This collection is inspired by Patrick’s residency on Coastal Long Island. In a great many ways, life is but a long island in the way that we experience and participate with the world.
Nunc Aeternum
A moment in time—
Timeless however
I was overtaken—
Imbued
Enveloped
And—
Covered in Light and Shadows
Which lead me to thinking—
‘Where do they end?’
And—
‘Where do I begin?’
So I asked them—
(politely)
And this their gracious reply—
“No beginnings”
And—
“No endings”
“Only now”
“Always now”
“Forever now”
And—
In deference—
I bowed my head in sweet submission.
INQUIRIES
MIXOLOGY
Inspiration is a fickle non-stop
Trickle.
Mesmerizing insights shaken with
Flotsam.
Relevance and irrelevance whisked into
Vortex.
Muddled viscosity strained through
Chaos.
Quenching see-through diluent poured
Amply.
Held by carbon-bound chalices
Freely.
INQUIRIES
11 September 2020
Nineteen-years and counting—
In those days we stood together—
We held each other up.
Party didn’t matter—
Nor did state lines.
We were a country—
Before all else.
What changed?
INQUIRIES
Good Friday
We just can’t get beyond it
And onto Holy Saturday and Easter
And Resolution
And Resurrection
And New Life
Instead we remain up to our necks
In Selfishness
In Greed
In Ignorance
In all that keeps us from pressing forward
Onto that Saturday
To observe a holy pause
To Repent
To Renew
To Reset
That we may Rise and Rush onto the verdant fields
Of that Sunday
Of New Beginnings
Of Unbounded Joy
Of Forever Peace
INQUIRIES
Saint Mary Oliver
I just know we’ll be friends—
in that which comes next.
A pair of whistling swans—
enwrapped in rapture.
INQUIRIES
Now listen, you do not have to be “good”—
You only have to be—
Present in the procession of moments that is your life—
Taking each and every one of them on-the-nose—
The good, bad and yes, the ugly—
Walking submissively alongside your Creator—
Honestly and wholeheartedly—
Trusting the providential process—
Receptive to each and every lesson taught—
And most important of all—
Being grateful for making the journey.
INQUIRIES
REFLECT
Sometimes it is easier to view the world
in its softer reflection
cast upon my glass-top desk.
Filtered,
Tempered,
Always cool to the touch.
When I can look no more
on its multi-layered stupendousness;
I drift through
and escape
to the reality
of my feet.
Planted comfortably but firmly
on the herringbone floor
of my self-imposed
retreat.
INQUIRIES
PRESSURIZED ENVIRONMENT
Reclined in a
turbo boosted,
pressurized and
gin ladened can
of sardines—filled
with submissive
souls, each distinct
but similar
in origin
and destiny.
Forward propelled
in upward lift,
until twin chimes
announce stasis.
Intermezzo:
orchestrated
by uniformed
conductors of
libations, nuts
and still more gin.
Synchronized dreams—
startled fits of
falling asleep
and coming-to.
A muffled voice,
twice chimed announced:
the harbinger
of shared descent;
seat-belts fastened,
plunging headlong
(willingly or
unwillingly)
into certain
expectation.
INQUIRIES
There are no part-time Poets.
You cannot be a Poet—
If you are not living a poetic life;
There are easier callings.
There is no half ass-ing it in this realm—
You are either all-in or all-out;
There are no part-time Poets.
The versed vocation is both lens and vessel—
Through which you instinctively interpret the world;
And your treasure sails the hallowed ages.
INQUIRIES
The Dune Grasses of 1910
The dune grasses of 1910 are
as they always were:
Each new season pushing through last year’s
exoskeleton;
The warm invitation of solstice,
irresistible.
The dune grasses of 1910 are
as they always were:
Held in place by ancient roots anchored
into sandy lairs;
Filled and refilled by each heavy cloud
passing overhead.
The dune grasses of 1910 are
as they always were:
Leafy standard bearers of summer
humbly holding court;
Over drifty realms—loyal subjects
of their whispy whims.
The dune grasses of 1910 are
as they always were:
Forever past, present and prescient
a nexus of life;
Memories like breezes blowing through
blades that lightly purr.
The dune grasses of 1910 are
as they always were.
We All Own The Inhumanity
There is no US and THEM—
only a perpetual
and penitential,
WE.
No matter how extreme the circumstances—
it is always
and regrettably,
YOU and I.
HALF-MAST
I’ll not raise the flag—
Till every body is buried.
I’ll not raise the flag—
Till each bullet mourned.
I’ll not raise the flag—
Till that gun is outlawed.
I’ll not raise the flag—
Till love topples hate.
I’ll not raise the flag—
Till peace supplants war.
I’ll not raise the flag—
Till joy checks fear.
I’ll not raise the flag—
Till many become one.
INQUIRIES
I Go About My Day Pretending
That I am not—
careening
throughout the universe
in haphazard
precision.
meandering
about my living years
in cavalier
distraction.
spiraling
unto max-transcendence
in under-baked
potentiality.
INQUIRIES
November
On my pre-freeze knees, hunched over a makeshift hole in the wall with my forearm finagled inside to turn-off the outdoor water supply.
Each year I forget how stubbornly each turn of the valve proceeds.
The skin of my increasingly weathered hand just barely gripping the knob worn smooth from its four-score biannual adjustments.
With each Herculean twist of seeming progress, I mourn each month of the seasons gone by.
It’s as if this valve was purposely tampered with by the Fates to force a moment of strenuous pause.
On the final turn, I release a sigh and replace the makeshift wall covering, pondering our next encounter—and all that lays between
INQUIRIES