Friday, December 21, 2012

Lockerbie

                                         For my friend Michael Bernstein,
                                               murdered by terrorists, December 21, 1988

                           
       The plane ascends beyond Heathrow.
        I stare out at the dimming countryside,
        as wing lights tick through clouds,
        rivulets of rain streaking my face's reflection.

        There is an explosive device beneath my seat,
        plastique wired to a timer, fused long
        to detonate in winter darkness.
        Soon my tattered flesh hangs
        from the bulkheads, bone and sinew
        vaporized in a heart's pulse.
        My eyes float through the broken fuselage.
        Wreckage and human carnage rain
        from the night sky, the whine of vertical velocity
        masking the screams of those still living,
        if only for a few moments longer.
           
        I ask myself why.   
        I have hurt no one, offended no one.
        Yet I am a victim of invisible terrorists.
        They do not know me, they will never know me.
        I no longer exist.  They have seen to that.
        But I know them. (I have always known them).
        They cannot remain invisible forever.
        My eyes are still floating, watching
.

Monday, December 10, 2012

Williston Road (Fathers & Sons)

                        Te szegény, szegény.
                        [You poor man, you poor man.]
                             "Nem én kiáltok," Attila József


                              I
                    fifty years ago
                    his eye fixated
                    dark vacant stare
                    two steel barrels
                    silent & not vacant
                    trigger gently fingered
                    squeezed firmly
                    & eternity rushed in
                    his disappearance
                    echoed along Wood River
                    passing beyond Sawtooths
                    who was he
                    avatar for all fathers
                    who look at their sons
                    pondering & wondering
                    how they failed them
                    wanting desperately
                    not to fail them
                    one more time

                               II
                    many times I traveled
                    down Williston Road
                    once while a storm
                    blew in off the Gulf
                    once in a swamp fog
                    once on a gibbous moon
                    waning & questioning
                    why you also chose
                    to disappear shedding
                    family & friends
                    suddenly & so easily
                    gone yet in plain view
                    many times I traveled
                    down this long road

                                III
                    traveling Williston Road
                    this time the last time
                    there will be no explanation
                    to my question why
                    no words at all this time
                    a plastic esophagus
                    offering bagged nutrients
                    respirator a constant clicking

                                IV
                    returning home now
                    this painfully familiar road
                    its skirtings of live oak
                    burdened with Spanish moss
                    approaching storms
                    swamp fogs & moons
                    whether waning or waxing       
                    all soon to be forgotten
                    once blue edged flame
                    has taken all that remained
                    to its final disappearance

Friday, December 7, 2012

Storm-Petrels

                        Birds call us into the moment.
                                Victor Emanuel


                    at every compass point
                    fog gauzes horizons
                    northward Egg Rocks
                    sulking stone rookeries
                    westward bay’s edges
                    southward open water
                    thousands of miles only
                    sea its many mysteries
                    eastward Monhegan Island
                    somewhere mist growing
                    thicker we sail deeper
                    our bow quickly scatters
                    delicate-legged storm-petrels
                    rafting in gentle seas
                    dancing across waters
                    separated into oblique
                    gray-green sea foam
                    levitating wings arced
                    facing vertical wind gradients
                    above wavelets they patter
                    surface film foraging food
                    plankton tiny crustaceans
                    fishing boats chummed detritus
                    white-patched rumps flashing
                    undertails as they skim
                    skitter in every direction
                    dark wing points meeting water
                    they disappear into fog
                    reappearing in different places
                    to dance again disappear again
                    Gorky called them streaks of black
                    lightning soaring proud free
                    over gray sea plains
                    gregarious pelagic tempest
                    messengers shunning land
                    preferring migrating life
                    soon they depart these waters
                    returning south nesting rocks
                    Tierra del Fuego & South Georgia
                    distant antarctic climes
                    as lifting fog dissolves
                    channel buoys clang & moan
                    gull screech & cackle announcing
                    slow approach to Monhegan
                    Duck Rocks & Smutty Nose reveal
                    shadowy waterlines to starboard
                    to port darkening shores hint
                    early morning sun reveals
                    storm-petrels disappearing
                    taking little interest in landfalls

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Maples Leaves

                            For Hugh MacLennan
                            (1907-1990)

                    sun setting beyond
                    the Citadel
                    fair Nova Scotia
                    with stars visible
                    & a quarter moon
                    over the Maritimes

                    farther west sun
                    dips behind Montréal
                    steep shadows sent
                    across city canyons
                    frozen St Lawrence
                    snow & ice
                    turned crimson
                    arboreal apparitions
                    dark along its banks
                    & all the while deep
                    waters pour seaward
                    across Québec
                    draining Great Lakes
                    into a dark Atlantic

                    sun passing westward
                    Ontario anomalous land
                    sprawling northern wastes
                    timber & rock & water
                    only animal footfalls
                    maniacal loon cries
                    towns tied together
                    by thin steel rails
                    cold macadam

                    prairies almost endless
                    Manitoba plains afternoon
                    bluish snow muted
                    & wind a continuous flux
                    scouring long drifts
                    over frozen seeds
                    of Saskatchewan wheat
                    through lonesome coulees
                    into the Cypress Hills

                    Alberta beyond
                    to the Rockies
                    & beyond them
                    British Columbia
                    & its island coda

                    a nation formed
                    Atlantic in the east
                    Pacific in the west
                    an unborn mightiness
                    unknown to itself

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Emigrant, Montana

                                       For Jim Harrison

                    morning long before
                    sun’s rays
                    peer over Absarokas
                    snow-hushed peaks
                    quiet hours
                    gathering April daybreak
                    wandering fragrant
                    sagebrush hummocks
                    among tall grasses
                    reed-edged waters
                    stringing bamboo rods
                    tying tiny midge patterns
                    entice dormant cutthroats
                    rainbows venturing away
                    shadowy cutbanks & deep
                    pools nudging aside
                    winter silt bottom pebbles
                    emerging larval detritus
                    harbinger of Spring
                    warmth & evening hatches

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Lutevile


                    föhn & trees quiver
                    body & mind shiver
                    disturbing moods curse
                    masks of Illuminati
                    katabatic wind melting
                    late spring snows 
                    rock jagged Kybfelsen
                    casting long shadows
                    dark forests most stygian
                    along peopled margins
                    & not deeper within

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Halifax

                    walking along
                    Gottingen rain blows
                    hard & cold
                    she touching hands
                    whispering cryptic
                    words so gently
                    what is this place
                    why are we here
                    walking along
                    wet pavement
                    Gottingen in the rain
                    song says winter
                    is so cruel here
                    into a Sally Ann
                    seeking warmth
                    for heart & soul
                    nothing there for us
                    walking along
                    Gottingen rain blows
                    hard & cold

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

For Christian Petzold

                    night train brattling
                    in Strasbourg’s ambit
                    your mother reclining
                    no regard for her book
                    enigmatic smile flashing
                    hinting some secret
                    I will not know for years
                    behind dark eyes
                    aspect beyond inclusion
                    that faint neonate pulse
                    knowing you already 
                    had I grasped then
                    what she already knew
                    sensing an arcanum of you
                    stirring deep & mysterious
                    within her as she sat quietly
                    there would be no surprise
               
                    now I see you sitting there
                    tree-shaded Berlin café
                    four decades passing
                    since that night train
                    that enigmatic smile
                    your mother’s dark eyes
                    I wonder if you share
                    her secret of you

Monday, November 12, 2012

Looking for Linda Hinkley

                    now long buried
                    Lincoln Plat churchyard
                    never aging beyond
                    that long-ago girl
                    still searching for her
                    this place below
                    summit of Azichohos
                    where once she lived
                    staring at creased class
                    picture quietly standing
                    schoolhouse steps
                    front row so young
                    smock dress & sweater
                    white anklets collapsing
                    over rough shoes
                    years fade static youth

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

NIŞANTAŞI

                        NIŞANTAŞI

                where mansions of pashas
                once stood among quiet hills
                harems and opium dens
                gardens of grand viziers
                where Ottoman princes plotted
                men in tea rooms   
                watch her quietly pass
                a scarfless girl dark haired
                her desires dream sequestered
                men’s eyes reaching out to touch
                what only eyes here may touch   
                her sandaled feet wandering
                deep shadowed Topağaci
                streets cobbled narrow
                stones obelisk shaped
                once targets for sultan’s archers

                in these plane tree hills
                where Atatürk played körebe
                where trams rails now jaw
                through Taksim Square
                clattering Beyoglu to Galata Bridge
                Golden Horn lies beyond
                neighborhoods like foreign lands
                a dying culture’s melancholia
                where her eyes search far
                distant landscapes Anatolian plains
                beyond the Bosphorus
                where women still hide
                their countenances behind scarves
                dreams still unmeasured
                even today

Monday, October 15, 2012

Listening to Black Elk

             LISTENING TO BLACK ELK

                     glinting parallel steel
                    Burlington Northern’s
                    imprimatur vanishes to
                    hazy distant horizons
                    Missouri oxbows below
                    Highway 2 it passes
                    through dusty scatterings
                    lifeless High-line towns
                    all streets sudden dead-ends
                    where nowhere begins
                    evanescing graffiti
                    warnings of crystal meth.
                    benchland of immense sky
                    long wind blowing down
                    from Saskatchewan a sea
                    of grasses ruffling
                    silent prairie hypnosis
                    farm reports emerge
                    from crisp radio static
                    cottonwoods and alders grow
                    tight to parched stream beds
                    cut through massive gray
                    shadows of Signal Butte
                    Lakota and trappers
                    took their reckoning
                    stockmen watch their
                    herds flow and ebb
                    this fenceless topography
                    the far side of yonder
                    remember all that you
                    have seen and found here
                    everything forgotten
                    returns to the circling wind

Along the Dry Line

                    ALONG THE DRY LINE

            panhandle winds east from Guymon
            afternoon skies quickly darken
            squall lines build frothing turbulence
            churning convection storms pulse
            to life along an advancing dry line
            lightning flickers yellowish sky tints
            thunder out past Boise City
            still too far away to hear
            dry lines are seldom dry juggernaut
            cleaving moist Gulf surface air
            desert’s dry breath displaced upward
            chuting the Rockies’ eastern pitch
            wedging its way across Great Plains
            a boundary slope reversal roiling
            dew point dropping in a dry punch
            anvil-headed cumulonimbus parade
            sanguine prairie schooners dissipating
            beckoned by the sun’s slow slide
            beyond another day’s purpling horizon
            quieter drier air returns with dusk    
            wind subsiding in invigorating darkness

Saturday, October 6, 2012

A Small Town Library

This essay was originally published on my " Looking Toward Portugal" blogspot - www.lookingtowardportugal.blogspot.com - on September 20, 2012.
 __________ 
There is something very special about a small town library. Living as I do in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, I am in a habit of frequenting large and often very impersonal libraries. For years I have wandered the cavernous reading rooms and the labyrinthine stacks of the Library of Congress. Then there are the many university libraries, the District of Columbia Public Library system, as well as those serving the suburban counties in Maryland and Virginia. During the summer I frequent the campus library at Bates College, in Lewiston, Maine, where I have research and borrowing privileges so that I can work on my various projects while we are on our summer hiatus. In most of these libraries you pretty much need to know what you are looking for and how to find it. These institutions are manned by librarians and their acolytes and they are often pulled in so many directions that there is little opportunity for personal attention and consultation. There are, of course, exceptions to every rule, and I have found individuals who are ready and willing to assist me. More times than not, however, I am left to fend for myself. And usually I prefer it that way. So a small town library is a welcome respite from the routine and one to be savored.

A couple of years ago we finally discovered the village library serving New Gloucester, Maine, where we have spent our summers for the past 25 years. I don’t know why we did not visit it before since we use our summer sojourns at the lake to catch up on our reading. Early on these visits were for two or three weeks each summer and we usually brought enough reading material with us to keep us busy. Three summers ago, after my retirement, we began to spend the entire summer at the lake and we soon ran out of books to read. Good book stores can be few and far between up here (although there are some we do like to frequent) and so we decided to check out the local library to see if we could borrow books over the summer. We were delighted when we learned that we could, and even more delighted when we discovered it to be an absolutely charming place staffed by some absolutely charming people who have also become our friends and whom we look forward to seeing whenever we return to Maine.

One of the more charming and inviting aspects of the library is its location. It is situated on the Intervale Road in the heart of New Gloucester’s “Lower Village and adjacent to the Town Hall and Meeting House, and just around the corner from the large white-washed Congregational Church. It is housed in the former high school constructed in 1903 and closed in 1962 when the high schools in New Gloucester and neighboring Gray merged. The library, formerly housed in the town meeting hall, moved into the vacant building in 1998.



And then there are the people. We have come to know Suzan Hawkins and Carla Mcallister, the two librarians who always meet you with a big smile and a pleasant “hello.” They seem to know the names of everyone who visits the library and probably do. Everyone feels most welcome be they young or old. There is always something interesting to look at and usually one of the tables has a puzzle at some stage of completion.


A small town library is often the hub of the community, and this is certainly the case here in New Gloucester. It sponsors an annual challenge to see how many books its patrons can read over the summer. A small stone is placed into a large glass jar as each book is completed. This year the jar contained over 5000 stones when the challenge ended in late August, a sizeable increase over previous years. There is the annual pet show, book groups, a reading hour for the kids, and much, much more. It is just a great place to hang out. You feel the pulse of the community strong and clear when you visit.

This year I was honored to be part of what we hope will become an annual event . . . “Poetry in the Gazebo.” Earlier this past week those of us interested in sharing our work as well as our favorite poems by others gathered in the charming little gazebo behind the library. It was a cool evening signaling the approach of autumn. The trees were showing hints of color and what better way to celebrate poetry? We always hate to leave Maine and one of the things we miss most is the friendly folks and atmosphere at the New Gloucester Library. There is always next summer. It can’t come soon enough.

Friday, June 29, 2012

To John Haines on His 88th Birthday

Photo by Dan O'Neill
Today would have been John Haines' (1924-2011) 88th birthday.  John, who passed away in Alaska in March 2011, was born in Norfolk, Virginia, the son of a naval officer. As a boy, Haines attended school here in Washington, D.C., while his father was stationed at the Washington Navy Yard.

After serving on a navy destroyer in the South Pacific during World War II, Haines studied at American University and the National Art School, both in Washington, and the Hans Hoffmann School of Fine Art in New York City and Provincetown, Massachusetts.

In 1947, Haines left Washington and eventually homesteaded acreage along the Richardson Highway approximately 68 miles southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska.  It was here that he spent much of the next four decades running his trap lines and living off the land while trying to realize his artistic talents.  It was here that he moved from the visual to the literary arts, and his experiences in the Alaskan wilderness were the inspiration for his early poetry collections - Winter News (1966) and The Stone Harp (1971), the essay collection Living Off the Country (1981), and the memoir The Stars, the Snow, the Fire (1989).

Haines came back to Washington in 1991-92 as Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Residence at the George Washington University, and visited Washington frequently during the last two decades of his life. He also taught at several other colleges and universities; his last academic appointment was as an instructor in the Honors Program at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks.

His later books included New Poems 1980-88 (1990), The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer (1993), Where the Twilight Never Ends (1994), Fables and Distances (1996), A Guide to the Four-Chambered Heart (1997), For the Century’s End: Poems 1990-1999 (2001), and Descent (2010).

Haines was honored for his writing, receiving the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the Western States Book Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Bellagio Fellowship, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Congress, and the Alaska Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, among others. He was also named a fellow of the Academy of American Poets in 1997.

I met John as a Jenny McKean Moore fellow at George Washington University in 1991 and we remained good friends during the final two decades of his life.  He was a guest in my home during his visits to Washington, and I look back with particular fondness on the days he and I spent together in Big  Sky, Montana in the autumn of 2004 following the release of A Gradual Twilight: An Appreciation of John Haines which I edited and which was published by CavanKerry Press.

So Happy Birthday, John!  I miss you.

My thanks to my good friend Miles David Moore, who also studied with John at George Washington University, for his contributions to this posting.  He and I will be presenting another tribute to John at the Cafe Muse, in Friendship Heights, Maryland, on the evening of December 3, 2012.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

On Pemaquid Neck

ON PEMAQUID NECK


Life bubbles up and dies down like the foam
on this unbound, endless motion.
        “About the Sea”
        Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963)






The incoming tide cuddles the strong shoulders
of this rocky shoreline, reaching all the way
to the junipers, their branches tattering the fog’s
morning margins as swirling waters eddy then surge
over the striated rocks gradually emerging from sea
foam borders to deposit its mysterious detritus
the distant news of last night’s passing storm.
           
The salt pond’s calm pools obscure secret chambers
where colorful creatures, chitinous crustaceans
find safe haven from the gulls and cormorant
perched on nearby barnacle-crusted boulders.

I am reminded of Hikmet standing alone at a shore
bordered by dark and shadowy balsam and pine forests
quietly mourning the sadness of an empty auger shell
breathing in the iodine fragrance of a southern sea.

Later the tide turns and ebbs beyond the rocky ledge.

Monday, June 11, 2012

Café Slavonija

CAFÉ SLAVONIJA
War is happening not only at the front, but everywhere and to all of us.
Slavenka Drakulić

A glass of Graševina on the table before me,
an unfolding drama observed from a safe distance;
watching,I think of my family far away and safe.
What do I tell them about what I have seen and heard,
when war and genocide rage so close? I breathe
hard and heavy unable to craft words from what I know.
                                     *
 All morning they range through the Konstablerwache market
having fled Slavonia to this cheerless canton of Frankfurt,
far from Croatia where no one could or would protect them.
They beg for money, food, a new or a dog-ended cigarette.
Pomozite mi molim vas, pomoc', pomoc' mene ugoditi!
They come every week and every week they are shunned
by those who choose not to see them. No one wants to see them.
The market-goers, like the world, remain silent with blinders on,
unwilling to see what is happening to these sad and pitiful people
in their villages, in the beech forests where pits await them.
Not a stone upon a stone wall remains of what was once theirs.
Refugees from a country of the forgotten, they live to suffer,
a consequence of ignorance, a contraction of the human condition.
                                   *
One does not want to know what a sledgehammer can do to a skull,
what a crowbar can do to a jawbone, to hands and feet, to testicles;
how a well-applied knife can remove an ear still hearing the screams
of others in a former library room, books now gone from where once
they came to learns their history and their folklore now being erased
as each one of them disappears into long trenches whitened with lime,
as if late autumn snow had fallen only to quickly mask these crimes,
white like the ribbons the Croats are forced to wear so the Beli Orlovi,
the Serb White Eagle militiamen, will know whom they should kill.
Are there grounds to justify this wanton inhumanity? Revenge perhaps
for the camps at Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška, old Ustaša iniquities?
                                   *
Fat white geese huddle in yards of bombed houses as refugees pass,
walking north to escape the atrocities, first to Vukovar then Osikjek;
by train to Zagreb, to the teeming stations in Vienna and Budapest.
Their bodies are no longer their own as they flee their homeland,
their bodies have been claimed by war. Citizens of no county - refugees.
They once believed the death of a body was the worst that could happen.
Their muscles tighten, the pulsing of blood reminding them they still live.
Perhaps they are the unlucky ones for escaping the pits. They do not know
that worse is the separation of self from the body, extinction before death.
                                   *
A young Croat woman, teeth yellow and cracked like autumn corn
harvested in fields along the Sava River, watches him slowly ramble
through the Konstablerwache, tugging at his jacket, a persistent pleading –
Sve kovanice? Cigarete, molimo Vas gospodine? Bitte, Zigaretten? 
He tries to ignore her, his gaze seized by her own that narrows 
with sudden recognition. Četnički! Da, ja vas znam . . . jebeni četnici!
She knows him, she remembers him from that morning in her village,
when the Chetniks came after the shelling had ended. She remembers
his cold crowbar and his knife, their work on her husband and son.
She points her finger at his dark murderous eyes. Vi prljava ubojica
He turns from her, swiftly retreats into a crowd, her eyes follow him
closely until he disappears, her finger pointing to where he stood.
Ubojica . . . Ubojica
                                   *
Here, at a table in the Café Slavonija, an empty glass of Graševina,
I watch the drama unfold from a safe distance.
Blood pulsing through my temples reminds me I am still alive.
I have no true understanding of mutilation and death,
the horrific pain induced by sledgehammers, crowbars and knives,
the secrets of the beech trees, the silence of the limed pits.
I am unable to craft words from what I have come to know.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Ashbery

ASHBERY

For DC

bacon bending
apocalyptic slant
to ante meridian
sizzle
signaling sad
aftermath
to a quiet perusal
ecclesiastic menu
suggesting
delayed death
benchmarks
in helix of grease
we die different deaths
after dissimilar lives.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Gone Fishin'

This is the text of a sermon I delivered this morning at the Twinbrook Baptist Church, in Rockville, Maryland.

Gone Fishin'
Luke 5: 1-11

Good morning.  Sally Ann and I have been members of Twinbrook Baptist Church for almost a year now, joining in early June of last year just before we departed for our summer hiatus in Maine, something we have been doing for over a quarter of a century.  We can’t tell you how much it has meant to us to be a part of the Twinbrook family and we thank you all for welcoming us among you.  When it was announced that I would be speaking this morning, a number of you came up with words of encouragement, and I was even asked if there might be a little fire and brimstone in my message.  I am afraid that is not my nature and so I can only hope you won’t disappointed in what I have to share with you today.  It was also hinted that I keep it short and sweet; to paint pictures with a few well chosen words.  Some wondered if I could talk for 15-20 minutes.  That has never been a problem; you only have to ask Sally Ann about that. She’ll tell you the truth of the matter.  Brevity has not always been one of my better qualities when it come to speaking.  So I am happy to see everyone here this morning.  I will keep it short and to the point . . . I promise.

Just a week ago I participated in what has become an annual rite of spring.  Gathering with good friends on Tilghman Island, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, we set off before dawn for a day on the Chesapeake Bay in search of trophy rockfish.  It is a time to celebrate friendship and camaraderie on the fantail of a 46-foot fishing boat as we trolled our lines over fishing grounds that have been good to us in years past. We have always caught fish.  Always . . . but not this year.  The time of season was right, the weather was right, there was plenty of baitfish, but the usual plentiful rockfish were nowhere to be found.  Perhaps early onset of warm weather this spring upset their biorhythms.  Who knows?  But such is the nature of fishing.  Sometimes they are there; other times they are not.

I am reminded of Isaiah 19:5-8.  Israel was confronting an invasion by the Assyrians, and there were proclamations calling for the destruction of Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt.  There was change; the ebb and flow of history.  In the latter, reference is made to the Nile, Egypt’s lifeline.  It is written that the waters from the sea will fail, and the rivers will be fouled, wasted and dried up.  And the fishermen - those who cast hooks and spread nets - will languish and lament.  By the very nature of their work, fishermen have learned to expect disappointment for there is always famine between times of rich harvest.

During his early ministry, which was then centered in and around Capernaum, Jesus was walking one morning along the shores of the Sea of Galilee when he chanced upon two fishermen, Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, cleaning and drying their nets after a fruitless night of fishing, busy at their task and unaware of the multitude who had gathered along the shoreline to hear Jesus speak. They were accomplished fishermen and the fact that they had not caught a single fish was not due to their lack of ability or industriousness.  Sometime the fish just aren’t where and when they are suppose to be.  Jesus certainly sensed Simon’s and Andrew’s disappointment and recruited the two men to row him a short distance from shore so that he might better address the crowd who had gathered to hear his message.  After addressing the crowd and while still standing in the boat, Jesus bid Simon Peter to lower his nets into the water, which he did although he had yet to catch a fish. However, when he gathered his nets back into the boat they were filled to capacity causing them to begin breaking under the sheer weight of the catch.  A neighboring fishing boat manned by two brothers, James and John, came to the aid of Simon and Andrew and they also gathered so many fish that both boats began to sink.  The four fishermen are amazed and astonished by the sea’s bounty.  Who was this man who could command fish to appear where there were previously none?  Jesus told them to fear not, for henceforth they would become fishers of men, and the four men left their boats and nets behind and walked in the footsteps of Jesus as his first disciples.

In this manner, Jesus eventually gathered around him twelve faithful disciples, literally “those who learn,”  whom he charged to go forth as apostles, as teachers, and bring God’s word and promise of a new kingdom on earth to all people, to force out evil spirits and to heal the sick.  Jesus also warned his new disciples that their task would not be an easy one for there would be those who would threaten them and attempt to silence them.  Keep the faith, he told them, for God would guide them, give them wisdom, and tell them what to say. 

Jesus’ invitation to the disciples was a simple one: “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.”   Yet, it was an invitation that would alter their lives forever.  Jesus took these simple Galilean fishermen and transformed them into the apostles that would tell the world of the coming of the Kingdom of God. He would teach them that every life matters to God regardless of whether a person is rich or poor, sick or healthy, a believer or a skeptic.  They all matter, and Jesus loved them all and hoped to win them all over to that promise of a better world ahead.   Jesus told his disciples to go into the world, to make certain their nets were tight and firm, and then to cast them wide and deep.  If they did, they would be amazed at the bounty they would gather in. 

If you think about it, all of us here at Twinbrook Baptist Church, as we practice our own discipleship as individuals as well as members of this congregation, can take a lesson from Jesus’ message to his earliest disciples, especially during this time of transition when we look at the life of our church and its congregation and wonder what the future holds for us.  We are all fishers of men (and women).  The lives we lead, and our dedication to the future of this church, are our small yet important contributions to spreading the good news.  We, too, are in the business of casting our nets in everything we do and say, and everywhere we go.  Just as Christ and his disciples shared their message everywhere they went, so, too, we go about our daily lives trying to follow His lead.  He used every situation as an opportunity to talk to someone about the promise of a better life to come.  And isn’t that what we are trying to do as members of Twinbrook Baptist Church?

And we are not alone in this effort.  We have each other and we are working hard together to find a future course for our church.  No one person, no small group of people, can alone do the heavy lifting that is required of us as we cast our nets wide and deep.  For there is a rich bounty to be gathered in.  It is no use to believe that one person, or a small group of people, can haul a net full of fish on board.. They are not going to be able to do it any more than Simon Peter and the early disciples were able to land their catch single-handedly. And even when they worked together, there was the threat that their boats might sink from the weight of their catch.

Last weekend, as my friends and I trolled our dozen and a half lines at a variety of depths and back and forth across the fishing grounds of the Chesapeake Bay, we knew that we covering every conceivable place where the fish might be.  If there were fish down there, we were going to catch them.  Maybe we did not catch them that day, but it was not for a lack of ability or hard work.  There is an inherent truth in what we were doing.  Fishing boats manned by a decent sized crew are always going to catch more than a person fishing off the end of the pier.  

This same truth holds when it comes to the matter of growing our church by living the life God has taught us to lead.  We have to heed the words Jesus spoke to his disciples.  We are going to go where the fish are.  We are going to have to go outside the walls of Twinbrook Baptist Church, we are going to have to go into our community, into our neighborhoods, with our nets mended, strong and ready.  God will guide our steps to those places where the fish are biting!  He will send us to the right places if we will follow Him and fish how and where He tells us to!  There is a possibility He will send us to fish in a place we feel might not be the best place to cast our nets.  But we have to cover every conceivable spot where the fish might be, and there we must cast our nets wide and deep.  At that moment, we face a decision.  Will we follow Jesus and fish where He says, or will we do it our way and come up empty?   There is so much to be learned from the lessons of the past.

Let me repeat something I said earlier.  “By the very nature of their work, fishermen have learned to expect disappointment for there is always famine between time of rich harvest.”   Our Twinbrook family has been dealing with disappointment in our recent history.  Yet amid the disappointment there is always a reason, many reasons, to hope.  There has been a great deal of soul searching going on and a variety of options have been brought to the table and discussed openly and honestly.  But the simple truth of it is - just standing around the tackle shop talking about fish doesn’t put any fish in the boat.  There is that old saying.  It’s time to fish or cut bait.  Friends, it is time to go  fishin’!  Our patience and our determination will eventually overcome any disappointments in the past.  Our nets will soon be full and we will be amazed and give thanks.

Friday, March 30, 2012

H Street, 11:45 P.M.



H STREET, 11:45 P.M.


I sit here alone in an alcohol haze,
the evening quickly succumbing
to those final minutes before midnight.

I listen as the night’s stragglers retreat
to darkened corners, leaning together
and speaking in shadow whispers.

I watch the barmaid move as if floating
across the floor. Her face looks tired
as she ferries beers to secreted tables.

I stare at the glass she sets before me,
considering the condensation on curved glass,
glistening like the sweat on her lover’s thighs.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Patrick Hart

Happy St. Patrick's Day! It seems appropriate to share the following poem which I wrote back in 1972.

I
was walking through St. Dominic's Parish Cemetery just up the road from where my parents lived in Brookfield, Wisconsin, outside of Milwaukee. It was around this time of year as I recall.
The small cemetery is the final resting place for many of the Irish immigrants who settled in this area in the latter half of the 19th century. I discovered two gravestones belonging to Patrick and Mary Hart, from County Sligo, who died in 1871. Between the two monuments was a very small tree barely as high as the stones. This visit inspired the following poem.

Three years ago I revisited the cemetery for the first in over thirty years and found that the small tree had grown into a stately maple. I returned again last weekend and was happy to see that it is still there, right beside Patrick and Mary Hart. I stood there for a moment and listened to the wind.


PATRICK HART

Do you remember the wind?
Watching as it blew ships out to sea
to what awaited them beyond the horizon.
We lived in a small world, just dreams
and the visions of sailing ships.

Remember the wind in Enniscrone?
We looked out over gorse to Killada Bay.
How could such beauty exist
when so many stared outward in hunger?
A bad time - for some it ran out.
We were lucky, you and I –
those sailing ships carried us away.
Do you remember the wind?

Far from Ireland we found new lives
deep in the American heartland. We forgot
the sailing ships and the hunger,
the broken dreams of those left behind,
those who have no memory of the wind.

It now blows through the leaves of a tree
growing beside these marbles stones,
roots clutching at our dust, nourished
by the years we spent in this new land.

Listen to it rustle the leaves.
Do you remember the wind?