Thanks for the Future

I sort old photos
and memories,
our oldest grandson fills out
his college app ...
his younger brother
practices for his band's
appearance at the high school.
Life plays and dances
to its own rhythms.
We watch
and sometimes play and dance, too,
glad to have had the chance.
We thank the Great Spirit
for this perfect day.
Let us walk in beauty
all the way.

Halloween Haiku (October Post)

Halloween
memories haunted
by our daughter

tears but no fears
this Halloween ... grim reaper
called way early

Halloween
her orange and black wall hanging
suits the night

day of dead saints
we remember
how she loved Halloween

Here and there
around the house, her gifts
bequeath her love

(c) Bob Loomis, 10-31-2010
Concord CA USA

Late Again! The September Post

Just since this morning
the laundry basket
lined with autumn leaves ...

Bob Loomis
09-30-2010

Running Again, Sort Of

Note: I'm a bit late with my August post, but here it is.

I am running again, running from grief, running from sorrow. running not as I did when I was 40 and running 10-mile workouts at 8 minutes per mile, but jogging short intervals, a tenth of a mile in between walking intervals: 200 left-foot walking steps to warm up, then alternating 100 jogging and 100 walking steps out the trail a mile and then back in with 200 walking steps at the end to cool down.

Occasionally, I see wildlife: Many coyotes over the years, recently one carrying a ground squirrel in his mouth and loping leisurely along, scarcely glancing my way as he slipped into the woods. I see many hawks, usually redtails, and never tire of them. Cottontails, red squirrels, peregrines, quail, lizards, and the other day we saw the most beautiful rattler we’ve ever seen, iridescent. He must have just shed his old skin. I almost stepped on him but leaped four feet to the side in midstride when I heard his dry whirrrrrr! For that brief instant his presence restored the alacrity of youth! We faced each other then he turned and slid into the tall grass, tail still whirring, waving farewell as we thanked him for the warning.

The hills are dry and yellow-brown as September’s song commences. I still think of Shannon but already sadness is … well, not receding, but now arrives accompanied by resignation each time it hits. What is, is and cannot be changed. As Dodo Miller always said and sang, “Life goes on.” She was correct, of course.

So I run again, recalling how I ran in younger days, when I ran to escape responsibility, to flee the pressures of job, of the fathering and husbanding I really didn’t know how to do. I am now I hope a much better grandfather than I was a father. Either way, I run out, but always return, wondering how many more years I’ll be granted this gift.

The gift of running has been passed along, apparently. Cameron, our eldest grandson, has joined the ranks of runners, perhaps also running from his grief, but also because he wants to. He’s gone out for the high school's new cross-country team. That makes me happy: to see another in my line lace up the shoes and fire up the endorphins. May he find as much joy in it as I did and do still in my somewhat feeble way.

Sometimes I dream of running. I am jogging along some familiar street and my stride becomes longer and longer and stronger and stronger until each step is an almost flying and I am bounding past the other runners, and taking even longer strides that are now almost flying! Then, just as I begin to soar away into the sky, I wake up, back to earth again.

Life goes on. The earth repeats her cycles, making necessary adjustments, recovering from disasters, ignoring the sorrows and joys of humans, but also providing comfort in her wild beauty and the possibility of fulfillment. Shannon’s run has ended. Ours goes on. May we meet at the finish.

Song for Shannon

On June 20, 2010, our lovely daughter Shannon Christine Loomis, 43, took her own life. It was a tragic end to an eight-year struggle with bipolar disorder. Her obituary, with a link to a guestbook, is here:
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/contracostatimes/obituary.aspx?n=shannon-christine-loomis&pid=143894026

I am working on a poem in her memory, a short section of which is this month's post:

I

After her death,
Her cat waits at the front door
meowing.
We sit staring,
Still expecting to hear
Her footsteps on the stairs.

Among her papers
The eulogy she wrote
For her cat, Godzilla.
He sat on the tub’s edge
During her darkest times
Keeping her alive.

This cool morning breeze
She will no longer feel.
Summer and the other seasons
Roll on without her,
Now we must do the same
Though it breaks our hearts.

Our daughter, gone.
We hold in our hearts
The memories
Of her best times,
The love she shared
So willingly with others
In their need,
The gift she had
For nurturing friends
And children.

The morning breeze
stirs the red oak leaves
whispering her name.
She cannot answer.

Song 48 for Beverly Loomis

On the occasion of our 48th wedding anniversary:
By Bob Loomis

We had no intention
Of lasting this long.
Back then life was simple:
Some laughter, some song.

But now here we are
After 48 years,
No known end in sight
But the one we fear.

Yes, we still laugh,
We still love and sing
Though lately our dance
Has somewhat less spring.

We still smile a lot
And love the old songs
Of life’s music track
As we journey along.

There’s not much to say
After I love you’s said
But we know we’d start over
If we could carry the sled

Up the hill for one more run
Down the slippery slope
(We know that won’t happen
But we can hope).

So just take my hand
And sit in the back yard
And know it’s been worth it
No matter how hard.

Look into my eyes
And share this one truth:
In love we’ve been lucky,
Thank the gods & forsooth!

-- For Beverly with love,
(c)06-20-2010

May Poem: Till Strips of Cactus

Work continues on Homage to Kurt Schwitters, so this month I'm posting another poem from that work in progress:

Till strips of cactus cover muted sobbing of coroners’ deputies with medicinal spines … till lost faces give love to celluloid mummies … till end of thyme & rhyme … till Everest crumbles atop Dutch apple pie … till solons act to empower idealistic surgeons … till collectors of tardy, tawdry minutae find hollow logs for shelter … till woman with obsolete grocery cart finds discarded hamburger wrapped in 14k gold foil … till we recover all lost words in found forgotten manuscripts written with Lindy ballpoint pens in ancient tongues … till Moses lets Red Sea depart … till Sahara goes green again … till Mommy tells last of red-hot Daddies to cavort with fire engines & beer-belly bailiffs … till final triumph of Reason heralds New Age of gropeless sex … till bank bandits stop wearing pantyhose masks … till remains of the day are laid to rest in temporary vault of night … till we run out of elliptical romances whispered only in purple undersea grottoes … till music goes round and round and comes out here … till Kerouac blesses consensual iambic pentameter in Latinate murmurings … till then, my friend, till then & then some …

© Bob Loomis
01-22-2010

April Poem Posting: The Top 500 Poets List

The Top 500 Poets list
awaits mouse or muse,
not sure which …
Is my mouse
my muse?
Does my mouse
in da house
inspire me
or does my spouse?
Does my mouse
in da house
make my poems click?
And then there are
the Classic Poets
all waiting
at the corner of
Hubris and Pride …
or is it the corner
of Rhyme and Meter?
Or Words and Wisdom?
Or simply a tiny back alley
in the guidebook
of literary history?
Rhetorical questions
posed on a rainy Tuesday
when neither mouse
nor muse seem interested
in doing much
more than this.

(c) Bob Loomis
04-30-2010

March Pome 2010

This month's poem is a hay(na)ku, a three-line verse form in which 1, 2 and 3 words are used in succeeding lines. Google the term and you'll find Web sites on the topic. The poem:

Wind,
Light from
The east and

Foliage
On the oaks
Has overnight become

Thick
Enough to
Block the view

From
Second story
Resort condo window

But
Not the
Roar of motorcycles

On
Their spring
Gold country runs

Nor
Happy cries
Of children playing

In
The dry
Wash below the

Balcony:
“Mom! I
Caught a lizard!”

We
Sip coffee
Above it all

Remembering
The time
Just last year

When
We stayed
Here with the

Kids
And grandkids
For Geezerpalooza Eleven

Our
Annual music
And potluck gathering

Revived
After a
Three-year hiatus.

Now
The condo
Seems somewhat empty

Without
The company
Of our descendants.

But
It’s nice
To have some

Time
Alone together
Too, nice to

Be
Here while
It’s quieter than

It
Was in
Late summer 2009.

Nice
To be
Here, be alive

Together
After all
These many years

Though
In retrospect
It hardly seems

Long
Enough even
After four decades.

We
Give thanks
For being allowed

To
See another
Spring in Twain’s

Celebrated
Jumping Frog
Mother Lode country …

Treasure
Indeed beyond
Measure and not

Hidden
After all!

(c) Bob Loomis
03-29-2010

February Poem: Untitled

We're off to WA and Wintergrass on Saturday and have a busy prep week ahead, so I'll make this poem inspired by some of Ron Padgett's work my February entry here:

Untitled
© Bob Loomis, 02-05-2010

I sit in the new
Many-windowed bump-out

Having morning
Coffee and

Watching the red oak tree
Slowly and proudly strut

Across the
back yard

So slowly
It appears not

To be moving
At all

But with such
Stateliness

That I know
It must be traveling

At least
25,000 mph!

Then the neighbor
Lets out his three

Big dumb
German shepherds

And they
Begin to fill

Their day’s
Barking quota:

BARK! BARK! BARK!
BARK! BARK! BARK!
BARK! BARK! BARK!

And so on
And on

And on
And on.

And I try
To learn from

The tree,
Which pays

No attention
To the noise

And in fact
Appears not to

Hear the dogs
At all.

Yes, I think,
Sipping my coffee,

I will be
Like the tree.

I will not
Go next door

With a
Large-caliber rifle

And put a final
End to the barking.

I just wish
The dogs

Would bark
More like our tree.

Happy New Year, Etc.

Last year around this time I decided to try to write a poem a day, no matter what. Like most of my resolves, this one soon dissolved. Nonetheless, I'll post one of my January 2009 efforts and one piece of word collage work done this month as my first 2010 blog entry:

Frost on the cars,
Sun rising over it all –
Diamond sutra!

(c) Bob Loomis
01-03-2009
Concord, 39 degrees, 8:15 a.m.

---

Happy New Year Collage

Happy New Year from dilapidated back hoes digging wiggy wainscoting … gentle drizzle raining kindness on beds of phlox … Ima Sumac singing “Poison Ivy” to nude, gasping matrons in enemy-of-the-state-of-the-art prison cell jodhpurs … forgotten Charles Manson admiring jihadeen bombers … BBQ’d bare black rock awaiting picnic-table diners … man spewing venom dressed in holy raiment … lovers leaping into marriage eyes wide with hope … newborn children asking forgiveness for joblessness … young people enlisting in armies to earn death benefits … old English lit professor snorting lines of verse off mirror of eternity … pulses quickening at Verdant Boulevard & Green Street … wisdom planted in center dividers out of reach of long arms of the lawless … exaggerated silence after last night’s riotous cacophony … shredded confetti remains of improvised party explosive devices scattered all around … another calendar year heralded by childish bedlam … stealthy bulldozers clear onramps to virgin freeways … Pope blesses everyone, blesses plastic statuettes of himself on dashboards of obsolete roadsters … acolytes entice foxy ladies to surrender furs for new papal capes … roving gamblers throw switches on new AC/DC solar energy stations … set purple curtains afire each night in ghostly opera houses … put frankincense & myrrh back in yule decoration box in chronological order while choirs clangorously sing new ironclad resolutions … disembodied spirits wish everyone a corporeal new year in shape-note tones … tax attorneys advise gathering rosebuds while ye may … experts warn of thorns lurking in fine stems …

© Bob Loomis
01-06-2010