Portland

Foggy morning
Crow conversations

I try joining in

But end up coughing

Lines Past Death

I sat with my Uncle all day the day he died. That was Saturday, February 1, 1992. These poems greeted me when I brought his ashes home to Southern Oregon a few days later. He had mailed them to me from Portland the day before he died, Friday, January 31. In the accompanying letter he  wrote, “All I need is a chance at a new peace”. He died the next evening with me sitting by his side, our faces touching, breathing together. I’ve taken the liberty of calling this collection, “LINES PAST DEATH”.

LINES PAST DEATH

The two were dressed in black, in what seemed like rented clothes.  They went to the man in the next stall, be still, is all I could do.  The man had died.  They took him away on a palette covered with a royal maroon cover and deposited him in a long station wagon.  So he passed his time, in a setting of principles.  No more to be seen.  Only the rented costume comes to mind as I write.  THAT was a fancy way to leave his guest.  Like a disappearance. 


#2

evergreen and birch trees and a small bed of roses…low evergreen shrubs and a lawn on either side of an entrance walk.  Crows scan the higher branches and frighten other birds.  The distance cold alerts one and the winter sun tries to subdue the body’s alarm.  Still, it is day, and we have the whole affect of nature to subdues us    and bring peace.


WINTER

A stalwart, winter day,
seen through the vibran
escapade of voices,
leaves me to wonder at the meaning left behind.
enlivening the shadow of this,
puts the mind at ease.
Where the January sun causes
steam to rise from the grass,
enfeebling cold fingers more.
To move is a mundane project
of prospects made whole
by the failing man seeking
to encase the situation
into something respective to itself.
Cold out, he said and felt in his pocket for the next phrase.
Only metal sounds and the body thrusts viably to taste the cold air
circulating on its tattered edge.


VARY AND VARIANCE

sit well – and sleep well,
‘til all these things stand still.
The existentialist needs somewhere to go.
incidental to the truth.  how depressing =
stay. and see if you like yourself.
cold are the winds of January.
grey, dull forces of winter, cleansing of the topical mind;
male and female appear to take away the body of summer.
You go – I’ll stay, adrift are crows, caw-ing in the twilight.


ONE BRIEF INSTANT OF GRACE

After some few weeks of silence, I long to show the contour of such meanings as could survive a hallway of elders and a nursing home; lunch.  The fittest apothegm means to be oneself elsewhere, and neglect to conclude what this does.

Leave the tray a while.

Why eat all the time


~John Chance, 1992

Note: The word "vibran" is Haitian creole for "stirring".
_____________________________________________

One February

No one is coming, Mother.
It is a long way up the hill to visit her. I don't know how many times I have made the trip in my mind.

She is lying on her bed. She is yellow. The TV is so very loud on the other side of the curtain. Too loud for such an important time. She leaves the room when we aren't looking.

Amends

To whom it may concern.

I betrayed you. It was never my intention but that does not change the past. Lives overlap. You entered mine at its darkest point. I had pathetically little to give. I was already dead. What good could I be to you? I have embarrassed you; deprived and misunderstood you but the dead do love, even in their blind fierce way, and I always have . . . and always will . . . love you. But an apology is nothing without an amend. The past is what it is but I will do whatever I can to rectify my mistakes. I am eternally sorry. Soco said I was cursed. Sometimes, even now, I think her explanation was best.

Anniversary

Tonight is the 27th anniversary of my mother's death.
That day I memorized the high, broken white clouds
glaring from the ice blue sky above her window.

Mid night ramblings

Couldn't sleep. Too many ideas running around my head. So I got up, made a cup of cinnamon tea and dinked around on the synthesizer for a while. That was comforting. Now it's just me, the keyboard and candle and, beyond the window, black night . . . edge of the starry, lapping sea. Listen closely. Words cannot go past this point.