved

Portal

Rushing about before we leave for Paris, we left open the workshop door.

The garbage man is due, and we're bagging trash, trying to reduce, to simplify.

Deaths of those we love have filled the garage with things they owned, scraps of their lives, mementos to which we have weak connection, except as reminders of interrupted souls whose evanescence too few are left to mourn. We won't forget. So, out they go, most of them, and we feel lighter for it.

Then the open doorway stops us. At the far end of the garage, seen through the darkened workshop, it seems a portal to the next moment.

We step through it, through the rose of sharon weighted with blooms, squinting in the light, and cross the yard toward the house to pack.

We leave the door open.

copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved

Genius Bar

We drove 60 miles to sit at the Genius Bar, our malfunctioning laptop in hand, and wait for our name to be called.

The Genius Bar is at the back of the Apple store where whizzes evaluate your problem for free. Our screen had gone dark, and we were happy to learn, with the help of a spare monitor, that repairs could be made on Sunday in the city. We made an appointment to see the computer doctor. We were on time, had a seat, and waited behind a handful of iPhone prognoses to be summoned. Not so bad.

"Definitely dark," he said. "We can replace the whole screen for $780, or you can ship it to IRESQ, and they'll replace the wire or the invertor, which is all it might be."

We are reasonable people. We took our dark Mac to lunch.

We come to you now by way of a toy Dell, our fingers gargantuan.

We'll get by, at least until we get back from Paris. We'll deal with it then.

 Difficult to confront adversity in the face of overstimulaton.

copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved

Tent

Tent

Awakened by owls
we emerge in the dark
like luna moths
the long trails
of our lives as transparent,
weightless, iridescent,
as the trains of our breath.

This is the overworld,
cold and reduced,
steam on the river,
sound off the water
folding in on itself,
consciousness purled
on a wall of shadows.

copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved

Season of Excess

End of July, and the volunteers are running amuck.

The life that appears on its own is thriving, achieving its maximum growth, blooming, expanding to fruition.

How we love to see it, the verdancy that happens without us, even in spite of us. We call them weeds, and all honor to the name.

They tower above us, alive with bees and butterflies and wasps and wind, and growing seed, thunderheads rising behind them. A storm seems the logical next thing, something powerful and dangerous and life-giving.

We are part of it. We belong. We are wild and given to excess. We feel the heat of the sun, and the shock of the rain, and the thrill of forces beyond our comprehension. We open ourselves to it, for we have this moment, and we are sure of that, and not much else.

We are alive at the end of July and full of praise for what exists.

copyright 2010, J. O'Brien, all rights reserved

Night Trains

The buidings in Harpers Ferry sag with history. Our second story porch was no exception.

We sat sipping and sweating and talking in the dark, strangers stopped here to sleep before continuing our way in the world. Night descended into the valleys of the Potomac and the Shenandoah.

The town is full of ghosts. John Brown's raid here in 1859 helped ignite the Civil War. He hoped to capture firearms manufactured and stored here, arm slaves, and start a revolt. He failed, and was hanged. Every private shop and National Park Service structure alludes to it. The town is like Gettysburg that way, unsettled by the past.

On our porch, a D.C. attorney spoke of the worst instincts of men. He spoke of genocide and war crimes -- the focus of his work. "Every living president," he said.

Beneath us, an interpreter of history, dressed in period clothing complete with boots, wide-brimmed hat, and chin whiskers, finished his talk, tucked his damp tips into his vest, and loaded his gear into his Sebring convertible.

Freight trains interrupted our conversation often, their rumble and shriek echoing off the stone cliffs of Maryland Heights.

"Night trains," said the attorney. "You don't want to know what's on them."

copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights

Sky Game

We have the sky in common, though the fans from Minnesota had forgotten it.

"This is why we have a roof," they said as the rain began.

"Nothing to get excited about," said the red-shirted usher, pockets stuffed with dollars from wiping  seats. "Just a little Pittsburgh air conditioning. Stay put, and it'll stop."

Paying customers made their way from the boxes to the mezzanine. One held up his Blackberry and said, "Torrential dowpour on its way!"

"Okay, then," said the usher, and we all sought shelter.

The wind increased. The rain fell beautifully, illuminated. The umpires stopped play, and the grounds crew spread their tarps.

Thirty minutes later, the sun shone. The tarps were pulled back. Men in tandem with push brooms moved standing water through the grass and toward hidden drains. The ushers wiped the seats, bills damp in their khakis. Baseball resumed.

The half moon rose over The City of Bridges.

No one imagined being anywhere else.

copyright 2010, J. O'Brien
all rights reserved

Expectation

Treacle days,

Langorous afternoons,

Paths of low resistance,

Thunderheads and fireflies rising,

Nights with flame and stars,

Satellites passing,

Mirror world,

Pulse of light then thunder,

Wind across the roofs,

Rain in the bent boughs,

No one else company enough,

Storm as expected.

copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all  rights reserved

Untitled

She loved the kiln of afternoon, the field bristling

With crickets, the yellow dust blowing up from the road.
I do not think the soul flies heavenward.

Oak and words and jets, our noise goes with us when we go,

A spin of midges at our heads, birds across a pool of red,

Stem and ridge and light; let what the summer says be said.

copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved

Three Inches of Rain

Three inches of rain fell in the night, raising the ponds. A warm, steady, windless shower, it began before sunset, straight down from high up, so invigorating we ran our last half mile bare-chested with the rivulets running down us, and we felt almost amphibious.

The ground drank it in, and when the sun appeared at noon, there were no puddles, except in the palms of the lily pads, and no mud. The green world stands a little taller today.

My son tells me he watched the leaves of his zucchini plants point to the sky and cup, directing the rain to their roots.

This evening, fire flies rise from the weeds in a display like we haven't seen in weeks, revived. We feel it, too. Rain is an ordinary miracle.

copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved

Only Impermanence Lasts

Candle flames straight up and steady,
Dogs come back to lie on the porch and pant,
That deep beautiful color in the woods
We can't describe and call it dusk.

The events of the day have unsteadied us,
The mind is born to struggles and distresses,
We read in the woods for comfort
The ancient thoughts of the solitary.

If it should rain, it will rain,
If the wind should blow, it blows,
If you want to know about your life,
Study the withering rose.

Even without hearts and minds,
plants fall with the passing days,
Seeing just how this is so, wrote
Dogen, we feel a little ashamed.

copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved

Bridgers

Sixty tons of steel

rose from the rail cars

as gracefully as mist

out of the valleys
in first light.

Watched from the hillside,

the bridge floated into place

with seeming ease,
evidence of what men
can do in concert.

We focus on the big events,

or so they seem,

the 100-foot behemoth

suspended from the boom,

the fluid turn
and the lowering,

the thrilling precision.

But men are the wonder,

their skill and courage

and faith in each other,

their quiet strength --

another day
of the incredible,

another totem to their work

that will outlive them.

All artists strive for that.

copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved

Before Sunrise After Parting

Early light,

Birds in silhouette

Sail out of the woods

In solvent mist,

Timothy weighted

With pollen and dew

Waiting for wind;

Friends and lovers,

Busy with the world,

Circle toward us.

Patience.


copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved

Standing on Your Head

The hum of being surprises us.

Unable to hear it for a few days amid the thrill of magnificent distraction, we sit once again with the earth beneath our feet and not a right angle in sight.

Silence is easily forgotten, how it strengthens us.

We walk the field, our engine slowing to a sweeter pace. The things we know the best we see again as if for the first time. We love the view uncommon, the closer look, the undersides of things.

Thoreau was fond of standing on his head to give him a new perspective. You may laugh if you have not tried it. Fresh consideration opens us to beauty.

Sometimes we are surprised to find that what we seek has been here all along.

We overlook so much.

copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved

Perspective

Our dairy farming neighbors took the day off on the Fourth of July. It was also Sunday, so they didn't really lose any time working the fields.

They parked their tractors along the paved road and festooned them with small American flags. We admired them on the way to the bike trail.

On Monday, Independence Day Observed, they went back to bailing hay. We went back to the bike trail. We rode 50 miles in the sun and the shade and made a few new friends from other parts of the world. That happens often on the Great Allegheny Passage.

When we returned, round bales cast strong shadows on the stubble, and the fields gained perspective. Us, too. We think we all had a productive holiday.

copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved

Laurel Mountain Pilgrimage

We found this place decades ago, unexpectedly.

We had been exploring the eastern slope of Laurel Ridge, riding the thumper up old logging roads, shutting down often to wander in the thickets of wild rhododenron, blooming white in the dark forest. And we heard it, the muted rush of water and gravity.

Drawn to water as we always have been, we followed the sound into the forest. In less than 100 yards, the ground dropped away, and we stood at the top of Cole Run Falls and the ravine below it.

Ever since, we have considered it a holy place.

The state has it listed now. The road has been graded and graveled. A routed sign directs visitors through the hardwoods. Humans have carved their names into trees. A sock lies with crayfish in a vernal pool beneath water striders.

That sadness aside, the motion of water, the mist in the shadowed air, the trees rising into the sky, still elevate our consciousness, pilgrims that we are.

copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved