waiting

so here I am in lifeliving

while on around me the world spins

no one wins

no one can

even poetry is full of blankness-answers

do not come

would money make it all okay

perhaps

i’d have things

wouldn’t have to think about ten dollars as food

maybe buy a book

but then

who would my friends be

the meadow between lives

it is there I meet you in

this field of dreams.  Breezes blow

gently rustling trees surrounding the

grassy expanse between our lives.

there is a beach across heaven where once we met and

it was there I bridged this great divide

crossing the meadow between lives

reaching across life to life

hand to hand

fingers briefly brushing

for a moment

slouching towards eternity

silence a voice singing

life is a waiting room the dock before

embarking time

i lie in my truck bed

watching the stars in the endless expanse of the night sky

hearing songs and snippets of memory

forever whispering dearheart

while satellite stars track tiny across the black bright sky

there are only spaces northern lights dance across

we live

then traverse

forever is simply dancing the meadow

between lives

uroborus

you never get over it—

they don’t tell you that.

Time heals all wounds. No.

It’s always there, the hole left inside the sense

of unfairness

the invisible bridge that separates the living

from the dead.

you are everywhere

everywhere i see you and hear you

and i should not feel sad because

you are there

rain falls often despite this

truth

great first lines

i collect them,like hummel figures:

temptation calls subtly like shadows

she moves wraithlike through the fair

like foxes in the snow

rain pattered like fingers drumming roofs

they flit across my brain at odd moments when i am meant to be focused on other things, so i will trap them here

and now, she resolved to be like other people working when it was time to work, being counted as a pleasant person, never complaining, not allowing others to irritate her rubbing catlike the wrong way

but of course, there is always time at night to think entirely too much.

On Lake Superior

Forever is defined by endless blue water

rendered brown by the spring rains.

her voice, low, harmonious

calls to me

and I have heard her in the night’s shapeless dreams she

has cut me in two

my soul wanders aimlessly in her icewater mansions

my body wandering over grassy prairie seas

I hesitate–

seeking wholeness

Drawn to her I go.

in the midst of life’s spiraling change only

this, this endless expanse has remained changeless

as far as the eye can see water joins seamlessly with

blue sky a marriage of opposites, their child the rain

this is not a lake, no

it is the ocean, glacial ocean shimmering in sunlight it has moods

of peace and of war

first a mirror then lightning

strikes

she roils and boils in anger, November winds waves lashing

catching ore boats unawares

reaching to claim what

is not of her

she screams she is not to be tamed

she is a spirit that haunts

and is haunted for she has had countless millenia to contemplate

the edges of eternity

humanity comes and goes in evanescent silence

only she remains

two cities rise along the shore

she is captivating

allowing us near

reflecting the glow of

the aurora borealis dancing across the sky

we sail on shimmering lights  and dance across the universe

she is Superior, Gitchee Gumee, shining big sea water

unclaiming

unclaimed

open mic night in the northern lights cafe–mark jarman

They were all white, passing through their stages
In sheets and ladders, rivulets and falls,
White—a dream of color or an aftermath
Of color stripped to gauze and gossamer,
A white electric squall in half the sky,
Epiphany for the blind, and veils of tears.
Magdalene’s tears. The tears that Jesus wept.
What draws them forth? Mortality and laughter,
The sad and funny fact that you will die
And that you’ve made your children, they will die.
Do they hold that against you? My parents made me.
They went ahead and made me, child of love,
Child of a loving union, which would end,
But which I grew up thinking would not end.
The northern lights remind me of their love,
The drama of my growing up was love
As they performed it, everyone noticing,
The scintillating cosmic imagery
Of two who seemed to be made for each other,
As light is made for sheets of summer darkness,
As darkness in high summer accepts light.
Why did I ever think that they were gods?
But I didn’t. I thought that they were people,
And people love each other for a lifetime—
Gods are as fickle as the northern lights.
Don’t ever think of human beings you love
And need as like those shifting shimmerings,
No matter how liquescent memorable enduring
Against the immortal darkness of the sky.
The northern lights will break a heart and heal it
In the same motion, raveling and unraveling.
They are the background music of creation,
The song God sang while sinking into rest,
The song descended into, words and music,
Oblivious and yet ready to break hearts,
Heartbreaking and yet in the end oblivious.
So I have thought about a years-ago night,
The northern lights above a northern mountain,
And how the tears came down and why, forgetting
That there is nothing oblivion won’t forgive.

from Rattle #25, Summer 2005

twilight

magic reigns, in sunset
strange now, i see myself in a dark mirror
age prevailing and stillness
an opaque pond.

Home is to the east
on shining big sea water
and those I love live in memory
this life, this life foreign,
as if my going on is somehow in error,
as if I should be with those left behind.

great dark sadness lies behind and ahead
above and beneath
love no more a mystery, only there, among other things
myself outside it all.

I see myself always beside the water
running headlong into the waves
shining, sparkling water blue blue

as the sky above,
sheer joy dancing in the waves
my self is there
not here, or here
my heart gone long ago
only waiting to be reclaimed