Do not be fooled

The sea gives the impression of staying put.
Even as it broils in a storm, it appears to be that great thing
Deep and strong that will be there after the winds die.

But the sea is never the same.
The water that rolls in the wave today
Will current away tomorrow
Or evaporate into a cloud.
The rain will become the sea.
Leviathan will leap and splash it away.
And the littlest fish will swallow it whole.
The foam will seep into the sand
Only to be pulled out by the tide.

Today the water will look clear and blue in the sun.
Tomorrow it will chill into a grey-green soup.
And the weight of the moon will pull and relax between
And again.
Who can say it will not turn purple the day after that
Or phosphorescent?

The sea does not remain.
The water that splashes at your ankles
Has seen other shores.

Do not be fooled.
For nothing will remain.
The ways of the sea are
Beautiful and awful,
Changing and true.

Well, my vacation is over now. But while I was off, I had the chance to visit with some of my life's many friends. It was an amazing chance to reconnect with some people I really love. Change and age and trouble were in the air, but so were blessing and family and God. I wrote this poem as a reflection and prayer.


You Can’t Go Back Home

They say you can’t.
And it makes sense, of course.
Nothing is as it was.
There is no such thing as standing still.
Although we can pretend there is
Or wish there was
And convince ourselves that what is
Is not.
But you are not the only one to move.
The whirlwind of age and transformation
Blows through wherever we are
And aren‘t.

The friends have wrinkled a bit.
The grey grows in the beards
And more of the women seem to color their hair.
But the bigger changes are the new fears
And the courage and faith that meet them.
The pain in the back or wrist.
The loss of a sister or a wife.
The job and the retirement fund swallowed
By the monster misnamed recession.
The child that looses their way
Or the diagnosis of uncertainty.
And the strange mid-life realization
That it really will end.

You cannot go back.
That is certain.

But you can go forward.
Go ahead and home.
For the hearts and souls --
Battered by the dreams broken
Or hopes realized and then recognized
As maybe not all
We had hoped for --
These hearts and souls
Deepen
In the whirlwind and the years.
Time grows us -- if we let it.
And friendships
Soften
Into a love
That never ends.

After a visit with dear friends in the Blue Ridge of Virginia . . .

Blue Ridge

Miles distant and years also
The blue mist sweeps away
Skyward the mountains’ edge.

They reach valley to cloud
Like tense muscle and tendon
Climbing to the west
And calling.

The green trees root in the rock
Grow together
Transfigure into gray and blue walls
That speak of ages long ago
When hot green rock reached to the heavens
Pushed up from below
With an earthly yearning to grow.

These ridges are older than dirt.
For the dirt that now gathers in their ragged valleys
Comes from the rising rock
Conversing with the sky
Loving and loved by ice and rain, root and sun --
This aged stone gives its wisdom
To the farms below.

At the foot of their rise
I stand changed
A fleck in the eye of God.
Rooted and
Crumbling
And growing
With a tense muscle
Ready to pounce
At the earthly moment
That lies before.