Baturin James - Wheel of Time
My wife and I walk every morning,
a mile or so--
it’s good for us old to walk in the cold,
or in the misty rain, it makes less the
pain
that old age is wont to bring to bodies
which once burned bright with youth,
though now I wear braces on ankles,
braces on knees, and I walk slowly
with 2 canes, like an old skier,
sans snow, sans mountain.
We passed a tree whose leaves had
left behind summer’s green and now
fall slowly, carefully one by one
in their autumnal splendour.
My wife stopped me--
listen she said-- but
I heard nothing—hush!,
stand still, she said,
and I tried hard to
hear the mystery….
Finally I asked her, knowing my hearing
less than my wife’s (too many rock concerts
in my heedless youth), what we listen for?
She looked up at my old head, and smiled--
only she could hear the sound each leaf
made
as it rippled the air in falling to the
ground.
COME AND DRAW STRENGTH FROM ME
Come and draw strength from me
as I build strength from you.
Pay no attention to the flashes of my mind,
paltry upstarts next to a single heartbeat.
There is death across the land,
dead faces on every street corner
but you and I, if we choose to,
can avoid it and create life, full
and rich like creamed milk.
We are not perfected beings, we sing
not the notes of heaven but of earth.
So my heart gropes in the damp night
for yours, listening to its beats
like raindrops on a windowpane
(life’s beauty lies in love’s sounds).
Ask not why my heart seeks yours--
if I had to guess, it’s an act of God.
One thing I suspect, heartily and with
reason:
all life and things of life are born in
love,
beauty moulded in wedlock of constant hearts
and all misery is from love denied – so
come and draw strength from me
as I build strength from you….
The Look In Her Eyes
No, it isn’t what you think
when I say I was enraptured
by the look in her eyes--
the eyes were those of a woman
who was dying and knew she
was dying….
I did not know her well--
she was the wife of someone
my wife worked with in the
prosaic world, the world of time
and schedules and appointments,
the world of taxes and getting
and spending and eating and
sleeping and making love (for
the lucky ones), a world filled
with the nightly news and TV
and a relentless social media,
a world that both commands
and ignores—but not the world
this woman was soon to leave
for an unique voyage she must
take all alone: somehow she knew
this as she lay small and quiet
in her hospice bed--
past speaking any more,
not even to her old husband.
But though quiet as a mouse
or a saint, yet she smiled, at
all in the room it seemed,
though when I went in turn
to say my good-bye to this
near-stranger, I thought,
‘She’s smiling at me!’ and
then I thought, ‘She looks
happy!’---but how can that be
I wondered--- until her eyes
gleamed with a light I have
never seen before in human
eyes—it was her soul I knew
that knew, and her soul had
no fear, death being less than
air, less than nothing to it----
her soul was ready.
WILL MY SOUL FLY?
Will my soul fly
When I die…
Will my soul soar
O’er the Alps,
The Rockies, the Andes,
And the Himalayas?
Will my soul see
The Aurora Borealis
Finally?
Will my soul
Dive deep, deep
Into the oceans,
Seeing beauty
And creatures
Unknown to
To those who
Live on dry land?
Will my soul slip
Time’s iron hold,
Then to skip, at will,
Through the Ages,
Back and forth
Like an unruly child,
(the dream of sages)
Knowing the faces
Of Caesar stabbed,
Of Joan of Arc burning,
Of Lincoln laughing,
Seeing too the places
Where the lions fed
On the Christian saints,
Where soldiers died
In battles long over,
Where Hitler lied
And Jesus cried?
And will my soul then
speed through our vast
Universe, far faster
than the speed of light,
faster than even thought
as it takes in billions
of stars and trillions
of other worlds, and
begins, just begins
to feel how really
big God is…?
A PASSING GLANCE
The other day
as I turned the corner
onto my quiet street
I saw a woman so perfect,
she snatched my breath away
as she waited to cross the road.
It was like seeing a movie star
or a beauty queen close up--
my heart ached a bit, I confess,
when I thought, once, a long time
ago, I might have had a chance….
But now I’m just an old man
driving an old car to an old house.
I drove slowly and could see
her gracefully crossing the street
in my rear-view mirror, much
like a dream fading quickly away …
suddenly, from somewhere far
beyond my mind, I realized
the truth of what I saw: that
it was all just stupid illusion--
she was young and beautiful,
I, old and lame, but those were
just markers on the wheel of time.
The wheel would turn,
my body would die, hers would age,
no longer enrapturing men—in truth
she was already an old woman which
I could not see, nor could I see the
sweet child still playing within her.
When there are no more days left,
our souls will be free of the wheel,
and all the world’s illusions will
seem as
distant, fading dreams.
When Sedate Age Remembers Crazy Youth
I’m a child of the’60’s,
not quite a flower child,
never really a hippie
[though my ponytail
drove an uncle nuts],
but still, I ate the ever
crunchy Beatles for
breakfast, lunch, dinner
and roasted the Stones
whenever a lady came.
I was free then, or so
I told myself—free
to travel the world,
free to love and
then, inevitably,
always, leave…
free to dream and
free to fail it seemed.
I owned only myself,
but I owed no one--
both big mistakes,
illusions really--
we own nothing,
save our souls,
we owe everything,
to everyone, most
of all, we owe God,
be we Baptist or
Hindu, Catholic or
Jew, Muslim or
atheist—we owe.
Most young ones
learn in time--
we are not free,
we are not strong,
we are not whole.
We hunger for
more than food,
we thirst for
more than water,
we need more
than money,
we need more
than our minds.
We are the animal
never sated, never
full, never replete.
We are the animal
ever restless, so
easily bored, even
of life sometimes.
Is that why we argue
and fight, commit
pointless crimes
end long marriages,
spurn our friends,
chase youth when
youth has become
less than a dream?
Is that really why
nations go to war?
Because of BOREDOM?
Why do we always
feel we are missing
something?
Now I’m old,
I have no answers.
I thought I would,
by now I had hoped
to understand---
myself, you—well,
everyone! I’d know
why I was so dumb
when I was young,
but I don’t even
know why I am
so foolish old….
Nolo Segundo, pen name of L.J.Carber, became a widely published poet in his mid-70's in over 140 literary journals/anthologies in America, Canada, England, Romania, Scotland, Portugal, Australia, Sweden, India and Turkey. A trade publisher has released 3 book length collections: The Enormity of Existence [2020], Of Ether and Earth [2021], and Soul Songs [2022]. These titles like much of his work reflect the awareness he's had since having an NDE when as a 24 year old agnostic-materialist, believing only matter was real and so death meant extinction, he lept into a Vermont river in an attempt to end the suffering of a major clinical depression. He learned that day the utter reality that poets, Plato, and Jesus have spoken of for millennia: that every sentient human has a consciousness that predates birth and survives death--a soul. A retired teacher [America, Japan, Taiwan, and Cambodia in the mid-70's] he's been married 43 years to a smart and beautiful Taiwanese woman.
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