I thought she was on her way out
at an age cats usually die.
But still she jumps up on our laps
sleeps there knowing she’s loved,
still finicky, she eats
and when hungry she speaks.
The honeybees and hummingbirds
are out enjoying our sage blossoms.
Life all around defying expectations
of fall’s slow drying on the way to winter's dying.

Piano and violins
in the hands of artists
string me along
in a peaceful stream of joy
their delicate threads
wrapped around my heart
on a gray morning
to quince my loneliness.

How stubborn am I
switching off the guy
who dares disagree
or who once offended me
like the pious phony pols
their oily speeches and hollow calls.
See what I mean?
I can’t resist a keen
cutting critique of my doctrinal foes
in my poetry and my prose.
Why can’t I give up judging
and like you, be stubbornly loving?

This is not a time for lamentation
it is time to glide to climb boldly
for clean clear air of creation
reach inside like you told me
find what you’re hiding behind
jump up and jump down
is my mind mine
verb or noun
stuck to
you...

Two birds
waiting for seeds
squirrels hog the feeder
boy girl cardinals a patient
red pair

June bugs crash into screens
mosquitoes whine
to get in by any means
dogs howl, frogs croak
like the bass fiddle
in Lightning Hopkins’ blues.
Sticky moisture from the bayou
envelopes, and soaks through,
permeates still night air
like the sad strains of Claude’s La Mer.

Growing up in southern climes
slowed days, stretched years
put me on the edge of tears
yearning for escape from there
from dominion of church
and Mama’s monarch perch.

Hints of her softness
were so rare and spare
that when she let us smooth her hair
we forgot how parched were we
for a trace of this tender intimacy
on summer nights’ scorch
spent on our homestead porch.

Sun shines through
the first orange leaves of autumn
coolness has settled
on the grass now turning a slight yellow.

Again we are in a season
of transition
me and Earth.

I am comfortable here
in this autumn.

Why am I surprised by my imperfection?
As a child, media portrayals of heroes
inspired and enticed me to be heroic
but my fallible family and crazy-wired brain
always kept me from being
all I aspired to be
putting me in a constant state
of unease about being me.

You might say, “Welcome to the human race!”
Thank you. I appreciate your hospitality.
I don’t know if it is comforting or scary
to know I’ve got lots of company.
Sometimes both I guess.

May I be infected
with a sureness
of your love

May it spread within me
like an IV flowing confidence
in my okayness

In the face of fear
and desperation may
I be a cove of calm presence

May you be well
whole and robust
in every cell

In this time of solitude
may I encounter
the awesome power of now

Can I still be astonished
or have I become so inured to the darkness
and fallibility in others
that I expect nothing more?
It does not surprise me if
     the wealthy ignore the poor
     fundamentalists hate nonbelievers
     I eat too much
     men abuse women
     I forget to stroke my wife’s hair
     political fervor stifles compassion
     I reject needed correction.

But I am astonished by
     nurses and doctors who care for people who abuse them
     the tenderness of a mother who loves her malformed baby
     when I’m forgiven by someone I’ve hurt bad
     childbirth
     politicians who compromise for the greater good
     a firefighter who runs into a burning building
     when my apology is gracefully accepted by a victim of my folly.

Astonishment can
     give me hope
     lift me from depression
     bring a smile in the midst of my sadness
     prove my humanity.

The wizened old man told me -
sustain the weary with a word
for many a one has none
to bring love and light
into the blight of their dreary days.

I asked which word
and through a wan smile
he said - you figure it out.

My heart keeps floating east
to the place of my birth
along the brown rushing waters
of the awesome Mississippi
the vast Atchafalaya basin
where the boys  
of fishermen and hunters
become men.
Oaks drip with moss
cypress trees grow out of swamps
and exude a mystic charm
that pierces your mood
and captures your fancy.
La Nouvelle-Orleans
born in centuries past
gateway to a new life
for my forefathers
who crossed oceans from France
made families for the generations
and planted their culture
amidst the rich foliage
and damp environs
of this magnificent mysterious place.
Yes, I yearn to cross the Sabine
make my way to Breaux Bridge
and other Evangeline towns
eat crawfish etoufee
by the Bayou Teche
speak my Texanized accent
to my Cajun cousins
who tell their stories
with a hint of French
and laugh in a universal language.
Soon I hope to make the trek
to quinch the yearning of my heart
hug my cousins
breathe the poem of my life
and the moist fragrant Louisiana air.

Here it is right at hand
nothing startling or grand
but it seems such a climb
to simply take….. my……... time.

The Tallow sapling is swaying
in union with wind and saying
good morning
wake up to a swinging
universe singing
softly in the early breeze
waking up trees
oh how the first movement
of this precocious symphony
shows up Chopin
Debussy and Copeland
in its sweet harmony
with the sun
and moon
and precious tides.
Look at the yawning and stretching
from side to side
in the awakening
of this day.

I watch Paul putting his ladder in his truck
atop the plywood to begin his day
on the road to a job.

From my perch slightly uphill
seeing him and his wife,
partners in the seasons
walking in their yard barefoot
looking at plants, watering them,
speaking softly to one another
puts a kind of fragrance in the afternoon.

This tandem talking and walking
a sweet intimacy that assures me
in spite of turmoil and conflict on the planet
here in this small patch of earth
things are as they should be.

Breathing full
along the brown tree line
next to the silent teal pond
birds still singing winter.
I feel my chest tingle
like when I was twenty five
discovering scotch
a woman’s breath on my neck
still believing somehow God was in that host
the priest raised.
All was ahead of me
and, as now
unknown.

Why is it my mind gets wrapped
around my heart and squeezes it
seizes it and sends it into isolation
until it is languishing in its cell
to the point of desolation?

It's not that my mind is blind
going everywhere without care.
Fondness is in there -
a word my mind knows -
but it is consumed and subsumed
by the focus, fascination
and interest of the moment.

This sharpness of attention
dulls the part of me
that can get lost
in the sweet aroma,
white softness and brilliance
of a magnolia bloom.

But oh this moment of writing
and gazing on that bloom
expands the room of my heart
warms, softens, and awakens
the rush, the transfusion
the perfusion of grace.

In this writing,
this moment of pausing
I have again found
my heart
the ***** of my ground.
I hear the deeper sound
of violas and cellos
feel the embracing warmth
the ineffable touch
of emotion
I forgot to pack
for my trip
into the ineluctable grip
of technology.

“Technology’s Grip,” Copyright © 2017 by Glenn Currier

Last night sitting on the edge of my bed
a bed that seemed more like a ledge
there with a burden in my head:
Should I look up or just feel the dread?

I sat longer and I think I prayed.
I knew he was a God who cared,
but lately on the verge of afraid,
my faith seemed weak and impaired.

I wondered if they were right
that the short blast of rays
won’t hurt and will **** the blight
the doctors say is in its early phase.

But why pray to a God who seemed unable
to help my aunt who died
from a disease so unstable,
so good at finding places to hide?

So here I was, teetering between trust
and its evil opposite, doubt
doubt he can alter life’s ******.
Does he have any real clout?

In this dark of mind
I came to see I really don’t know!
So why let my inner skeptic always lurking behind
reign and empower its verdict of no?

Instead I choose to lift my head
from that lonely fretting place
and embrace a Father not gone and dead -
but here, now to create and renew me with grace.

“Teetering,” Copyright © 2018 by Glenn Currier

It is a worthy mercy
to take up temporary residence
in another's suffering body
by listening.

I just had a moment
when I felt the great beyond
thanking me.
What a joy!

With a bleak wan smile
she confided
when she went to the restroom
she noticed she had not flushed the toilet the previous time
and I could hear a hint of fear and regret in her voice.

For two weeks the pain on the left side of her back
was still there
and an awkward limp
when she got out of bed.
She spoke with a dripping sadness in her words.

In a slightly bewildered tone
she traced her arrival at home
from her visit with her aging nieces.
She reflected on their continual drone about their medical conditions
as she listened mute
without her usual
lively witty
response.

It was as if she could almost feel
the slow creeping shadow
of senescence
and mortality
behind her.

I was again struck
and gratified
by the surprising
frankness of my eighty-six-year-old cousin
as we chatted and each recalled
our Thanksgiving
encounters
with kin.

Why do I trip and fall into shame so easily?
I wonder if there is something in me that says:
“Feel ashamed and you will be better.”
But focusing on my limitations and failures
shouldn’t be such a regular habit.
They say that there’s two kinds of shame:
healthy and toxic.
But both of them feel sucky.
It’s healthy to realize I’m not God
and to accept my limitations
Toxic is staying stuck
in that hopelessly defective thought.
This stuckness has a thick cloud of darkness
surrounding it – gripping me.
I guess what people call faith is knowing
there’s always light outside and inside me
if I but look for it
believe in it.

And then she said no.
I said I knew
you’d decline my offer
but I had to try anyway.

Sometimes no is the best answer.

Living with day and night
black and white
crepe myrtles of white and pink
variety and variance make me think
now and then a dissonant pitch
makes my life rich.

But sometime what seems at odds
is not.  Like seeing Love AND God
contemplation AND friendship
solitude AND kinship.
Why must it be either or
against or for?
Why can’t we see through
the differences between me and you?

What is so sad
what seems so bad
is when difference leads to rejection
then I must leave for my own protection.
When she said, “If you are this then you can’t be that!”
I left.  I won’t be her doormat.

Some people thrive on opposition
attracted to dominance and friction
but at this stage of being me
I choose to be free
to see through those things that divide
beyond the outer mar to the beauty inside.

There’s a concert in my back yard
solos and duets all day
a circus with acrobatics
clowns painted with reds, blues and browns
just feet from my perch
here as I peck on the  keys
the stars fly in
then flit away with ease
as if to tell me:
you can’t hold me long
with your seeds and your eyes
we are free to dive the skies.

If I were blind
I’d still be able to enter the deep cavern of my mind
filled with eight decades of your creation,
and sensations as deep as earth and high as its sky.

Here am I Lord ready to jump as high and as deep as you will.
The layers of my life as uneven as the thrill
of color in strata of the Grand Canyon
as sure as you, my dear faithful companion.

Here in the green meadow of your peace
I find a place to release
all the conflict and pride I’ve amassed
in this long life passed

in the blink of your eye.

Do you know someone who heals,
in whose presence you feel whole
you do not have to bow or kneel
nor beg nor fool nor cajole?

Do you know another whose care
and ability to reach inside
erases doubt and lays you bare
your doubt and pride are laid aside?

Distrust in me is the boulder rock
that averts, delays and hesitates,
stems the tide and sadly blocks
the flowing stream of healing grace.

It is hot
I am sweaty and already tired
a lone mason out here in the sun
my back bent over the edge of the foundation.
Behind me the stack of bricks
in my hand the trowel
snatched up from my weathered toolbox.

My forehead drips joining the goo of mortar
I lay the mortar bed row
and grab the first brick
to begin the southern wall,
the wall that will face the first squall
of this troubled season.

flame jumps and waltzes
reaching for the heavens
pointing there
not entire here
it can’t contain itself
its inner being too wild
for this air.

I am its cousin
kindred energy
in our genes
our lives short but full
the future not our thing
we burn now
knowing we live
in this moment.

The cards of the 30 year old deck
festooned with Monet´ prints
swoosh so easily pliant in our hands
we unthinking about what the cards must know.

The dealer endures rebuke for bad hands
and pleads randomness and no malice
but still has the cheek to brag of her own good lot.
The cards bear unholy smudges of anger
and oh the tales fingerprints could tell:
loss of cool, onslaught of quiet ire
if not murderous fancies
all shielded by superb acting
and control
of ****** muscles
and the pace of breathing.

This drama plays out
unspoken but with latently lurking
hurts, slights, envy
and long smoldering resentments.

Even patriarchy rears its ugly self-righteous head
and cords of tolerance of the old man are strained
and taut to the breaking point,
Pete now realizing why Kit no longer plays when Dad’s at table.

But then there is the rare event
like when it’s revealed that Liz had the better hand
but folded because she knew Burt needed a win tonight.

Would it be insensitive and unkind
to say I don’t like letters enclosed with Christmas cards?
Usually they glow with all the lovely and bright things
in the family that make parents proud.
You don’t hear about the dark underbelly
of their lives that would likely ruin your Christmas mood.
I suppose that is a gift.  But it seems so unreal.  

My wife wrote one this year.
It is mostly about adventures and comic misadventures
in our travels.  
A couple of the stories reveal the raconteur in her
and remind me of her dad who was a master storyteller.
Her letter brings a smile to my face.
But there is too much about my various afflictions -
detracting from my strong male image.
But at my advanced age, I care less about image.
And that’s a good thing.

So this year, have mercy on your friends
and don’t include a letter unless you type:
“Optional Reading” at the top.

Merry Christmas 2017

I am above ground
looking down
I behold
a canyon or sink hole
where people are gathered around
a shiny Rolls Royce deposited on the ground
by some unknown force.
Somehow I make it to the floor of the hollow
but soon I fear being caught there doomed
and look for a way out of the gloom.
I see a pathlike outcropping on the southern wall
a few others follow as I walk to it to make the crawl.
One old foot at a time
I carefully climb
but eventually I must stop
the outcropping severely narrows near the top,
grass and dirt within sight,
but too far for a safe berth
I cannot pull myself up to flat earth.
I look down the steep side
the fall would be two hundred feet if I slide
I feel dizzy and scared, a void in my groin.
So close to success, near safety and normality
yet now discouraged
wrapped in doubt and fear
where to go from here?
It seems nowhere but in the abyss
all my difficult progress amiss.

One of its legs was broken
right atop the spring’s coil
the edges of the old wood
rounded and stained from rain
and oils of veined hands
hands of lovers who chose to toil
for a month of years
for their sweaty families
in from fields and factories.

This fallen veteran of wars
its leg broken in battles with the wind
and the weight of wet sheets
battles for dignity and respect
walking tall in clean clothes
to Sunday church.

Church where the broken are joined
bound to brothers and sisters
in union with their God
hanging together on the silver spring of faith
and their resplendent love.

I get up in the morning
and my first duty is to our cats
to ensure they have food and water
to satisfy their simple needs.
They have no urgency to gather in
the myriad strands and filaments
of my mind to focus on them.
Unlike me, they are without ego
or neurosis or compulsions
or impulse to chew and devour
startling new currents of thought
or to dissect and parse tradition
to produce some new light of intellect.
Their feline genius of simplicity
is my present focus of admiration
and desire.
But of course I could never dissolve
the accumulated humanity
focused in my solitary mind
and achieve the elegant ease
with which our cats occupy
their meager patch of earth.

Our family room has a vaulted ceiling.
Facing each other in that place,
our eyes meet and in this gaze
across the room
we take flight
through hot afternoons
into cold dark nights.

What we reveal in this air
is the stuff of dreams and things
of joy, pain and sorrow washed in tears,
and when the clouds have cleared
there we are in a sacred space
in the wind and tide
where a mystic spirit
arrives and abides
for quiet moments,
and on this holy canvas we spread
the blush of eternity.

We bring memories of our dances
and missteps where we fell
into each other’s arms and laughed
at the folly of two fools
who leapt across their rifts and fears
across dry days and long years,
sank into the hearts
of each other
and flew to vaulted horizons
where together we reached
to touch the face of God.

Before dawn the front thundered in
launching with its deluge
the first glimpse
of an approaching winter.
To how many more autumns
will I bid farewell
before my own returns me to heaven?

I feel a little joy
to see the new growth on the sage bush
it survived the deep freeze of winter.
I join this subtle green creature
in this moment, in this piece of now
maybe I too will get through this season
with a small burst
of creative energy
enter the gates
and rejoin Life.

I know poetry is about words
and I do dote on words
I treasure digging up just the right one
to lay out on the carpet and let fly

but I wonder if
it would be well
to just dwell
in the heart space
in silence

to hold the object of my anger or irritation
there
in silence
surrounded by blood
and warmth
there
in the anchor of life

I have come to realize
poetry and its cousin prayer
are just as much
about the heart
as words.

I push through the fog of doubt
convinced on the other side
is the light of day
clear and bright.

I see your action in my life
and feel it as surely as the air sweeps into my lungs
when I wake and my body moves
into the new day.

It’s late April
spring is in full swing
bursting with life
the tree lifts its arms,
waves across the field,
its leaves full of light
flutter in perfect rhythm
with the wind.

The train is leaving the station
the years gathering toward my finish line.
Each season a child frantically
waving at his grandpa
as if to whimper
this might be the last time.

Mom has been gone for years
but just now I was brought to tears
from a poem about my childhood piano playing
and how she patiently listened, probably pained
Mom told me she loved hearing me play soft or loud
and ‘twas the one thing I could do to make Dad proud.

Replaying years of hurt for mistakes they made
bound me in shadows and shade,
but now late in life I again recall
the character of their care for my soul
and cherish the humanity of these two
and their suffering that got me through.

Experiencing the presence of you
in this now moment is a present.

I got to wondering today
if I am an old dog
who can’t be taught new tricks
if that windmill going round and round
catching the wind between the blades
is really who I am,
if the universe surges
into the spaces still left in me,
if it is trying to wake the music
yet alive inside
in the curves of my heart,
if the blood pulsing there refuses to go down
in one grave path
and insists on a symphony of swerve
an inclination in a new direction.
If that breeze is really grace
then maybe I am being reborn
a puppy full of life
eager to be all the dog it can be.

When I stop
I notice your unwavering presence
your persistence surprises me
because I neglect you.
Lovers don’t do that.

In my dreams you are there
passing through my imagination
like a genie yearning to gift me.
Your stories teach me about your desire
to interrupt my ordinary.
I even remember a few of your tales
and try to figure out what they mean
for my dull self.

I know. You don’t like me discounting my self
because when I do so
I discount you my precious one
and the awesome power of your love.

Inspire me today
a day of needed and neglected work.

You are here my love
in every fiber of my body
every impulse of my mind.

I will dive into the river of your compassion
and be refreshed by it.

He held out his hand in greeting
smiling, eyes sparkling,
happy to see me
but I saw the scars on his wrist
his wound public
but easily missed.

We all carry wounds within
that we disguise or otherwise
hide from public view
and if they knew,
who would they see anew?

A disfigured one
or a mass of clay
being crafted and re-formed each day
emerged from darkness of night
into a soul full of light.

Thinking of my closest relationships
makes me marvel at what a fool I am.
A map of the streams of my loves
would show small settlements
tiny villages where I’ve rested
from my frantic search for meaning -
spaces made by nights of talking and sharing -
spaces of kisses, cries,
shouts and whispers that kept together
the threads we coiled into a chord
of memories.

Memories of foolish leaps we both made
into a friendship, a kinship, a marriage
a co-creation.

What faith abides in me that causes
me to abandon logic for love?
It is a mystery to me
how I can stay in this embrace
despite our divergencies?

But it is a splendid mystery
I celebrate.

Thirty-two cents is all you need
just concentrate
put everything you have into it
and you’ll get there.

     Yes, but what do you miss
     from the whole cloth
     from which those few cents
     are cut?

I see the cloth
I’m poking through it
cutting from it
holding it in my hands.

     Did you feel and see the fabric’s weave
     the imperfections and texture
     making it unique, interesting
     and beautiful in its landscape?

I got what I needed
from that poor piece of cloth
to put in the bank
to buy the factory.

     The future stretches before you
     in your race to the finish line
     don’t let that ever-changing line
     shrink the wealth of the present.

“The Sense of Fabric,” Copyright © 2017 by Glenn Currier

Back in the corner of the closet
they rest covered in layers of dust
so thick I can barely see their color
but I remember the days of trust

I placed in them on ladders
dragging the hose through mud
standing before the radial saw
cutting with fear of drawing blood

Yes they are quite ugly
scuffed and parting at seams
soles worn and getting holey
walked through broken dreams

But I’ve got more work to do
I shake off the past with their dust
put on these old shoes cozy and true
and step into another future with trust.

“Inertia:   (physics) the tendency of a body to maintain its state of rest or uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force, a disposition to remain inactive or inert”

I seem to have a mindless patriotism to this state
as if I must salute its flag
and devote myself to it,
volunteer for service.

Dare I rebel against the state?
Dare I become a traitor?
What if I join the rebel forces of action
join the anarchy of activity?

It is all to easy to stay put
where it is warm and comfortable,
to lay back and just watch.
Oh how I love to watch!
I seem to like being a ******.

I don’t believe that.
I still believe there is a spark in me
urging me onward
spurring me to leap into the stream
to grow and learn and become
to either eat the pie
or step out of its sticky sugary mass.

I choose to rebel
against the state of inertia.