Friday, December 30, 2011

Beggars Mites- a work in progress 10-8-11- the dictionary phase

Your words are like crumbs
on my path.
Scraps, scattered,
to designate, mark, blaze
a journey, a passage-
home.

Hanseled to the earth,
Greteled to a tree;
these crumbs are a child's
way of remembering,
a last ditch of an affect.
("an expressed or observed emotional response")

I gobble them hungrily,
like the black-capped chickadee
of mixed forest
(decidious/coniferous)
the present
or
prairie,
past.
darting, pivoting, hovering,
hanging upside down to feed:
a balencing act
of wild chickery, Queen Anne's lace, and beggar's lice
and body weight.
Is it the weight or the wind
that bows my support,
my foundation?

II.

My days, nights
are consumed
with my caches of your words
I've stored in dead bark,
leaves, and clusters of connifer needles-
3G data plan-
till my 28 day memory fades.
The words putrify in morning light on that 29th day...
like manna, words were never meant to be hoarded-
kept prisoner in the brain...
cankers...
I count the words on my fingers-
I tick them off.
Flicking my fingers in a chant-
a rhythum...
It is not enough.

III.

Instead I would be the jay,
stellar,
raucous,
cackling, cawing,
flaunting my presence
in the boughs of pine.
Flashing blue
in the tangle
of a manzanita maze.
(a wall not unlike Sleeping Beauty's thorny barrier-
but I'm no sleeping beauty and you are not a prince...)

My life in fairy tales
is grim.
What looks to be is not.

Stealing kibbles of dogfood
instead of oily black sunflower seeds...
A sentinel: in a watch-
tower of mammath sugar pine.
I dip, carry, hide.
Loud in my protest
at your entrance,
disturbing my feeding,
my growing,
my changing.

IV. Geier

I would be King of the Sky,
not groveling groundward,
seduously scurrying,
mindlessly amassing
the soupcan you've strewn upon my path.

My olfactory lobe pierces the litter
of the forest floor.
I reign in confidence,
kettling skyward on thermals.

I know what I want:
not crumbs,
or beggars mites.
My life is not fairy tales,
nor grim.
What looks to be is not,
and crumbs on forest floors
leave me hungry.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Flotsam from Japanese tsunami reaches West Coast

PORT ANGELES, Wash. (AP) -- Some debris from the March tsunami in Japan has reached the West Coast.

A black float about the size of a 55-gallon drum was found two weeks ago by a crew cleaning a beach a few miles east of Neah Bay at the northwest tip of Washington, the Peninsula Daily News reported (http://is.gd/9jSz9q ) Wednesday.

The float was displayed at a Tuesday night presentation at Peninsula College by Seattle oceanographers Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Jim Ingraham, consultants who produce the "Beachcombers Alert" newsletter.

Tons of debris from Japan will likely begin washing ashore in about a year, from California to southern Alaska, they said. Items that wash up may include portions of houses, boats, ships, furniture, portions of cars and just about anything else that floats, he said.

That could include parts of human bodies, Ebbesmeyer said. Athletic shoes act as floats.

Flotsam in a current travels an average of 7 mph, but it can move as much as 20 mph if it has a large area exposed to the wind, Ebbesmeyer said. The latest float sits well atop the water, has a shallow draft and is lightweight. Similar floats have been found on Vancouver Island in British Columbia.

Models show currents could pull some Japanese tsunami debris into the Strait of Juan de Fuca as far as Port Townsend.

"All debris should be treated with a great reverence and respect," Ebbesmeyer said.

If the debris has any kind of identifiable marking, such as numbers or Japanese writing, it may be traceable, Ebbesmeyer said. Families in Japan are waiting to hear of any items that may have been associated with their loved ones.

Ebbesmeyer is retired from a career that included tracking icebergs, the 1989 Exxon Valdes oil spill and Puget Sound currents that affect sewage outflows. He wrote the 2009 book, "Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How a Man's Obsession with runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science."

Ingram has retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where he created computer models of ocean currents.

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Information from: Peninsula Daily News, http://www.peninsuladailynews.com

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Wednesday, December 14, 2011

sanctification

"And we Lutherans do work this out with fear and trembling as St. Paul instructs; we’re awed by the fact that Jesus obeyed the law for us and died the death we deserved, transferring His law-keeping to us as a gift by declaration (Justification), as if we had kept the whole of the law ourselves. Additionally, He has also sanctified us (set us apart from the world while leaving us in it) by His Spirit for His purpose: our participation with Him in a massive rescue mission behind enemy lines."

http://www.newreformationpress.com/blog/2011/12/09/you-participate-in-your-sanctification-as-its-direct-object/

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Theosis and Mystical Union

The Formula expresses the same reality in these words: "It has been sufficiently explained above how God makes willing people out of rebellious and unwilling people through the drawing power of the Holy Spirit, and how after this conversion of the human being the reborn will is not idle in the daily practice of repentance but cooperates in all works of the Holy Spirit that He accomplishes through us." SD FC II:88

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Orison




Turbulent undulation;
clouds roil,
vortex gathering, spitting, splitting.

"to render turbid by stirring
up sediment"

"to disturb or disquiet; irritate,
vex"

"to move or proceed turbently"

My relationship (time spent)
with you,
(30 years)
rendered disquiet
building turbidity,
unsettled in my soil (soul)


Words splatter
on rock

Serendipity.

II.

like a lightening strike;
searing of heartwood:
conflagrant feelings.

laid out,
set out,
to burn.

a wildfire in an urban interface,
encroaching on forest dwellings,
a near miss,
a well laid plan....

Words can burn
and leave a soddened charred relic.
Or words can abort,
put out,
what took 30 years to grow.

Fire roils.
Water roils.
The air roils.
turbulance
that becomes a whimper
of silence.

A death
either way.

I don;t know what to do.
Leave?
Stay?
How do I leave?
How do I stay?

III.

To lay down
on a forest floor,
needles in my back.
One hand on dirt,
one on scabrous bark,
eyes to heaven
and the undulating clouds-
gray white caps above the trees.
Waiting,


(Why won't the words convey how I feel?
Or how I think?)

Dammit.
I need the pen to stab these words
till the blood boils
and runs down my cheeks
and out my mouth...