Seven Autumn Haiku

split cordwood scattered 

on frosted red leaves

days before winter

you die in the fall

your voice greeting still on

hear me say I love you

September clouds

hide the sun then the moon

wild creatures know what to do

squash soup passing

hints of nutmeg through my mouth

spoon-fed fall

autumn on the porch 

writing a haiku

my pen casts a long shadow

humming birds gone

feeders half full sway in downpour

wind chimes play the blues

mother turkey in the shade

one through five survive

six, seven, and eight get ate

Dumstruck (This I Believe)

 I believe in finding a quiet place to gather strength in the face of suffering.

I pressed the red button that silenced the alarm to the memory unit, and walked through the double doors.  Outside dark clouds dumped sheets of rain.  I had just visited my father-in-law, and thought the deluge must have triggered his warning for me to watch out for submarines.  He once commanded a Sub Chaser in World War II, and probably had been through storms like this.  Perhaps the cyclone fence that surrounded the facility reminded him of the ship’s railing that separated him from stormy seas. 

As I walked the long hallway towards the exit, a social worker stopped me, and chuckled that my father-in-law had offered her $500 to let him go home. “He just wanted to see his wife, his dog, drive his car, and trim his shrubs, “ I said.  He had whispered all this to me during our visit.  He knew he was somehow trapped in this place, but much of the time, he thought he was in an airline terminal, and couldn’t find his gate. His brain filled with imaginings that replaced the vacating spaces of his brain.

On my way to the car, I noticed I could delay walking through the torrents of rain by taking a route through a large windowless series of parking garages.  The security lights glowed amber through the dark, cold cement-surfaced building interior. I made my way slowly past old cars, discarded sofas, old TV’s and stereos, mildewed shower curtains, plastic bags of clothes, a rusted-out snowblower--remnants of what I imagined to be dead people’s stuff.  So this was what remained after the bodies were shipped to the embalmers and cremators--a big, smelly mess for the janitor.

At the far end of the building, I was dumbstruck by a ten-foot high pile of aluminum walkers.  They were all thrown together at different angles.  There were so many of them that they formed the shape of a bell.  I crouched down and stared at this symmetrical assemblage of rubble. It looked like a mountain of white bones, leftover sacrifices laid on some ancient stone altar under a copper sky.  Then I remembered the pile of shoes I had once seen in Jerusalem at the Holocaust Museum.  

I wept in this sorriest of places for the cruelty, confusion, and general misery of people who suffer.  Then I wept because I felt powerless to help the fenced-in father-in-law I loved.  I felt like I was a jumble of walkers in a dying world, where my father-in-law was dying. What would become of his wife, his dog, his car, his shrubs that he had cared for? It would soon be time to get practical and solve problems, but for now, I bent over like a folded-up lawn chair, and rocked rhythmically to the rain on the sheet metal roof.

Submitted to This I Believe, Inc. (Sept. 18, 2011)

Indra's Pearls

 Guess what?  We are all connected!  A hundred years from now, our children will study our recent preoccupation with divisions of ethnicity, race, religion, and national citizenship, and say, “What were they thinking?”

Quantum physics has already proved that we are all connected.  Just as butterfly wings create a small disturbance in the wind off the West Coast of Africa that results in a Caribbean hurricane, human actions anywhere can create human consequences everywhere, especially when you consider the grouchy used car salesman in New Jersey. 

Global warming shows that we are all connected by one world ecosystem.  Pollution in the northern hemisphere is killing babies in the southern hemisphere.  Alaskan bark beetles, thriving from 20 warm summers, have chewed up four million acres of spruce trees.  Floods, draughts, and hurricanes have increased in frequency and intensity.  Fresh water is decreasing, causing an increase in malaria.  Polar bears are becoming skinny.

All the major religions of the world have as a central truth that we are all connected.  The Hindu goddess, Indra, wraps her hair around an infinite number of pearls. Each pearl reflects, and is reflected by all the other pearls, each connected to, reflecting, and composed of, all the others. We are all little threads of life wrapped around the stars in a vast web of existence--little innumerable nodes circling the universe and running into each other in the supermarket.

Do we want to leave the last tracks of naked feet on an earth vacated by perpetual warfare, famine and disease?  Do we want to leave our children and grandchildren a brambly, grassless, yellow earth wobbling around a yellow sun? Do we want our legacy to be dry river beds filled with the dusty remains of dead soldiers, and Manhattan condos with nothing left but the roaches?

After human extinction, perhaps a distant traveler from beyond the Milky Way will lay down new footprints of some sort on the vacant earth, and say, “What were they thinking?” 

Today, all fields of human knowledge are moving in the direction of “wholes” rather than “parts.”  Our social systems thinking is well behind the best of science and religion.  We need to stop thinking about people by placing them in  categories; we need to look at the larger social system when making decisions; we need to stop expecting people to change in a social vacuum-- we need to take care of ourselves, but also take care of others, especially mother-in-laws.

We are not all alone; we are all connected.  

Interpretation of Psalm 23

God keeps me safe
and I need nothing more.
God lays me down in a field of gentle grass.
God leads me to a park bench on a quiet bay,
and restores my life on a golden afternoon.
You help me do things better for higher purposes
that are far greater than my clumsy imaginings and dreams.
Even though I walk alone down a wooded path on a moonless night,
you overcome my isolation, and touch me with your infinite power.
You bless me like a warm summer rain flowing over my head.
You sit me down with people I despise,
then illuminate the room with your divine love.
I am confident that I will always know goodness and mercy
in the world around me as long as I live,
and I will be silent and listen for your presence in every moment of my life.