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

MIA

Some evenings,
the voice
you don't hear
cries out
in your heart.
- mce

The Bitching Blues

Bored shitless,
pottering about the shack,
chain-smoking,
nothing compelling to read,
out of beer,
too early
to get high,
no one to talk with,
same birds and trees,
even the creek
sounds repetitive.

Oh, these mad,
unsettled days:
how they do wear.

Sometimes the desire
just to drive
until I am out
of gas and money
becomes a mania.

Contentment,
what did you say
your address was?

I'd like to visit
for a while.
- mce

Chewing The Cud Of Memory And Divorce - For Uli

Our marriage
began with laughter,
lust, hopes, plans
and the desire
to last until
death parted us.

It ended
with harsh words,
icy silences,
disdain, contempt
and flight.

Between the two
a lifetime leaked away.

Was it worth it?

This question,
and what went wrong,
will haunt me
to my death.
- mce

A Very Real Disease

Money makes men mad.

Caught in the dollar,
they lose touch
with the real values
beyond the cash nexus,
forget that love and loyalty,
friendship and honesty,
outlast worldly treasure;
forget that green
is the color
of more than currency.

They know the price,
but not the place;
the cost of living,
but not the worth.

Iniquitous Mammon,
twists the souls of men,
infecting most,
exempting few,
reducing life's joys
to the tedious,
inhuman bottom line.
- mce

Please Barmaid, Not Another Round!

So much rain.

I feel more and more
like a drenched mammal,
less and less
like a human.

And yet it continues.

Branch and creek surge,
tree leaves drip tears,
blueberries burst,
everywhere sticky mud.

The earth cannot
absorb this
this fluid bounty,
precious and necessary,
but too much,
too quickly.

As with life's often
painful torrents,
this would be easier
to sip than gulp.

And yet,
we are bound
to drink up
all we are served.
- mce

The View From The Dump Truck

The beauty
of high summer
just past its apogee.

Iron weed, bull thistle,
chicory, goldenrod.

Fields mown earlier,
left alone since,
restore themselves
to abundant,
tenacious life.

This moment explodes,
ripe and fecund,
warm and verdant,
green and glowing.

Yet, even now,
autumn whispers
its soft hello
as winter,
just behind,
looks upon the scene,
patiently waiting.

Seasons upon seasons,
change and renewal,
never ending.
-mce

For My Son, As His World Changes

"Courage is the virtue upon which all other virtues depend." - Socrates

The world consists
of daily fire fights
and constant skirmishes.

Beginning
and beginning anew
require the most personal
type of valor.

Loss and change
can drain
even a hero's spirit.

Just showing up for life
sometimes demands
more courage
than you think
you can muster.

Look within.

To be a man
demands a warrior's heart.

I know there is one
beating in your chest.

Listen to it.
- mce

A Moment's Decision

Sometimes
the dice
simply cry out
to be rolled:
pass them bones
over, God;
baby needs
a new pair
of shoes.

_ mce

One More Princess Poem

I peered into the dark moat
surrounding your heart,
no bridge in sight,
recognized the danger
and leaped in anyway
hoping to swim safely across.
Only you can know
what happened next.
- mce

The Nocturnal Predator

Loneliness
came hunting
last night.

Carefully, it stalked my cabin,
searching every black corner,
knowing it would find me
awake and solitary in the darkness.

It did.

- mce

Post-Coital Tristesse

If, in the afterglow of passion,
we two, spent and glistening,
cannot fall back and gaze
into our best friend's eyes,
what do we really have?
- mce

The Y Chromosome Decoded

Should women
truly learn
men's hearts,
convents
would flourish.
- mce

Invocation And Entreaty

Sing, Muse,
the broken dreams
of an aging man.
Even in my ruin,
lend me your voice.
So much yet to say
in these waning days.
Share with me
the divine fire
of inspiration
that I might breathe
a few final words
before I must move on.
Sing, Muse,
do not abandon me yet:
let your songs be mine
a little while longer.
- mce

Old Man, Early Morning

The older I get, the more difficult
each awakening morning.
Tired and achy,
dazed and wondering,
another day arrives
on the heels of nightmares,
fragmented dreams,
disturbing visions.
Sleep, I know, however fitful,
but oh, Sweet Lady Repose,
will you ever visit my bed again?
- mce

Enjoying My Winnings

The unexpected sound
of creek water flowing
in the still of morning;
better by far
than winning the lottery
or, maybe,
in a sense,
the same thing.
- mce

Alienation

If you don't know
your watershed,
the names
of local trees
and plants,
who grows
what you eat,
where your
waste goes,
and what
generates
your electricity,
how do you know
where you are,
much less
who you are?
We are local
or we are nothing
at all.
- mce

The Great Misreading

"Dominion over all the earth..."

This was a gift granted
that we might,
through nurture and husbandry,
earn our way back to Eden,
never a command
to ravish
and ruin the earth
for profit and ease.

When a god
kindly provides you
a fresh creation
and a second chance,
be aware that
the work of your hands
engenders providence.

What you make of it,
you make of yourself.
- mce

Job/Work: The Contrast V 2.0

Leaving this valley
to make some money.

The cacophony of toil
in the wider world:
air break blast,
traffic blare,
hydraulic whine,
compressor knock.

Ears and heart assaulted
by the necessary noise
of getting things done.

But later, back
in the patch,
blueberries
repose in stillness,
fat, indigo droplets
awaiting the touch
of my gathering hands.

At most, the earth sighs,
the breeze whispers,
the birds intone
songs ever fresh.

Real work
without din
or commotion.

The perfect blend
of effort and silence;
meditation, not drudgery,
quiet and complete;
the healing consolation
of honest sweat
and human doing.

This is possible;
this is nearby.

Blessed relief.
- mce

Petition

Come to me, love.

Put your body in my hands;
let your heart snuggle in mine.
Be the voice in my throat,
my warmth against the chill.

Together holds delights
solitary cannot imagine.

Let us sing, love, a duet
sweet as this morning bird song,
notes intertwined, filling
the day's freshness with harmony.

Only trust, love, and let the music begin.

We will teach each other songs
unimaginable alone.

Only sing with me, love.

All of this and more awaits.

Shooting Craps Or Karma?

Once, desperate
for freedom
I quit the game,
walked out the door
and didn't look back.

Now, reduced to a car full
of basic belongings
and a little cash on hand,
I have accomplished
the bare minimum
I thought must suffice.

No woman,
no kids,
no mortgage,
no boss,
no chains.

Fine.

But in the marrow
of emancipation,
something stirs.

The needs
for community,
companionship
and home
tug at my heart's
hard won, but
lonely freedom.

Somewhere,
the road must end.

Somewhere,
the end
must become
a beginning.

Perhaps
it comes down
to making
a choice.

Could this be
the time
and the place?

Only one way
to know:

shake them bones;
roll them dice;
get back
in the game;
take a chance.
- mce

4:30 Am Darkness

Why do I
always wake up
exactly where I am,
uncertain where
exactly that is?
- mce

A Morning Visitor At LZ Serenity