Doug Stanfield's Blog

Sun and blue sky

A pause—still air—
no, there’s a breeze
Setting the yellow jacket trap swinging.

Clematis gone to seed now,
leaves yellow-green. Drying. 
Already? Can it be?  

Still languidly hanging on one another
in what dappled sunlight
makes it through the slatted air.

The geese are restless, raucous,
making practice launches and landings around the lake.
Six or 10 at a time, getting their flight muscles ready for
 the 1000-mile migration to California

It’s the dry season after all,
end of another summer,
and things sigh,
knowing their season of vigor is passing. 

I know the feeling.

August is a time for letting go—but not too quickly. 
A time for one last kiss under the 
yellow porchlight of summer, 
 in the still warm air.

Another breeze stirs in the
eternal Now.
Today wiggles it’s hips and calls for
tomorrow. Today
will soon be just another
yesterday,
remembered in a snapshot.

The hummingbirds were
arguing about something.
Now they’ve gone silent,
apparently satisfied.

He sometimes wondered if he had become so acquainted with sorrow and loneliness that he thought his purpose was to use up the last of his words, to push beyond into the undiscovered country.

To leave language behind for the first time in 30,000 years, devolving into a free spirit like the raven, giving one last, inhuman, cry as a completion, a final letting go.

And then to push against the air with huge, black wings, to climb into the first golden light of morning and head for the far mountains. A new quest, a new mystery, riding on the invisible wind into the rising sun, climbing to the headwaters of the mother of rivers. And thereby to the mother of all waters.

But as had happened so often, he found he was wrong. The headwaters was underwhelming, at first glance. A trillion soft, quiet droplets from melting snow, infused with the patience of the spirit that moved throughout creation, slowly merging, surrendering, falling faster and faster, becoming something new with each click of time.

Letting go is both end and beginning, he realized. How foolish he’d been. He’d been like a wave fighting all of the others, when all along they were all essential pieces of the same ocean.

Deep snow on

mountains, awe-conjurers.

Full sun blesses the ancient miracle, making

Rivers emerge from the ice.

The whiteness slips

and slides and bids the peaks goodbye.

Ten minutes later clouds like

The gods’ slate mittens return, unsatisfied,

Eros slips through Psyche’s window for a night of hidden passion,

And in the morning, the pure snow is back for a time.

But shocking blue bursts like a promise

through the clouds daily, longer and bigger,

Stabbing the heart with longing, and song.

Flowers and cherry blossoms are everywhere,

‘Tis the season for life again, like

a mob of billion-jetted young bodies piled

up outside the dance hall, impatient

clamoring for the band to get the party started.

I am weak, afraid,

Filled with doubts

A knock?

I open the door, trembling

Enter. Take everything. It is yours.

Take this life,

These old, stiff fingers. 

I bequeath them to the Work

anew this morning, 

my pride released.

With every dawn

A new surrender.

I am a pretender, 

forever beginning.

My very life a continuous beginning.

Raw. Necessary.

All I have is me,

 a channel,

Use me. 

Give me meaning. 

Amen.  

by Pablo Neruda

Naked you are as simple as one of your hands,

smooth, earthy, minimal, round, transparent,

you have moon lines, apple streets,

naked you are as thin as naked grain.

Naked you blue like the night in Cuba,

you’ve got creepers and stars in your hair,

naked you are huge and yellow

like summer in a golden church.

Naked you are small like one of your nails,

curvy, thin, rosy till the day rises

and you step into the world underground.

like in a long gallery of clothes and jobs:

your brightness goes off, gets dressed, and browses

and back to being a bare hand. “

(Pablo Neruda – “Nude you are simple ,from One Hundred Sonnets of Love, XXVII)

Lazarus never smiled
after he rose from the dead.
For 30 years, until he died again,
he was haunted by the
unredeemed souls he saw
in the four days of
his afterlife journey.

Laughter died stillborn in his chest.
That was what he told neighbors—
if he talked about it.
His throat was always dusty
and his tongue thick.
It was hard to speak, and
had been since that day.

He was notorious, though,
and played the part
the disciples designed for him
with resignation.
“Come, Lazarus, tell the people
what happened to you!”
Peter would say.
John would just shake his head
and turn away in pity as
Lazarus forced words
of testimony past
the dust of the tomb
stuck in his throat.

After all, the redeemer of
the world had made him
the only other man,
beside himself, to come back
through the veil. That
came with certain obligations,
they reminded him.
Nothing’s as convincing as an eyewitness.

He was always bone cold, though,
and sat in the sun for hours.
He bruised easily, and cuts wouldn’t heal.
And there were the
aches and pains,
his wife said,
from lying on a stone
slab, slowly decaying, for
four days. The crucifixion
came too soon, and
these complaints
could not be addressed.

30 years he lived
before dying again.
Dreading the meeting of those
souls again, explaining
why he couldn’t help. That the
one who could had
gone on ahead to the
big time, leaving poor
Lazarus behind to play a part
and to sit in the sun,
waiting, knowing.

He forgave that, though.
A miracle is a miracle.
What else could he do?
He only wished his friend had
left behind a few more instructions
for how to handle this.

We rest at a new border crossing,
Our chipped swords and frayed packs 

leaning against a twisted tree,

New wounds healing with the old, 

bodies aching. 

More battles won,

more to come.

Questions of mortality
haunt our thoughts,
more with each year, decade, 

more with illnesses and surgeries, 

with new scars, pains,
choices, fears, revelations…

More tests of courage…

(Do these ever end? No…) 

Remember this? 

“We have both lived with lips more scar tissue than skin. 

Our love came unannounced in the middle of the night. 

Our love came when we’d given up 

on asking love to come. 

I think that has to be part
of its miracle.
This is how we heal.” *

But my love, you have a 

a wounded child to care for,

your own 

identity, desires, fears, memories,

you protect her

always.

‘I will kiss you like forgiveness. You
will hold me like I’m hope. Our arms
will bandage and we will press promises between us like flowers in a book….’ *

I await your heart’s choice—

Perhaps not forever— but

loving you, forgiving you… 

I will not be afraid
of your scars.
I know sometimes
it’s still hard to let me see you
in all your cracked perfection,
but please know:
whether it’s the days you burn
more brilliant than the sun
or the nights you collapse into my lap
your body broken into a thousand questions, 

you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. 

I will love you when you are a still day.
I will love you when you are a hurricane.” *

* Clementine von Radics, “Love”

By Lisa Citore

If you want to change the world… love a woman,

just one woman.

Love and protect her, as if she’s the last holy vessel.

Love her through her fear of abandonment;

which she has been holding for all of humanity.

No, the wound’s not hers to heal alone.

No, she’s not weak in her dependence.

If you want to change the world… love a woman

all the way through, until she believes you,

until her instincts, her visions, her voice, her art,

her passion, her wildness have returned to her-

until she’s a force of love, more powerful

than all the political media demons who seek to devalue, and destroy her.

If you want to change the world,

lay down your causes, your guns, and protest signs.

Lay down your inner war, your self righteous anger, and love a woman…

beyond all of your striving for greatness,

beyond your tenacious quest for enlightenment.

The holy grail stands before you,

if you would only take her in your arms,

and let go of searching for something beyond this intimacy.

If you want to change the world…love a woman

to the depths of your shadow,

to the highest reaches of your Being,

back to the Garden, where you first met her;

to the gateway of the rainbow realm

where you walk through together as

Light as One, to the point of no return,

to the ends and the beginning of a New Earth.

When the egg was fertilized, stirred, ready.

I was already on my way.

Had a fleeting sense that 
“oh, this is not going to end well.“

There was something wrong
Too late to turn back.
Luck of the draw.
Law of Life.
Natural selection.

The woman who would carry, birth me 
did not want
to go through
this again.

Come what may…
The second I arrived in the fertile seed,
she knew
I felt her heart drop.

She had her reasons. 
Childbirth was life or death in those days.
And she had once almost died.
She also may have remembered her own mother’s
failed attempt to stop a beloved
brother with a hat pin,
leaving permanent disfiguring evidence,
lifelong pain,
moral stain.

But I was on the way. For better or worse,
’til death do us part….
Just not the hat pin.
(I knew none of that yet.
They don’t tell us everything.
But thank you.)  

Who said God doesn’t play dice?

Sorry, Ma. He does. 

Each body has its own unique,
peculiar bio-chemical, genetic soup
sour, sweet, full of loaded dice,
genetic time bombs, gifts. .

The spirit is destined to whip
all of that
into shape.
Eventually.
If it can.

But from the beginning
it gets drugged by the soup
and the humidity and noise,
and confused until
gradually, imperfectly
it forgets where it came from 

Almost. Almost. 
That’s where Hope lives.

The spirit swims in confusion, involuntary 
emotions, unfamiliar sensation,
Surrounded in life by other spirits—
As confused, or to one degree or another. 

And all of those things stiffen into a
garbled outline of a life
written in pencil,
designed for erasures and editing.

The creator gambles, 
has set in motion a universe of
a vastness unbelievable;
Of blinding violence
numinous beauty
cruel randomness, 

But it is all aware,

alive,

seeking.

It is us and we are made of it.

As our instruments peer deeper and
deeper into the seething heart of creation,
we one 

Day may see a question mark
Or an eye,
looking back at us.

Rejoicing.

He plopped himself into the red leather recliner, coffee within reach, in his favorite spot by the oversized picture window.

This had become a daily ritual, rain or shine. But this mid-May morning on the Olympic Peninsula was warming as clouds gave way to the sun. The world outside burst forth with a little more newfound vigor each day, as if eager to tell an exciting story. Hundreds of birds swarmed everywhere, drawn to the lake. He was five miles from Puget Sound, the still snowy Olympic Mountains 20 miles hidden by forest at his back, sipping hot coffee and welcoming a new dawn.

His attention was snatched from the distant horizon by a clematis vine that had grown fast and with wild abandon, defying the constraints of its trellis. It leaned precariously, the weight of its impending blooms threatening to send it toppling over.

Without skipping a beat, he saw this as a problem to solve, and pictured the bundle of vine tied together with garden tape and secured to a screw or nail tacked high on a nearby post. Oddly enough, this train of thought triggered a memory of his late wife, the one who would have surely challenged his idea.

As he had toured this place (before paying too much two summers ago), he vividly recalled this front flower garden in riotous bloom, thinking it was a sight that would have delighted her. It was one of the reasons he decided to settle here, where her spirit could feel at home, and he could pretend she might be drawn to it. Memories of her in those days infused each such thought with a touch of sadness, but also with a sense of contentment.

She had been a free-spirited gardener, constantly planting and tending a growing gallery, allowing the plants to roam and thrive as they pleased. She embraced theEnglish style that bordered on anarchy. It looked like a jumble to him, but it also worked. Somehow. It rubbed him the wrong way. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why until this very moment—two years after he’d moved here, five years and one month after her passing.

Control of things like this, it seemed, was embedded in him.

He admired the beauty of plants, yet craved some order and tidiness. Balance. Harmony. He recognized that this trait, if indulged, could veer into unhealthy territory. But being a writer, he also was no stranger to appreciating details. Editing his garden became just another facet of this peculiar pleasure, untethered from the expectations of others, including his wife of five decades. He felt a pang of guilt, but of the many things he missed about her, that particular quibble wasn’t one of them.

Returning his gaze outside, he marveled at the top-heavy clematis, its imminent cascade of blooms threatening to one kind of sensibility. His. But then, in a moment of surrender, he decided to let them be.

He smiled.

Let’s see what they do, he thought. Nature will figure it out.

The sun silently warmed to the idea, as well.