WALKING ON GRASS

"The Good Grass", oil, by Justin Clements

When sorrows sit on his shoulders, 

he sometimes walks on grass

instead of sidewalks, setting his feet
on the promising green surface
for solace and reassurance.
He realizes again that goodness
grows around and under him,
and that sorrow is not the master
of kindness, but its servant.
He knows that nothing heals
like letting his fussing self
flow away and vanish,
and the goodness of green grass
does that for him,
helps him hold his sorrows
like flakes of paper
that fly off in the softest breeze.

WHO HE IS

He often wonders who he is.

Is he a complex collection

of cells and connective tissues

and bones that easily break? 

Is he his thoughts and feelings

as they fly through his life

like hawks or hummingbirds

or quarrelsome old crows?

Is he a piece of the breezes

that blow by him as he sits 

beside a river with a friend,

the friend who found him last year, 

when he slowly started to see

who he really was,

like a submarine surfacing

and seeing something like paradise?

RAIN DURING ENGLISH CLASS

The rain wasn't racing up against the windows,
nor was it a wandering rain
that went aimlessly here and there
across the prospering spring countryside.

It was a rain that remembered
how the universe continues to design itself,
slowly and harmoniously and everlastingly.
The raindrops sang an undisturbed song
as they descended on the darkness
that is sometimes the human race,
and he didn't think the darkness minded.
There was music in his heart
as he heard, with his students,
the tunefulness of this latest storm
in the endless and flourishing history of rain.

DURING STUDY HALL

Someone he thought of
as he was standing by the bookshelf
sent his mind off searching
for feelings that shine like stars.
He was lost for awhile,
while his students whispered
when they should have been studying,
but he soon came back
with brightness surrounding him,
so that his students said
he looked like love itself
had spread across his 70 years.

RIDING WITH HER ON RIVER ROAD

"Two for the Road", oil, by Mary Maxam

The big heron
helped itself to the wind
and went off to the west,
and we followed our feelings
down River Road.
You can't remember sorrows
when you're sailing
on your bicycle
with your best friend,
someone you found
like a flower in a beautiful field.
You followed the stars for years
and finally found nothing at all,
but caring for this quiet person
on her new, snow-colored bicycle
has brought you
the best of this universe,
the best of its spread-out, shining gifts.

THE DAYS AHEAD

Sitting outside, 
he saw his little life 
leaning toward him 
with happiness in its hands. 
"Here," his life said, 
this is for you", 
and it set a thousand days 
of satisfaction at his feet.
He unfurled his fears 
and let them fly off, 
and then he stared 
with delight
at the days ahead.

COMING AND GOING

Coming and going, 
he gets what he needs -- 
a night of spreading kindness, 
a day of joyfulness 
that falls upon him 
like pieces of soft paper. 
Something says the best news to him
almost always -- a wish
from a wind passing by, 
a bright baseball in the grass 
like a sign that something special 
shines inside all things.