beginning

Together

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On a morning in late January the first year after Marianne died, I was taking the usual walk that Marianne and I took together so many times, walking hand-in-hand. I felt her presence, as if she were walking beside me now even though we were on different planes. Words started to come together in my … Read more

Many Arrows

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I love the concluding poem of my trilogy of “arrow” poems (written over a span of 31 years), because it is so clearly about Marianne and me together. I thought I had a single arrow Now I glimpse the truth My love and I have many arrows There are many rays from the resplendent sun … Read more

Two Songs from a Vision Quest

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These are among the very first poems I ever wrote. The association came from the phrase “the waves on the grass and the waves on the sea”. In the poem Samsara I spoke of an opening and finding a new song. These poems were written while Marianne and I attended a workshop entitled “Song Quest, … Read more

Turnings

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This is an autumn poem, but it is also about beginnings, and so feels appropriate at this time of beginning for my blog. And it is about my mother, who died in the month of May, not long before Mother’s Day. I felt the energy of the end of the poem this morning as I was reflecting on the needs of my friends and the world and my own feeling of incapacity to really help despite the abundance of gifts that have been bestowed upon me.

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We’ve only just begun

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During the 70s when Marianne and I met, the musical group “The Carpenters” was popular. I remember this song from that time. I believe I even heard it playing on the radio in the student center of Knox College, where I was a professor and Marianne was a student! Many years later the song keeps coming back to me, and by some miracle, even though Marianne is no longer on the physical plane, it does indeed feel like “we’ve only just begun”.

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Beginning

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I was in Chicago to attend a spiritual conference. Marianne and I had met in Illinois many years before, and now, being back by myself, there were many memories … I arrived the day before the conference began and went for a walk. There was a special energy of connection with Marianne, and words for a poem started to come together in my mind.

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