THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

 

May 5, 2022

 

Every two weeks, I put together another issue of “peace, love, happiness & understanding.” Sometimes, a day or two in advance, I have no idea what will be in it. Sometimes I find out by making a beginning. 

 

Joshua Barnes, Alex Tretbar and Nick Eldredge recently sent me some things they have written, so we’ll start there. Going forward, I’d like to invite all our friends, inside prison and out, to send poems and short prose and essays you’ve written, or favorite writings by others (famous or obscure) which you feel might uplift, inspire or give delight.

 

Okay, here we go!:

 

A Question

 

A question to the listener of songs;

“Have you ever heard a blackbird sing?”

For surely there’s the finest of bards

Of those on feet & those on wing.

 

Flitting to and fro they speak

In musical tongues that seldom are heard,

Teaching to any with the patience to listen

To creatures as simple as warbling birds.

 

Surely you know of the birds I speak of,

For their songs are known far & wide

& are talked about in the oldest of circles

Crossing over each boundary’s side.

 

Oh, how I’ve learned from their forgotten ways,

Being under their wings & watchful eyes.

I wish my edification wasn’t so lonely,

That others were keen to learn from the wise.

 

I’d like to ask from where your tutelage came,

(not meaning to insult with my circling jests),

And where you learned of the songs you sing,

If not from out of a blackbird’s chest.

 

Maybe listeners, you can teach me a song

Of forgotten peals & tinkling bells,

For I’ve come to feel we both have drunk

From a similar source but different wells.

 

—© Joshua Barnes, 2022

 

Some unfinished thoughts I had:

 

Flickering

 

The flickering flame brings many questions to mind. Do we live in a world of darkness and shadows, watching the light flicker in from the outside? Or do we live in a world of light, where the darkness is a thing that intrudes.

 

Maybe there’s a happy medium, or maybe the answer is neither & is something altogether different… Maybe there is no answer.

 

Each thought in my head flickers like a flame, dancing around, eluding me at every juncture. It’s ironic, the flames hide in the shadows of my mind, & although they shine I am left in darkness.

 

Even so, it could be I’m not meant to spy the campfires of life, but from a distance. Maybe the only way of knowing is knowing… Maybe we don’t need to know at all.

 

I once asked someone these questions & found only another shadow & a mere flickering from them.

 

The questions are only stepping stones across the river, if seen as such… They can be either the path, or the obstruction disrupting the stream. They can be anything. To me, the darkness serves to cloak & veil & make you grow.

 

& though it leaves you stumbling after the light in unhappy circles, wondering if everything is an illusion, it still leaves you wondering.

 

The wonder of wonders leaves me wondering still.

 

—Joshua Barnes

*

 

Akrasia (the Greek word for “incontinence”) is the condition in which while knowing what it would be best to do, one does something else. How can such a state exist? It’s tempting to say that foolishness is inherently human, but sometimes even simpler-minded animals choose wrongly when they know better.

 

The salient question is why, and the answer is that conscious, knowing missteps are unavoidable—and often beautiful. I could plant a flower in the dark soil of my garden, or I could do so in the barren dust of a desert, where its blue petals will die sooner but glow brighter.

 

A blue little flower is nodding, standing under

my understanding of the wind. Like a dream,

death always means more than it means. Fact:

if you scream loud enough into my hearing

aid, the drum will begin to itch. How to scratch

what’s out of reach, like a bone, soul or sky?

I, too, have seen peace in the eyes

of a canary staring into the sun

forever, the film of its blind pupils

developing like a backwards Polaroid.

I think of all the disincarnations

war begets, how I have looked into the eddies

at the base of folly’s wall & found there

the white surf of desperation, mine.

Prima ballerina, seamstress, comedienne—

I have died for you as many times

as there are orange street lights in this world,

and no matter how few suffixes survive

the coming punctuations, the pall…

I’ll look down the terrible length of the wall

and choose neither left nor right.

Knee-high is sky-high. Listen:

the blue little flower is screaming

so loudly my dream begins to itch,

and death alone survives the fall

through feathers.

 

(for Manon)

 

—Alex Tretbar, from Free Spirit, No. 14, April 2022

*

 

the rumor

 

there’s a curious rumor out there 

about an ocean of living energy

an ocean that is endlessly expanding 

exploring every possibility 

evolving into a fuller

more complex 

more realized expression 

of its infinitely curious universal self 

 

the rumor suggests this ocean 

is somehow the source and the substance

of every single thing and all of us 

 

that every aspect of our universe 

what we know or believe we know 

or cannot yet imagine 

even the unfolding mystery

of who we are and may become

rises from this very ocean 

like fog 

like mist 

like the wind-blown spray 

that crowns a breaking wave

 

and, further, that every single thing and all of us

will, in our time, return to this ocean 

like rain 

like rivers 

like gently melting snow

 

and finally 

that the currents and tides of this ocean 

are a weave of perpetual change and permanent balance 

currents and tides that carry us all  

deeper and deeper 

into the mystery this ocean remains 

the possibilities this ocean contains

into the expanding consciousness and simple serenity 

this ocean will always maintain

 

so far this evolving universal ocean 

that is every thing and all of us

is only a rumor

but on a casual walk  

if you happen to catch a flower 

from just the right angle 

glowing in the electric embrace of the sun 

in that blink of a moment 

the rumor can feel 

completely real      

 

—Nick Eldredge

•                    

 

How to Be an Old Man of Some Scant Worth

 

Mistrust your certainties. Interrogate the obvious.

When you think you have the answer, be still.

Count your regrets, and let them teach you.

Listen to women, especially what they don’t say.

Sacrifice achievement to be fresh in thought.

Be the curious fool, the one who bows low

while attending to minor treasures in time.

Read the sky, and study neglected things

for clues to what you have missed by being

busy with the lordly agenda of a man.

Show children it’s possible: old and happy.

Cherish the fragile, the brief, the beautiful.

Give all you have to be ready to be gone.

 

—Kim Stafford

*

 

earth the door Orpheus goes through

 

into the twining tree roots sent down for water

joined by hypha searching moisture and minerals

in the underground night with myzhorrium that link

tree and nematode anchoring the cacophony of underworld life

feeding giant trunks reaching upward to branches where

in cresting light chlorophyll sparks its own green drive

 

Ghost River

 

Red patterns run

through sand and rock

thin lines etch a once fluid life, 

opening as a flower, 

tendrils flow outward,

branching, reaching

under cacti 

these tracings

so fragile

become smaller, 

dissipate into desert dust.

 

Sand trickles 

as stream,

waves move in rock, 

the sound

of water fills our mind,

calls out, 

first as living river

now as image,

its meanderings 

evoking

a vanished delta.

 

A rose appears in the desert,

petals cover the ground.

 

Memory and being

braided into a shimmering presence,

remember the water,

the water, remember.

 

—Deborah Buchanan

*

 

Ukraine 

    

It’s 2022, and I’m frightened. 

The bottom has fallen out of our agreement with God.

There is no bottom. We’ve pulled the plug.

 

From deep within, some remember the code.

Before thought, before prayer. It comes with the first cry.

 

—Mark Alter

*

 

my sangha

all people, plants, animals,

clouds, stones, rivers,

imaginings

 

 

amateur dilettante

 

an amateur is a lover

a dilettante takes delight in things

i plead guilty

 

—Johnny Stallings