New Blog Address

My new blog is call Step/Rock Journal. You can find it at: http://step-rock.blogspot.com/

Mike

Or Sooner

The new blog may begin sooner than I thought. The itch to write must be scratched!
-mce

In Which I Say Goodbye (For A While) And Take The Leap!

Well folks, a new life begins for me. I'm staying in Tennessee, where I'll be teaching at Tennessee Technical University. It feels weird, after 33 years in PA, but it is necessary.

I am also staying in LZ Serenity. Should be interesting to watch the seasons change from my deck.

This blog is over. Blogs have a life-span for me and this one, which was only meant for the summer, has reached its end. I will be leaving it up, but not adding to it anymore.

Instead, probably next month after things settle down, I'll begin a new one. I'll email when that happens. It will be a slightly different format, I think, perhaps more of a journal. I don't want to be limited to only poetry.

I appreciate your reading and commenting. Hope you will continue to do so when the new blog goes up.

Thank you,

Mike Essig

Postscript

Every ending includes
a beginning.

The past can
never be escaped,
but it can be
left in the past.

The tree that
falls and rots
feeds new growth;
it remains,
but is transformed;
likewise the past
must nourish
the future,
not stunt its growth.

Open your arms
to what might be
and what has been
assumes it's
proper place.

A damned fine world
waits out there:

time to get on with it.
_ mce

Friday Night

Just the tree frogs,
the birds and me;
funny, the company
you end up keeping.
- mce

It's A Gamble...

Buy a ticket
in the lottery
for our souls.

The prize:
a heart melded
to your own
truly and forever,
a passion
that will
outlast death
itself.

So much
to be won.

But as they say,
you can't win,
if you don't play.
- mce

In Memory Yet Green

Two years ago today
you dumped me.

Ouch!

Now, the world
has moved on
and so have we.

Only promise
you won't forget us.

I hope to inhabit
a (small) space
in your heart,
just as your smile
will always have
a place to stay
in mine.

The only favor
I ask of eternity.
- mce

A Necessary Alchemy

Fear and faith
rule our lives.

Find a way
to reconcile
them
and life
becomes
a path to joy.

Real work
worth doing.
- mce

The Precariousness Of Free Will

Every step you take
is yours to make,
but only God knows
where the path goes.
- mce

Questions Of Fear And Probability

If every time you rolled the dice
they came up snake eyes;
if every mouth you ever kissed
closed tight against you;
if the children you loved beyond life
turned from you in disgust;
if those you counted on as friends
found it easy to forget your name;
if every decision you ever made
dissolved to ashes before your eyes;
would you have the guts
to take one more chance?

Can you honestly answer yes?
Do you really have a warrior's heart?

Or beneath that calm and stoic veneer
are you broken and cowed?

Consider your answer closely, my friend,
and welcome to this moment in my world.
- mce

A Valley Green And Growing - After Rumi

"Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find
all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against it." - Rumi

Love, there is a valley,
green and growing.

There, flowing waters
erase the painful past
and birds willingly sing
all the songs your heart
has never known.

Let the weary world
play out its dramas
in the lives of others.

Refuse your part;
reject your role.

Do not lightly
accept direction

Escape with me to a place
where we may become
the unlikely incarnation
of each other's dreams.

It exists, love;
it can still be done.

This requires merely
a moment's courage;
demands only
that you forget what was
and chance what might be.

Believe that you are worthy.
Know that this is possible.

My arms await your body;
my heart awaits your soul.

A valley green and growing
with waters fresh and flowing.

Come to me, Love.
I am waiting.
- mce

Invincible

No one is invincible.

The world makes soldiers
of willing nineteen year olds
because they believe they are.

I have heard them die
screaming for their mothers.

If you had heard them
whimpering and bawling
in their final moments,
completely amazed
by death,
you would understand
what they learned too late:

No one is invincible.
- mce

Gentle Readers

Let me say that taking what you read too literally may lead to misunderstandings.

Some of you who read this blog worry too much. Please keep in mind that these little poems are fictions. They are not suicide notes or otherwise cries for help. They are what I see, filtered through my imagination. They are just instances, true only in the moment of their birth; after that, I'm not responsible.

As I have written elsewhere: if I write "suicide," don't think I'm planning to; if I write "whiskey," don't assume I'm a drunk; if I write "sex," don't assume I'm promiscuous; if I write "despair," don't assume I'm depressed.

I appreciate the concern, but I get a lot of kind, but mistaken emails fearing for my life. Thanks, but - really - it's OK.

Truth is, I'm the best I've been in decades, with some hope that such progress will continue. Of course, making such a statement may tempt God's laughter. Time will tell.

If I were going to commit suicide, take terminally to the bottle or try to beat Wilt Chamberlain's record with women, I certainly wouldn't announce it in a blog. And when I'm really depressed, I can't write at all, so it won't show up here.

What you do see happening here is an ongoing look at a life in progress, one man trying to understand what he encounters and, occasionally - I hope - a worthy poem or two.

Robert Penn Warren described what I try to do here best when he wrote:

"This
Is the process whereby pain of the past in its pastness
May be converted into the future tense
Of joy."

Read, enjoy and please don't fret.

Mike

Still Climbing Struggle Mountain

Han-Shan got it right:

the fewer people,
the fewer distractions;
welcome visitors,
but discourage guests.

Drink to ecstasy,
but not remorse.

Let your children
lead their own lives.

Expect nothing
from anyone;
you will never
be disappointed.

Assume that death
waits outside
right now,
holding your car keys.

Keep your nose
on the cosmic grindstone;

keep you fingers
on the Dharma throttle;

place preparedness
for resurrection
at the top
of your to-do list:

nothing, but this
solitary moment,
is guaranteed.
- mce

Poetry: Blah Blah Blah

All these faltering words:

just a deal
I made with God
as a personal reason
to keep breathing;

my own
hermetic language
designed for discourse
with the Divine.

When you think
you are reading them,
you aren't.

Really,
you are only
eavesdropping.
- mce

Zen Hummingbird

Watching
an improbable
hummingbird
dart beneath
my deck,
I wonder
how being
without thinking
must feel.
Good,
I imagine.
- mce

Hearing Deficit Disorder

If you have never
heard God laugh at you,
you need to listen closer.
- mce

Long Ago Morning - Via Sappho

Just as day broke,
mission safely over,
red tracers reached up
to grab our chopper:
Ah, the rosy-fingered dawn!
- mce

Breakfast Thought

How easy
to bite off
more than you
can chew;
how difficult
not to choke
on it.

- mce

Squirrel Relativity

The squirrel
that regularly
visits my deck,
blinks at me
through
the dirty
plate glass,
unconcerned
as a fat, gray
Buddha,
just going about
his business,
casually and
without concern.
I can almost
hear him thinking:
what is that
in there?
- mce

Why Suicide Remains Only A Comforting Notion

The hooples say
life is all about
making good choices.

A quart of whiskey
and a forty-five
could end this madness
in less than a blink.

How strong
the raging temptation
to act a god!

Yet somehow,
with my luck,
I'd manage to miss.
- mce

Explanation - for JLB

"Hearts will never be made practical
until they are made unbreakable."
- Tinman (Wizard of Oz)

Met you
in a moment
of anguish;
loved you
in a time
of trouble;
lost you
to a world
wider
than mine.

Shouldn't
have done
any of it
at all.

Should have
known better;
should have been
practical.

But I couldn't
help myself,
and I'm glad of it:

you altered
my universe.
- mce

Spring Creek Haiku

Rushing creek water:
the earth wants to have it back;
soon it will be gone.
- mce

LZ Serenity - Front and Back - Beautiful High Summer Morning

Front

Back

How To Look At A Naked Woman

Appreciate the flesh,
but examine the heart;
one lasts,
the other can't.
- mce

True Love

All the lost loves
of my life
have prepared me
for you.
Isn't it about time
you show up?
- mce

First Things First

The heart
grows weary
of endless
debate.

Abstraction:
a human talent,
but not
a human virtue.

Keep it simple,
concrete, and local.

What can be touched,
can be counted upon.

Live now;
die later.

In between,
be alive
to the glory
and possibility
of Creation.

Pursue the eternal
through the portal
of your living flesh.

Difficult,
frustrating,
necessary.

If only this
can be done,
it is enough.
- mce

OK, Let Us Try Again

"To be alive is to be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace."
- Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

Morning pokes a hole
in the nightmare fabric
of my tortured dreams.

Sunlight floods in,
soothing my heart
with green and bird song
and the gentleness
of flowing creek water.

Unexpected respite;
undeserved relief.

Coffee and Mozart
in a cathedral of trees;
a wafting breeze
caressing my mortal skin.

All good reasons
to try
to live another day.

Funny how often
beauty follows despair;
how the voice of God
lifts and sings out
in the jagged desert
of the broken soul.

Perhaps, this
is what is meant
by Grace.
- mce