"Running the Bases"

“It’s okay to think about what you want to do

until it’s time to start doing what you were meant to do.”

from THE ROOKIE

What are you meant to do?

And how do you know when it is time to start doing it?

Unlike weather, the setting sun or plants and trees programmed to grow into their design—predictable, bound with no alternatives.

We have will.

We learn, adapt and desire.

Freedom allows a powerful distraction.

Conflict with other lives and circumstance strains trust

in our individual abilities.

And a lifetime can progress before we are even meant

to address them center stage.

It is not easy.

Still, in the end, knowledge that all life has purpose

grants permission to pursue and discover, and contentment

when we hit the mark.

On Eagle's Wings

How do you introduce a poem written on the occasion of your mother’s death? How do you choose to breathe that level of grief again? I have moved on, lifted the weight that pressed in waking hours and hovered even in sleep.

So I struggle to properly frame what is to follow.
A poem rediscovered safely tucked inside its original note written by a friend of Mom’s and mine whose honesty records the sounds and images of those very moments in the graveyard with gentleness as fresh and giving as the rain.

That is how poetry serves—capturing a series of moments we are unable to fully apprehend in our hearts and spirits and minds until at a later time we can linger, enriched by the truth and vitality sealed within.

It is with permission and gratitude that I share this poem written by Valerie Connor titled, “The Rain Came Softly Falling.”


The Rain Came Softly Falling

Surrounded by remembrance stones,
Across a carpet of emerald,
Chaired on uneven ground,
Beneath sheltering canvas;
Upon our love, Death came calling
And the rain came softly falling.

Mournful whistle of a distant train
Pulling out of town—
This departure beyond mortal bounds.
We stand with our hats of grief in our hands, listening hard.
Unseen birds are calling
In the rain come softly falling.

Ripples spread across the Lake of Souls
And lap over us, caressing our thoughts,
We try to peer into our mind’s eyes
For images of your face, the sound of your voice
the sparkle that lit your eyes,
And gape at the tear left now in our lives.

Prayer words lifted,
Hymns carried on unsteady voices
Squeezed from lump-filled throats,
And plain words quietly spoken to
Hearts brave but broken.
Angels have come calling,
And the rain comes softly falling.


for Carolyn

Valerie Connor
May 2003

There Is a Time for Everything

Surely there is no comparison to soft, warm clothes fresh out of the dryer as someone recently reminded me, relieved to finally not have to wait for clothes to dry naturally. This reminded me of what a family celebration we had when our hand-me-down dryer was carefully inched in its nook tucked beside the washer in my childhood home. How had we managed with stiff, air dried laundry for years? You do what you have to do.

But if our family had never hung clothes in the breeze and warm sunshine, my sister and I may never have experienced running alternately between dangling sheets and dresses feeling the refreshing brush of the cool, wet twist of fabrics. We may never have battled the racing storm-flash as we wildly grasped at sheets and towels throwing wash and pins in the basket together, willing to reach the swinging gate and porch before the downpour. And we may never have tugged with the dog for the piece lazily draped unpinned that fell from the line until we fell back laughing on the ground, hair gathering loose sprigs of dried grass.

Shades of Hyacinth and Lilac

To what degree after death will consciousness remember?

Will Earth feel old then?

Like when after decades, we drive home through the very streets and neighborhoods of our childhood to find lanes closed or widened, windows boarded and buildings removed. The colors and shapes of new constructions replace what we once experienced in a single frame of space, where we did breathe and speak and laugh.

But it is ours no longer; we are without effect, at a strange and lonely distance.

No Strings Attached

One spring afternoon when I was in sixth grade a boy literally dropped dead on the schoolyard during recess. Though he had a congenital heart problem, none of the students knew. A few months before during the Christmas season he had brought a gift to school for me. I was shy and not yet interested in boys and didn’t really know what the gift meant so I had a teacher quietly return it.

Instead she must have given it to his older sister who came to me very distraught. She didn’t want her brother’s feelings hurt and took pains to explain that he wasn’t trying to be a boyfriend; he just thought I was nice and wanted to give me something.

So I accepted the most beautiful box of stationary I have ever owned. The pages were full notebook size with blue and purple mountains in the background. Gazing upon the scene an elegant lady with a long flowing dress held her pen in the air as if in thought.

Our class was asked to sing “I Am the Bread of Life” at the boy’s funeral. Somehow they transported all 20 of us.

I am the bread of life

He who comes to me shall not hunger

He who believes in me shall not thirst

No one can come to me

Unless the Father draws him

And I will raise him up

On the last day

A Root of Purpose

A friend recently brought this poem by D. H. Lawrence to my attention, “The Enkindled Spring.” A total of only 12 lines and yet a whole essay could be written in discussion. Like

*The irony of using hot, consuming imagery to describe something refreshing and regenerative.

*Feeling belittled within the power of the universe.

*Shadows versus reflections in Plato’s Cave.

*The ramifications of what is feeding or supplying them.

*Determined or Free.

Lawrence asks: “And I, what fountain of fire am I among/ This leaping combustion of spring?”

I offer in answer,

a single brushstroke of blue in Vermeer’s girl
a solitary rock contour beneath the waterfall
silence beyond the air of one retreating note

As a Season Passes

Winter months are ones for searching, for digging up questions carefully stored to feed on during languid snow-filled hours. I have listened for the prodding; waited by the still, cold morning; slept between volumes of pages. In voices preserved, they have unashamedly examined my very uncertainties.

I am grateful.

But now I feel again the Bloodroot pressing through.

It is time, then, to place these stacks of verse and prose—their waves of philosophies and theologies—back on the farthest shelf. For there is air to breathe and

Living.