SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE

Dear Shaya:

Honest, honest. This ongoing poem began as I relate in the early stanzas, but I couldn’t stop myself, working on it daily as days unfold. It began just for you, to be shared with
Bahira; now I find myself wanting to work on it more and more to keep expanding
this mode of sacred telling. I have joked about Batina have ocd, but now I find
myself in that category of creative folks. You must know yourself: to share
what is learned with others, it’s a “we can’t stop ourselves” from being that
instrument of Hashem-Allah, who some how put us here to be, not necessarily do, as much as we can be.

Healing, healing energies

May they infuse themselves into your body parts

To help make you whole-ly.

Yes, you are already.

The docs will know they are touched with light,

As they enter the lightness of your physical.

Delicate particles of matter needing delicate hands

To rectify, correctify,

The Light as matter.

Shaya, you have become my muse. Thank you. I’ll stop now and send this for you. Take your time. I did go on and on.

This extended poem was inspired by my Rebbe, Shaya Isenberg.

SOME THINGS ARE HAPPENING HERE

June 30, 2010

Clear Seattle Day.

We’re on a roll here;

Three days in a row.

Warmish too: 70s.

But to be honest, I must be a bit crazed, but,

I do long for the long, hot, humid, summer days in Gainesville.

Getting dirty and sweaty in

the

McRorie Community Garden.

Love of life comes in different ways.

Listen.

Puget Sound

Golden Gardens Park

Far apart, white cumulus clouds,

Floating lazily suspended by the unseen.

Evaporating water particles unseen

Rise up before me.

From the Sound,

That is majestic.

Gentle winds; an unseen energy.

So much is unseen.

There is, it’s true,

More around us unseen than seen.

The beauty of this day is felt so peacefully.

Batina paints on 5 x 7 cards,

I write,

The same view

Different Way.

We sit 30 feet from the waters edge,

A large boulder barrier between the water and comfort for humans….and dogs. Every other person walks with at least one dog on the asphalt path between the water and us.

Seattle with a high level of dog love.

And coffee.

More coffee and dogs per capita than where, what?

Those boulders, larger than man can move,

Moved into place by machines?

Pyramids, A Great Wall, built by humans;

With unseen help? Did they have help?

All slaves?

Mega-creations

Does anyone volunteer this work?

Batina and I enjoying this day.

I declared it a vacation day.

A stress reduction process.

To the beach we go,

But we can’t just be.

We doodle our crafts.

Eyes take in what fills the space.

Something moves something else. Inside.

All Muse. Not us.

Allow for creative energies to flow.

A love of life.

Two days ago there were hundreds of teens here.

Gathering in groups.

That was the first of this three day

Run of sun.

Must have been a school is over event.

On that day I sat in my van with a man not much older than me,

Stroked to be a partially disabled man.

A 24 hour shift, for me, 9 a.m. to 9 a.m.

Getting paid for sleep.

Hmmm, not like moving boulders.

Only my third time with him. Getting to know him. He me. But still, “a stranger in my apartment?”

How would anyone think or feel about this when

A someone just shows up?

Sent by an agency?

Just to be clear here:

He was informed by his power of attorney.

But still, cognition impaired by a stroke.

Language, movement, will never be

As it was.

He seemed to love just being by the water,

Responded immediately

To my suggestion.

He doesn’t communicate well.

May not want to.

Uses a walker easily.

But didn’t need or want to get out of my van.

90 minutes comfortably watching the water, boats and those many passing by

Our van window view.

He talked a bit, to my questions: Today told me he was a: mountain climber,

Electrical engineer a photographer,

Had a motor boat.

No children.

Batina and I:Words and paint expressing something

That inhabits our beings.

Is there credit due someplace?

To Whom? To What?

A hand holds a brush.

A hand a pen.

From where?

How did they get

In To our hands?

Miracles of time, space,

Industrial transportation.

We’ve no clue, give no inquiry,

Except where we buy,

What we need.

Water ripples, breath flows.

Slow and easy

As we

Absorb the natural world,

Become it

As feet move on asphalt.

Her fingers hold a brush.

What are the bristles made of?

Where did they come from?

Everything is in place.

Some sails down, engines on,

Some sails filled with that

Unseen energy, engines off.

She here, me here.

She who? Me who?

For how long???

Any… anytime,

Without warning,

It will change. I know and

We won’t be here or anyplace.

Then, just being.

Or

Still doing. A higher work.

Perhaps.

We will abide in Love. A Gift to cherish to,

Take with us.

The brush squiggles

Held in deft, delicate, God Fingers.

Paint from some where,

Onto paper from another where,

Re-Creating water, sky, grass, sail boats,

On paper that

Was a tree.

Imagine that.

For an eye-sense. That

Sends a message,

Deep inside being, to a place,

Unseen, but knowable,

Becoming a Soul Experience.

Her hand. A Hand.

Joined to a

Greater Hand

Dips the paint,

Moves the brush.

What is that Force behind the action?

Samples, samples, of the beauty seen.

Where does pride enter as we do and be?

What we do and be, but

Soon we won’t be or do.

Time moves faster than our blinking eye

And we don’t know.

When or How?

She holds the brush,

I a pen

Paper lent

Love lent

Body lent

All a Souls mission to experience,

To know.

Memories of parents.

Forgotten how they held us

When we were their gift from

Who knows?

Two day later another near Seattle beach.

My 13 month old granddaughter, Clover,

Our first excursion out of their house,

Into my van, she enjoying,

The prep.

Understands what I am preparing for us.

But not my struggle with the car seat straps.

Cries, is uncomfortable.

Me too.

But all settled, now smiling, knowing Grandpa Bob’s words about

Car, go, good time.

I’m impressed with this babe,

How cool she is.

We are getting to know each other.

I’m came here 2 years ago, for

Grandson Vaden, and then

God blesses us with a female angel too.

We meet Batina at the beach, she was attending a

Art meeting as her reputation is slowly expanding

Having a show here and there.

Baby girl Clover, a smiling angel,

No discernable words, no stand up walking,

A good crawler.

And a great smiler. A Great Smiler.

No faking.

Like from the place where she abided

Before showing up here.

Love — Love brings us into

Being in Life together.

A Passage to Eternity.

Could not have imagined that,

But I see who I see.

Yes this is real.

I point out the boats, a train goes by,

The water the sand the grass.

The mysteries of life unfolding daily.

A stroller. Thanks Megan for remembering.

My first stroll with a stroller in many decades.

On the asphalt, onto a pier, Clover keeps a well balanced demeanor.

We drive home.

I reach over and touch her feet as I did going. We smile at each other in the rear view mirror.

A charge of love emotion fills me.

She dozes.

We arrive at Gabe’s house. I wonder

If Clover coming out of a soft sleep will

Will feel a bit of discomfort — but no,

Ah, perfect equanimity.

I love so many aspects of life. Thankful. Gracious.

HashemAllah Hu

Not a vacation day today,

Even better: a blessed day with

Clover.

OTHER SACRED MOMENTS

(Now a few days later, still working on this piece of peace and I have to interject, that I just picked cherries from a backyard tree.

A total first.

A cherry tree in this rented space.

30 feet, maybe more,

They are ripening, the other two, ten feet, still a way to go for ripening.

Maybe another variety.

Maybe not cherry, although are the same shape but remaining hard

Amazing. Nuts?

Cherries.

It makes me happy to have this.

And be alive to it.

I thought there would be a tug of war between me

And the black birds, that nested in this tree and birthed chickies.

Maybe they’re getting the higher ones.

A fair trade.

For me.

From tree to mouth

The love of life manifesting in so many ways,

As I thin small lettuces from my

Seattle front Yard garden,

Propagated from seeds saved two years ago from lettuces in the

McRorie Community Garden Gainesville plot I helped attend.

These tiny, some tiny, tiny, baby lettuces,

Thin-d from between two inch high Romaine.

That hopefully will grow full size,

Allowing two or three to “go to seed,”

So I can again save seeds.

I couldn’t throw the leaves aside.

I know they contain energies I don’t understand.

Cut their thin rootlets,

Rest the rootlets near the larger plants,

To again become earth.

Gather the lettuces leaves,

So carefully in my palm.

Into the kitchen,

Many rinses

To get off

Tiny soil particles,

Lightly clinging to tender leaves.

That soil

Helped bring forth.

So close to the ground they were.

I include these leaves in the salad

Of the day

Appreciating their young energies.

Never knowing what is eaten from the

Organic gardens will have

Special Energies that will do for our beings what

We need to be

Physically whole.

After all,

What is eaten from ones garden, that is carefully nurtured,

Sweated upon, personally energized, honored and prayed upon,

Is in return a taste of ones own self.

DO I WANT TO SWITCH

Wait, wait for me. My mind hears others sounds,

Coming from the deep. Deep water oil well.

Do I want my mind switched from so pleasant,

To what was not our wish?

How can this be?

Sitting by Puget Sound, somewhat cleaned up after its struggle with human disingenuity.

Dissing ingenuity.

But it is what we are known for.

“Too bad all is not well in the well.”

Where is the voice coming from?

Who says it won’t be well? We’re a smart species.

We can screw things up

And unscrew them just as easily.

Show me.

We’re working on it as we speak.

Some ones wish.

Some place with dark voices from places

Unseen, unknown,

Almost Ghoulish, but with a sidestep away,

“You didn’t have to do things this way.”

We had no choice.

Time moved to where we were destined to go.

Oh. Zat so. Tell me more about your brilliance.

Machines were invented.

They needed fuel.

Oh, zat so. Tell me more about your brilliance.

Oil it was coming out of the ground,

Just waiting for humanity to make good use of it.

And did you?

Look at all that we have now.

Look at all you don’t have.

Species loss, forest loss, plants lost, butterflies.

Should I go on and on and on……?

Our species is recalibrating.

Our ingenuity got ahead of our

Spiritual destiny.

It does create the high life.

For some.

Oil was going to help all.

All? Oil was going to help all?

Who believed that?

Nuke energy was going to be so cheap,

It was going to be free. Ha!

We have plans for betterment of the whole.

But instead you drilled holes where it

Wasn’t intended.

Sham on you.

BP didn’t know what they were doing.

None of you up there know what your doing. You are all complicit in what is going on using the oil drug. It’s a world strung out and you won’t change until your are forced to change
and maybe we, the diabolical good forces have finally created a disaster that
will wake everyone up to their sickness. So much of what you produce, what you
consume, what you do, is guided by the worst principles in relationship to the
good of the earth and to life. You are all so accustomed to living in a bizarre
world of accepting the worst as if it was the only means of sustaining your
lives.

Okay so we’re stuck. Wise guy. Do you have any idea of how we can get out of the purgatory we are forced to live in?

There was a time when people lived more in harmony with the natural world. So many of you know this, but most are so out of touch it may be impossible to bring them into that
harmonious way.

So many will have a harder and harder time as the world they are accustomed to dissolves.

Dissolves? What do you mean dissolves?

Well, it’s not like soap dissolving in water, but it may seem like that as so much of what your people expect as always staying the way it has been will fade into obscurity.

It won’t be detected the way it has always been. It will be a slow but steady disintegration of life as you knew it. It has been written about many times in your life, it is nothing new
under you sun, but still, what a surprise it will be when one wakes up one
morning and the world isn’t what it was and for most of the human race, it will
be a scramble to survive and it’s quite possible that most won’t. It’s happened
before on your planet, that information is out there and many are aware of it
and many are doing some preparation for how to deal with a recovery once the
disintegration occurs.

What does one do?

No one can tell anyone else what to do. Each has to pursue what they feel is the right way for them. Smart ones are already gathering small communities together to work cooperatively
with each other to share what needs to be done in order for the regeneration of
social norms, if there really is anything like social norms in your world. It
is only the very few old cultures that have been able to hold on to mores and
folkways, customs that may seem old fashion to each modern culture, but what
these primarily were able to do was maintain a dignity between themselves and
the natural world they were in harmony with.

We can go back to those ways. Yes we can. I know many people who are willing to give that a try considering the critical nature of what you are suggesting.

Suggesting, I’m not suggesting anything, all I’m doing is telling you the way it is and if there are those who can see some of the danger that is coming, maybe they should have
been getting ready before circumstances became as dire as they are.

July 3, 2010

I am thankful for being this Gift from God;

Oh Creation, behold this being as part of You.

A new adventure today,

Prompted by Batina so I wouldn’t

Sit home and dawdle away.

Now in a forest, new to us, but ancient.

Near Edmonds Beach,

Sitting on a well rotted, fallen tree,

One amongst a few others,

Nestled in a bit,

A naturally

Carved out, dent in the earth,

Tucked away, off the narrow dirt paths,

Through the woods. Scattered pieces

Of broken branches are randomly all around this

Dent in the earth forest.

It’s almost like a large nest,

Sitting here gives me the feeling of

Being a Gnome.

Batina painting the view,

Me doing my recording

She doing hers.

So comfortable being here,

Away from

The world of human made,

Most of us abide in.

Is it unnatural man creating unnatural

Environments and products

For mainly, (only?)

Profits.

Comfort.

No, I don’t want to get into war machinery.

Needing yes, oil.

For so many,

The Natural World.

This is what we are missing.

Mae Zifken Ellenberg,

May she r.i.p., would have

Nothing to do with this that I love,

That is part of my nature.

It was hard for her to appreciate the

World of

Birds and Bees, woodlands and forest.

Flowers she loved,

Picking low hanging Magnolia Flowers.

She didn’t see God in nature.

I tried to help her see more deeply

Into what was around products of man.

Where she lived in my apartment

For half a year,

Until she couldn’t anymore.

It was a trying seven months,

Not seeing eye to eye or belief to belief,

But connected by birth and maybe more.

Her last hours,

Finally, getting her to relax.

Lighten up mom, I pray,

I love you, I say.

She uncurled her body from a tight,

Womb like, fetal pose.

Easing her from 24 hours of moaning and groaning, as she

Knew her time was very close.

Gentle back rubbing, “breath mom, try and relax, I’m right here with you. I love you. Becca is here too.”

Rub, rub, my mom. And ah, yes, she can, yes she can,

Relinquishing her hold on suffering,

Stretches out finally, no complaints.

Imagine. No complaints. I love you mom.

No thirst, no pain,

None. I asked.

She whispered, “no.”

I am thankful,

The time with me was a preparation

She was ready to leave this plane.

Came back as a small bird, I imagined,

In a story

Not too long after,

She was able to know the natural world in ways

She hadn’t before.

Batina and I walk out of the forest

Up steep incline, narrow path.

From the forest, an immediate shift,

Into Suburban planning. A neighborhood.

Homes right on the edge of the forest.

How lucky for them.

A small patch of managed flowers,

Right on the edge of the forest,

With a marker,

“Backyard Garden Sanctuary.”

A metal table with matching chairs.

Set off a bit from any nearby house.

We discuss: Whoz iz it?

Public or private?

Whose garden?

We take advantage of the space,

Batina sits on the ground with her 5 x 7 cards,

I take my self to one of the metal chairs,

To mark our day,

I write this place, Batina paints.

We all are learning what we need to learn.

Do what we need to do.