We Opened Eyes

Nearing the end 

Satisfied with accomplishments

Overcoming hesitation and questions

We opened eyes

And now stand in this place admiring creation

November 20, 2025

To quote a line of lyric from a Greensky Bluegrass song .... "So many things about me nobody seems to know."

No Warnings

I've heard these words and stories before

With both rain and tears falling

Relayed over distant nights of darkness and grief

Today assumedly part of a celebration 

Or commemoration

An absolution of regrets

The wounds never healed or forgotten

Left a hesitance to recall

Their pull becoming stronger

We traveled to the edge in blindness

We knew the eventual destination but not the path 

No markers or lit torches for guidance

No warnings of the diversions farther on

Just the faith in each weary step forward

And promises of discovery

With possibilities for clarity

November 2025

(To be continued)

Old ghosts waiting to be conquered.

They return in dreams and flashbacks.

Conspiring against quiet.

An anguished wish for distance.

Abolish the deafening silence.

A plea for peace.

Conclusion of a Whisper

This silence at the conclusion of a whisper

A measured fury

Rising above vocalization

A prophetic evocation of a damaged soul

Hiding fears and history in random shadows

Without question

Was it a sin to consider otherwise

To think of terms for surrender

Unknown Date

Found words scribbled on a piece of paper in the bottom of a draw that had fallen to the floor when pulled out too far, with contents spilling in various directions. I cringed a little when reading it. I was going to just toss it out, but an inner voice said to hold onto it. Hoping it's not a repeat post here.

Mostly Absolution

Mostly when we speak it's in bursts of attempted absolution

For sins and doubts no longer referenced

Still lingering in distant chambers of memory

Renewing failing humility

Completing its journey from darkness

Remembering the power of two

April 27-28, 2025

From a 2013 visit to a tulip farm. Capturing, savoring and later ..... remembering purple. Thinking that green and purple go together well.

Elevated Grounds

I see and hear you in all these late-night dreams, visions and mirages that always leave me yearning for uninterrupted continuation of soul revival and exploration beyond known beauty and previously existing only in rogue rumors and hopes ..... and even in promises and doubts of the unknown. It was there where I found courage to dare to believe in possibilities and the mathematics of the workings of the universe and in words often thought but feared to express, with the exceptions of confessions to occasional after-hours ghosts and blasphemous shadows. And discovering there, a brokered peace of mind still struggling with verses of acceptance. And there's you in the resurrected foreground rising above seismic layers of past hurt, reimagining the future, reversing aging malignant trends, designing elevated grounds to be wandered and explored in lurking weakness and victorious salvation. 

April 2025

Photo taken in April 2009, at Silver Falls Park, Oregon from a path behind a waterfall, looking out through the curtain of falling water. The cold mist from the waterfall was both chilling and refreshing.

Old Enough

Old enough to remember that day

Where we were in that moment, when we heard .....

Remembering the fear in a teacher's eyes

Aware of the significance but unsure of the meaning

Not knowing the history it would become

A stranger all these years

           Until today

Realizing we were just a few steps apart

Unaware of each other's presence in the world

A disruption of innocence

Did you tremble too?

Did you feel the world shake and change?

Unaware how it would lead to a chance encounter sixty-two years later

The horror of that moment

The ultimate perfection of it all

April 19, 2025

Crossing paths with a stranger. Becoming aware that we were a few steps apart many years ago as one of history's most remembered moments was taking place two thousand miles away.

Why

Why did you intermittently appear

In these waning minutes and seconds

To balance losses

From imperfect resolutions

That saved nothing we could touch

Designing insurmountable barriers

Dividing all but the salvaged assumptions

Whatever minor hope remained

Into strained fractions from fractions

Existing in the space below eternity

Announced in peripheral ringing of scandalous bells

Forcing a constant observance

Of leftover ghosts trapped in enveloping silence

Quietly chanting determined prophecies we feared to confront

Until that final hour

With hopes abandoning dreams

Resilient sorrows clinging to emptied souls

Erasing time in its spent fumes

Remember

I wonder what would have been the result had we been able to get past our tears and fears .... and all the I love Yous, instead of splitting us apart, had led us upon a different common ground

     Remember how it ended all those times before when our words led to sudden separation and sorrow and "I'm sorry" came too late too slow too far away and didn't move enough ground

          And everything we had temporarily gained was consumed and lost in that instant and final conflagration and all that remained was hurt and doubt and why and how

               And neither of us could hear what the other was saying because we had our jaded separate truths and pride and suspicions and were too damn young to react with anything besides raw emotion and one-sided solutions

                    And what one thought was reconciliation and restoration the other saw as further evidence that a forever change was needed and unavoidable

February 2025

Speaking In Silence

She spoke of the sky and flowers

Of a lost friend

And a world I didn't know

Of a sunset remembered from her first day of college

And of fractured fragments of late seconds and hours

..... and the music within

And these days I speak to her often through the clouds and airwaves

These narratives of longing

Across mountains, tree lines and imposed borders

In whispers and meditation

In frequent moments of contemplation

She was present in last night's dream

And the struggle to hold on

2024 / February 2025

A Reason

I sometimes visualize things through the morning fog

Just on the other side of the distant trees

Just past the limits of visibility

The possibility that there might be something so beautiful there

Waiting to be revealed

Testing and stretching my imagination

A reason to keep going

February 2025

Words for a beautiful friend, imagining that there's even more to discover.