Sexagenarian Love
Waking to your touch
electric eels
massive
healing hands
without a glint
of sexuality
Waking to your smile
whispers sweetly
to my soul
like the first time
so long ago
on our first flight
together
when your arm
brushed against mine
and shook our worlds
out of their solitary
orbits and
sent us to the moon.
Your grey fluffy hair
sparkling silver threads
entices every time
I sniff your fragrance
and inhale the heavens
the warmth
of your cheeks
in our fleeting
embrace
I would it
would last forever
like our love
The smile lines etched
around your sky blues
alter the pulse
the course of my blood
and with each glance
reach for the stars
twinkling inside my head
The wrinkles in your cheeks
and your furrowed brow
pluck at the strings
inside my bosom
for I know the hard times
and worries that
engraved them on your face
On the doorway
to Orpheus
in pillowed embrace
your big hand
holds mine
and makes me
feel safe and loved
and little
as you drift off
leaving me wishing
for morning
to awaken once
more to you
fears tears
so long to wait
till morning
We are old
How did this happen?
and we are in love
more than ever
youthful passion gone
replaced by years of fidelity
affection, quarrels, laughing,
teasing, crying
always sharing, caring
yet attraction still stirs
and the years of together
have sewn our souls to one
Loss is inevitable
and unacceptable
In equal measure
The God I used to find
in nature
I now find in you
And the ecstasis
of gazing at the sky
now rests with the mystery
of you and the layers
of your personality
You CANNOT leave me
I won’t let you go
If you should leave
if I still breathe
take my breath away
I beg
of you
of God
take me with you
I cannot
breathe without
your breath
nor see
without your eyes
nor pulse
without your heart
I cannot
though I did before
I can no longer
I live
for through in
you
and you alone
in forever.
Ode to a One-Eyed Dog
You open our eyes to the Infinite
with your soft-brown, one-eyed stare,
your gentle, pink-tongued kisses
and your deep, dark, velvet ways.
You open our hearts to Eternal Love,
joining in our displays of affection,
cringing at discord in dire dejection,
Oh, Love-Dog with a failing heart!
You work your love-magic on all you meet
with a willful wag of your toy-like tail
Soothing us in sorrow and defeat
with the soulful “ear” of your only eye.
In your own pain, you comforted us.
Losing Dad, you licked Mom’s tears.
When Mom died you brought us back
from the shrieking world of grief and fears.
And you are getting old, as I lie sick in bed,
my nose nuzzling your greying head,
inhaling your sweet doggie scent,
I feel the fragile flutter of your tender heart.
Lulled by the hum of your delectable delight,
warmed by your love, touched by your joy,
filled with awe at each breath you take,
I see in you God’s mystery of life.
Divine Romance
Our third decade together. And the love grows deeper against a background of eventual, inevitable loss. A loss more unimaginable than one’s own demise.
I look deeply into your eyes, my eyes linger, falling into your blue orbs, while you, in turn, delight in my gaze, going far beyond the polite looks people use in everyday conversations. We pause too long. I fall into the abyss of your sky blues and feel reverence. Reverence for your happy spirit, infectious mood.
It is not the Eros of our first decade that waned in the second and all but disappeared in the third. Attraction, yes, but of a different nature. Attraction of the heart, the soul, the spirit. We bring each other to pure joy, bliss, a sharing of spirit. We give each other a taste of oneness with all.
Turtle Tears
It is before dawn on a moonlit night. The moon has swept the trees and grass in silver. I await the sun. The moon woke me to whisper about the silent beauty of the predawn hours. The yard is white magic and I imagine a monarch butterfly now sleeping, awaken to find a turtle so it can drink its tears. Monarch butterflies drink turtle tears. Why are the turtles crying? They cry for the ailing earth. They cry for those who suffer. They cry for the dying. They cry for those striving to become one with all. They cry for the sap in the trees flowing. They cry for the animals who are constantly on guard for their lives. They cry for the bird egg which will not ever hatch. They cry for the dying stars in an ever expanding universe. They cry for the unawareness of the high and mighty. Turtle tears are like diamonds sparkling in candlelight, like rain drops on a drooping Lily of the Valley. Come now to drink my tears, dear Monarch. Your beauty gladdens my heart. Your heart drops manna from the heavens into my soul. Come now, dear Monarch. Come lick the dew drops in my eyes.
Tears for America
Valarie Kaur of the Revolutionary Love Project talks for 7 and a half minutes about the rage and indignation we feel in the face of the domestic terrorism attack on the Capitol on Wednesday January 6th, 2021. She tells us how to channel the rage and indignation and powerlessness we feel. And she ends with a short Sikh prayer song.
Beings of Light
December is my favorite time of year. In this month of darkness, in this the darkest month, the light of the human spirit shines forth in a fullness shown by so many, in so many ways. As the days grow shorter, houses and trees are decorated, and snow falls. In the hushed silence of the nights, lights shine in windows, and the beauty is shared by all. For this season of giving brings the festivals of lights: Diwali, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa. Each tradition incorporates light in its ceremonies and decorations.
A neighbor friend of mine who lives down the road where we used to live, a donkey in his stable, reminds me of the story of another manger 2000 years ago. And seeing him snug in his stable with snow on the ground used to give me the illusion that all is right in the world. But all is not well. Not now, not then. Millions know no peace in any season. A world-wide pandemic rages. Politics that divide us runs rampant.
This year some have no food, no home. Others fret over how to pay bills. Yet even living in darkest of times we can see the light of the human spirit and celebrate the season of light in personal ways. For the human spirit is indomitable.
In December’s darkness we light lights. For we are beings of light. A light glows within each one of us. And, at the most basic level, we are beings of light because we are made from stardust. Perhaps that is why the stars hold such majesty for us– for we are made from star material.
Einstein said: “A human being is part of the whole, called by us the ‘Universe”– a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings, as something separated from the rest– a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” We are all cut from the same cloth and our inner light unites us.
And in this holiday season we behold the night sky as shepherds did two thousand years ago on the birth of the holy infant, in a stable like the one down the road where my donkey friend lives. That night a star (maybe the congruence) lit the whole sky to guide the shepherds, and on these deep, long, silent nights as we light our houses, our candles, our trees, if we are blessed enough to have them, let us look inside ourselves and find the glow that may guide us to The Light.
Reaching for the Stars
“I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree… a tree that looks at God all day and lifts her leafy arms to pray.” The opening lines of the poem,“Trees,” by Joyce Kilmer. Indigenous peoples through the ages have talked of tree spirits and trees as wise ones. Trees are striking as they permanently lift their arms to the Heavens in seeming prayer, day and night in communication with the Creator, their outstretched arms reaching for the stars.
Reaching for the stars. The image calls to mind a dance of the Kalahari Bushmen who were featured in the movie “The Gods They Must be Crazy.” The Kalahari, the last men born of the Stone Age culture according to Laurens Van Der Post, have no sense of individuality and so share all they have. They have a dance of gratitude which Van Der Post describes in his book entitled “A Mantis Carol”: “I never see their dancing without feeling deeply moved and utterly irreverent and blasphemous because of our own incapacity for acknowledging what life will give if only we will let it in.” And then there is their dance of the “great hunger,” a dance that says we do not live by bread alone, a dance at life’s end fraught with longing, with arms outstretched taughtly towards the Heavens as they reach for the stars.
My grandfather reached for the stars. He came here, a 16-year-old peasant stonecutter from the mountains of Sicily, knowing no English. He wound up carving the Lincoln Gettysburg address at the Lincoln Memorial in DC. While working on the Gettysburg Address he studied English at night school. I remember him telling me how he was the laughing stock of his fellow stone cutters because, inspired by Lincoln’s words, he carved his initials at the top of the monument, “A.L.” for Anthony LaManna (and, of course, for Abraham Lincoln), followed by: “Attorney at Law.” Working his way through school, he actually did eventually become a VA lawyer. He reached for the stars and touched them without ever forgetting where he came from. And he was childlike as he took care of me, as we danced to records on the victrola or as he played the mandolin and sang to me. I always think of him with a tinge of sadness, for more than anyone, he taught me to reach for the stars.
Reach for the creator– that is what the trees say. At this time of year I yearn for the days of childhood in which God seemed close. This yearning fully ripens each year at Thanksgiving/Christmas/Hanukkah when the people brighten their houses with festive lights. It is a time of year in which we light up our hearts and look to the heavens and sing songs of love to a babe born not so very long ago, or in which we give thanks for the oil to light the lights of the temple for eight days. We are all really seeking the love that motivated the Kalahari Bushmen to do their dance. We are seeking a savior, and yearning for the Light in this overlit, commercialized, complicated world in which the inspiring simplicity of the Bushmen, the peasant, is rapidly disappearing. And the trees touch my heart in their upward reach for the Heavens. For at this time so many millions of them are sacrificed as they become our Christmas trees and Hanukkah bushes, to be discarded after the holidays are over.
May we enter this holy season with a simpler yearning, not for presents and parties and hoopla, but with our hearts full of gratitude, taking lessons from the trees, from the Kalahari Bushmen, from our ancestors, and seek Love, in whatever form it takes in our souls.
Notes from a Very Noisy Mind
Presence. Stay in present. Stop projecting into future. Stop the negative daydreams. Worse than nightmares. “What if”, “what if”,”what if” ad infinitum. Put ice yogurt on grocery list. Add potatoes.Introduction to Daaji
The most humble guru I have yet encountered and his meditations are the most relaxing. Heartfulness meditations.
The Spirit of Snow
The Spirit of snow
highlights the love of line
the loving grace of trees in winter
bare and spiritual
the horses a gift of color
in otherwise black and white
Apologies to My Readers, Christine Blasey Ford and Good Men
When Kavanaugh was confirmed yesterday, my husband held me and let me sob the pain out of experiences from long ago. His care, his love is so pure, I think of it as sacred. It brings me to God and gratitude. I am profoundly grateful to, and for, him. These are very dark times and it is hard to see God in the current state of the country. But love surpasseth all. It is my husband’s birthday tomorrow and I will strive to give back to him, in my own imperfect way, all he has given and whatever I can add of my own.
Meantime, apologies. I am sorry my gut spoke out. And to those of you who wrote in despite that, a most profound thank you.
Christine Blasey Ford You are Still a Hero
Yes, I am Bipolar. But as well I was sexually abused as a child from age 3 to age 6 or 7, and, at that time as well, emotionally abused. The sexual abuse was incest with my “upstanding and outstanding” grandfather. I adored him. I idolized him. Everyone in my family did. No one knew my secret. Along with everyone else I worshipped him all my life. I listened to Grandma say, after Grandpa died, how he had always been faithful to her. I bit my tongue because he had been unfaithful to her with me. Grandpa wanted me to tell his story. Not THIS story. A story about all the good things he did in his life. He worked as a lawyer for a VA hospital and helped many veterans. I have no doubt that he did. He carved the Lincoln Gettysburg address at the Lincoln Memorial when he first came over from Sicily. He was written about in a psychology textbook as an example of motivation.
Grandpa didn’t rape me but he did sexual things with me. Things I knew were wrong. Things that damaged me for life. I tried to tell my grandmother but she didn’t understand what a child was talking about, asking her if she was jealous. She laughed. I realized to tell her would hurt her. I never told anyone until later, when a woman in a gay bar told me she was abused. Then I realized I had blocked it out of my memory for years. All my life I lived as a doormat, letting everyone hurt me and walk all over me and I said nothing. Just like with Grandpa.
With Dr. Christine Blasey Ford coming forward I am struggling, like many women abused in all sorts of ways, with an anger coming out that I never felt I had. I loved Grandpa very much. I thought that love could forgive what he did. That is until now. Until I heard Christine Blasey Ford speak. Now I am furious. Fortunately I have a very understanding husband who worked as a therapist. with mentally ill medicaid clients. He totally supports me. I should be happy with that. I am. But I am struggling with people who do not understand. And the profound injustice of Ford’s case.
As things progress, anger is morphing into despair and the deepest disappointment with our country. My doctor, a male psychiatrist, was caring, went overtime with our recent session and said my anger was justifiable. But he tried to make excuses for my grandfather. This was, and is, devastating to me. As are glib, dismissive statements, like “we have all been abused.” I am sick at heart and in my gut. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I would venture to say that these two weeks have been traumatic for all sexual crime survivors, and, as I learned from a younger friend, for survivors of emotional abuse as well. It has taught me a lot. It has taught me to treasure my husband even more. I always did, but now it is profoundly visceral and flows through every vein in my body. My husband is the only one who “gets” the whole story.
I hope Christine Blasey Ford’s husband can help her. I feel SO badly for her. She was a hero and look at what it got her. A sham investigation. A probable Kavanaugh confirmation. A Trump parody of her answers, perhaps his most perverse remarks ever. That same friend of mine, who suffered emotional abuse, tells me there is a silver lining to this. That women will use their power and mobilize. That young people will see the horror of mistreatment of an innocent victim of a sexual predator, a sexual predator like our president. Not being the most optimistic of people, I only hope she is right.
And THANK YOU Christine Blasey Ford! Take pride in your moving bravery. You have helped countless women. You are a hero for all of us. My heart goes out to you.
The Magic of Water
(Continuation of exhibit from previous post.)
“Jupiter”
“Rose Hills, Blue Trees”
“Summer Heat”
“Water in its natural state shows us how it wants to flow, and we must obey its wishes.”
–Viktor Schauberger
Water is the medium. Water is my brush. Using watercolors on wet paper, I allow the water’s capillary action to “suggest” an image from the natural world and then work with it, using a variety of methods. I have sought to capture scenes from nature with dazzling, bleeding color. The paintings are an exercise in “letting go” and allowing the creative energies to flow, after preparing the mind through meditation.
As abstractions, the paintings are personal visions—the impressions of light and color and thus do not always appear as they exist in the natural world. However, since landscapes are my passion, the results most often appear within the realm of that genre.
Finally these paintings, as renditions of nature, are reflections of the magnificence of the shimmering wilderness and thus, in some small measure, are my own awestruck reflections on the majesty of creation.
The Magic of Water
(Scroll down to see some paintings from this exhibit.)
“Water in its natural state shows us how it wants to flow, and we must obey its wishes.”
–Viktor Schauberger
Water is the medium. Water is my brush. Using watercolors on wet paper, I allow the water’s capillary action to “suggest” an image from the natural world and then work with it, using a variety of methods. I have sought to capture scenes from nature with dazzling, bleeding color. The paintings are an exercise in “letting go” and allowing the creative energies to flow, after preparing the mind through meditation.
As abstractions, the paintings are personal visions—the impressions of light and color and thus do not always appear as they exist in the natural world. However, since landscapes are my passion, the results most often appear within the realm of that genre.
Finally these paintings, as renditions of nature, are reflections of the magnificence of the shimmering wilderness and thus, in some small measure, are my own awestruck reflections on the majesty of creation.
“Acid Rain”
“Night Forms”
Spirit in Summer
Summer spirit
whispers to
the lowly weeds
dances round
the graceful trees
and sends peace
to pacify
an observant cow
Through the Blur of Maya
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
Bible verse from the King James version of the Bible, 1 Corinthians Chap 13 verse 12
And the guru who is my eyes right now is Kamlesh Patel, known as “Daaji,” and his disciple, Joshua Pollock in their book “The Heartfulness Way.” See below. I have read it twice and will reread it again. It is the No. 1 Bestseller in India right now and it is chock full of insights and directions to follow the path of “Heartfulness.” It is the path of love and the heart. The path of Raja Yoga. How could I resist? Daaji does not charge for his teaching. He has a network of trainers available on the Internet. The key to Raja Yoga is the transmission you receive from the guru, from the trainers. The path of Heartfulness is leading me to peace. And as I am in the midst of withdrawing from a major tranquilizer STILL (a long process that will continue for months), peace is MAJOR. I am not there yet but I see light at the end of the tunnel of Maya. “I see now through a glass darkly…”
Urban Landscape
There’s been no photography nor poetry for months. Today in Harlem on the way home from a beautiful museum these cityscapes caught my eye. It is a beginning. Maybe.
