A Long Perspective

Category: Poems & Photographs

  • A Church Burns

    100th Anniversary House (231 of 370)We gather before the burned-out building

    our aged container of our times

    together in prayer, sermon, song

    both in joy and in sorrow.

     

    We have gathered here for years,

    over generations, taught our children,

    shared hot-cross buns, coffee, tea,

    shed tears as a praying congregation

    lighting a candle for the sick, the bereaved,

    given thanks together.

     

    We are a singing congregation,

    we love the organ’s melodies;

    we stand to sing the Hallelujah Chorus

    filling the rafters with praise.

     

    Though the holes in the floor gape

    though the hallways smell of smoke

    though the pews are pushed askew,

    the church is the energy of its people

    the spirit of God lifting us up,

    the house of God.

     

    We will walk from our building

    to a new gathering place

    and when the time is ripe,

    we will return in song, celebrate new beginnings

    and the joy of being together.

    We are the church.

     

    FEWalls March 31, 2016

    (My little church in Ballard burned on Tuesday, March 29, 2016.)

  • Cathédrale de Notre Dame

    IMG_0164Ah, Cathédrale de Notre Dame at dawn,

    in fog, sepulcher white, barely formed,

    the façade emerges from the mist

    each statue takes his place above the arches

    the flying buttresses hold high the nave

    the solidity of the wooden doors.

    a vast square with the lanterns unlit

    even the birds rest silent in the cold

    on the banks of the river Seine.

     

    Ah, the nightclubs at dawn

    soften the music

    spill out their partiers

    the liquor still on their tongues and breath

    drunk, some shout at young couples

    already speeding across Pont Neuf

    on their vespas.

     

    One last look at the ghostly church

    then we go into the depths of the metro, St. Michael,

    where the light then darkness

    takes our anonymity into the tunnels

    hacked into the depths of the earth

    we are miners of the underground

    hurrying from Cathédrale de Notre Dame

    to destinations unforetold.

     

    FEWalls   December 21, 2007

  • Return Flight

    IMG_0404_1Some people just wait

    you know, just wait until the door is closing

    to run up and say, “Wait for me

    I’m boarding, too!”

    on that plane to somewhere.

     

    Sitting in the metal tube

    feeling scared 30,000 feet in the air

    going 150 miles an hour

    adding your weight to the tons

    that must stay aloft for hours.

     

    Wondering if a bomb will go off

    yet longing for adventure

    (horseback, covered wagon, car, train)

    those engines whining for hours

    the invisible pilot coping with boredom,

     

    fatigue. Smell the recycled air

    enter the germy restroom

    knock against your too-close neighbor

    with his shoes off, his elbow hogging the entire arm-rest

    his body too close

     

    his breath too close

    as if he could blow his way home

    like the big, bad wolf blowing the house down

    around the little piggies

    eating up meals in boxes.

     

    (Drink water! Avoid alcohol!)

    Wrap yourself in the tissue-thin

    blankets, tiny pillow at your back,

    eat with the plastic

    fork the hot risotto or cold chicken.

     

    Stuff yourself with everything

    remotely edible (cheese, crackers, chocolate)

    but enjoy the hot towelete

    handed you with a metal tong

    by the tired attendant

     

    coping with swollen ankles

    and jet lag and seniority battles.

    Don’t forget you can

    track your flight on the screen

    count down the minutes elapsing

     

    watch another movie in the darkness

    (Casablanca, Everest, Grumpy Old Men)

    the blinds pulled down against the light

    don’t stand and look down the aisle

    at the faces staring at you.

     

    Do stand up every hour

    and stretch by your seat

    that precious space is yours

    until you set down on that runway

    the jolt of earth embracing you

     

    now rolling down the asphalt

    disoriented but sensing safety

    in your bones

    certain, finally,

    you have come home.

     

    FEWalls March 25, 2016

  • L’imagination pouvoir.

    IMG_0486_2“No to Vietnam! No to tradition!”

    In 1968, students barricade Place Maubert

    tearing up the cobblestones

    stoning police that march

    shoulder to shoulder toward them.

    The students may forget the year 1588,

    the first revolt and barricades of Paris

    but not the journalist.

     

    Now, the locals drink at the cafe

    in once the filthiest street in Paris,

    when the putrid waste of the Sorbonne

    flowed down the lanes

    where 800 years ago the masters of divinity

    lectured their students

    who sat on bales of hay even in the rain

    so hungry were they for news of God.

     

    A fountain shines now under the sycamores

    and the aged and women with babies

    sit on the benches where 600 years ago

    Francois I, the King, burned alive the Lutherans

    ignoring their screams

    and generation after generation watched

    the executions in this “cesspool of Maubert.”

     

    Now, the sounds of a rugby match

    echo in the plaza from the bar

    the Frenchmen make their only goal,

    and all stand and sing the Marseilles badly.

    Even the one scribbling on a paper

    joins in shouting out the chorus

     

    “To arms, citizens!
    Form up your battalions
    Let us march, Let us march
    That their impure blood
    Should water our fields.”

     

    Now the water trickles from the stone mouths of lions

    on the crown of the hill

    water runs down toward the Seine

    through the gutters along each street

    past the fromagerie, the patisserie,

    the charcuterie, the bottles of wine stacked in pyramids,

    and in one window of the cafe,

    a woman bends over a notebook

    her hair in disarray as she writes of Place Maubert

    as if the world could not see her steady hand

    planning the next revolution.

     

    FEWalls 2005

  • Souvenir de Paris

    Paris 2010 633In this café off Rue Severin,

    we will meet someday again

    in this smoke-filled room of laughter,

    and toast,

    Salute!

    as the cameras flash their language of truth and lies

    and the secrets we keep from each other

    and from ourselves.

     

    In this café

    where the woman in the portrait

    moves away from us toward Algeria

    in her black dress,

    her lips parted slightly, mysteriously.

     

    We gather in this café,

    in from the lights of the Seine

    and eat lamb and coucous with our wine,

    forgetting the flea markets and mannequins,

    the flower and bird markets,

    the Moulin Rouge, the Oberkampt,

    Le Marais, Montmartre, Montparnasse,

    forgetting everything we have metered and measured,

    counting out the seconds of our lives,

    brief or eternal.

     

    We have gathered in

    from the Renaissance facades and interiors,

    from the haunts of Hemingway, Pascal, Picasso, Monet,

    the cobbled streets of the great and the humble.

     

    We have gathered in

    from the priests blessing the wafers,

    the protesters with their banners and masks,

    the police in uniform or not,

    and the parade of white-headed veterans

    marching erectly to L’Arc de Triomphe.

     

    Here in war-wounded Paris,

    the plaques, the red, white, blue carnations

    next to a man’s name and a date,

    mark a place of sudden death,

     

    and beyond, at Pere Lechaise

    where its canopy of chestnut trees in pink bloom

    covers the chapels of bone and ash,

    and the stones of remembrance

    enrich the monuments to the deported.

     

    We remember that “those who love

    will be reunited,”

    perhaps, here, in Paris

    where lovers embrace without fear

    and kiss the brow of their lover

    as the Metro races through the underground caverns

     

    toward the gardens of light and Luxembourg

    where a girl leans out from her wooden horse on the carousel

    to catch a ring with her stick,

    and little boys push sailing boats

    in the winds of the sea on the pond,

    and every statue comes to life

    in the blur of the sun, quickly, as the blink of a camera’s eye.

     

    We have gathered here in this café

    with the portrait of the Algerian woman,

    who will never glimpse the Notre Dame, the Louvre

    or the Seine.

    Perhaps for her, we remember.

    Perhaps, for ourselves.

    “On oublie jamais,”

    We do not forget.

     

    FEWalls

    May 18, 2001