CHRISTMAS POEM: 2019: "Walking the Extra Mile"

Walking the Extra Mile

She walked the extra mile, which was her wont,

and her table was laden with every delight to please

her guests’ appetite, Italian, Russian, Anglo Saxon,

Nordic, and East Asian, a united nation of Canadians,

old and new friends, sipping wine and tiptoeing in

gentle conversation until the ice melted, and as the air

began to tingle with warmth and comfort, her freckled

face radiated the earned grace of making the extra effort

to please her varied guests; that’s what Jesus, the Logos

and redeemer born on Christmas Day meant when he

taught the secret way of making the two into one, neither

male nor female with no hypocrisy, by walking the extra

mile in our long and lonely journey to the kingdom of

our true nature that Jesus called heaven, the precious

pearl of great price that we all long for, and our gracious

hostess retired for the evening with a smile on her face,

gratified by her generous little get-together for her

neighbors in Tiny, Georgian Bay Ontario.

Poem for the week: "My Merry Way"

My Merry Way

I’ve had plenty of time to reflect upon my life,

and regardless of what angle I looked at myself,

I was always outside of life looking in, more

of an observer than a participator.

I stood outside the whole Elvis Presley phase,

the Beatles craze, Trudeaumania, and whatever

other movement swept the nation, always

wondering what was wrong with me.

But today, as the sun begins to set on the horizon,

I look at my life and ask myself: did I get it right,

or wrong? But the world pays no attention to

my question, because it doesn’t matter.

Every circle has a center, and water always finds

its own level, and when all is said and done, no

one is any wiser; so, I stopped reflecting on

my life, and continued on my merry way.

New Poem: "The Ladder of His Own Descension"

The Ladder of His Own Descension

I watched a movie the other evening called

“A Fortunate Man,” the son of a stern Christian

clergyman in the Netherlands, a rebellious youth

who refused to be constrained by his faith, so

headstrong in his conviction that I knew within

minutes of the movie that he was climbing the

ladder of his own descension, and it was only

time that took him down to the basement of his

self-abasement, moving me to pity at the hubris

of his genius when he refused to bend with the

wind of opportunity, and when the story came

to an end, I knew precisely what was meant

by the proverb, “Fortune favors fools.”

Poem for the week: "The Lost Children of My Soul"

The Lost Children of My Soul

They’re not lost really, the bastard children of

my errant soul;

they’re in there somewhere, wandering and

waiting for a place of their own.

(Too proud to be the same, they wait and wait

for lightening to strike.)

Fear of propriety, rejection, and blame, always

another reason to stay away;

these are my lost children, destined to be alone

in the dark forest of my soul,

wandering and waiting for my muse to call and

write them a poem to call home;

like my feelings on the indigenous issue: moral

rectitude, entitlement, and victimhood—

a karmic obscenity too terrible to name.

New Poem: "The Two Lives of Ernest Hemingway"

The Two Lives of Ernest Hemingway

“In order to write about life, first you

must live it,” said Ernest Hemingway,

my high school hero and literary

mentor who taught me the mystery

of man’s dual nature.

Born with a deep hunger for life,

Hemingway lived his life to the fullest;

and born with a passion to write,

Hemingway lived to write about his

life as he lived it.

Fishing with his father when just a boy,

and hunting too, Hemingway went on

to become a big game hunter and world

class writer more famous for his name

than his great stories.

He married his first wife on the rebound,

and his second for play, but his third wife

rode the Hemingway name and walked

away, and his fourth wife suffered him

to the bitter end of his Nobel fame.

Full of mischief and pain and too broken

to live, Hemingway blew his brains out

with his favorite shotgun, leaving a record

of both his lives, not knowing which life

was real, and which was fiction.

Poem for the week:: "The Longing in Her Soul"

The Longing in Her Soul

We had history. She introduced me to the path

that I lived for thirty years, a teaching torn from

the ancient past by a clever man who put two

and two together and created his own teaching

and line of spiritual masters to prove to the world

that he was no fool; but despite all the gems of

precious wisdom that he purloined from sacred

texts, the fallacy of his teaching became too much

to bear, and I had to walk away, as did the lady who

called me from her winter home in Florida, once

again, probing me on my knowledge of another

path that she was exploring; and I replied, “It’s all

so simple. Why do they always complicate it? It’s

not a mystery. Life just is. Live your life, enjoy

your family, your friends, be a good person; that’s

it. That’s the path that all paths lead to,” and she

laughed at the simplicity, relieved of the terrible

responsibility of exploring another path to

satisfy the longing in her soul.

New Poem: "The Stressed Look"

The Stressed Look

It’s the stressed look, torn denims

aspiring to fashion, factory-fatigued,

bleached, worn thin, affecting the virtue

of honest labor, the dignity of work,

the sweat and fear of next month’s

bills, a new trend to please

the ersatz consumer.