lightning flashes the rain swept darkness
crashes against our roof in Independence
and you out there electric too register
in the midst of every heightened sense

can you feel how it flows ground to sky
and back again the pause so momentary
it seems to be continuous as we ourselves vary
jostle and swap atoms among forms barely

visible but for the sustained intent flickering
in our eyes the lingering touch of rarified air

we breathe it in slowly together recognizing in this
shared moment the slow thundering roll of earthly bliss

©John Greenleaf-Maple 4/25/17

from my earliest memories i longed to be returned to the water
as though submerged, surrounded and buoyant for so long before birth,
swaying softly within the warm embrace of a woman’s salty sea,
i remember being suddenly crushed, cold, then heavy and land locked
i gasped for oxygen, survived the birth, survived my mother’s suicide the same year i started school,
survived the many aftershocks in our family as we stumbled along our dusty path,
but are we seeing the pattern here? the choice for life on land may be where we fundamentally went wrong.
it can be very tough living here, and my story is far from extraordinary, i’m sure you will agree.
did we leave the sea because our food became scarce? or because we were something’s favorite snack?
it seems so bountiful there. but perhaps it was just a mistake to leave,
and that explains our mass tendency toward lunacy,
all this difficult lumbering about the land.
in any case, we all feel that attraction to flow back to the source;
our skin encapsulated the bit of sea we must always carry with us and still it is water that we mostly are.
(except for the bones we are very cushy to lie against, because of this yielding pliancy).
we will always long to merge, relax within slow currents, and to hear the long undulating sounds
from far beneath and beyond the range of sight, to flicker though refracted light sleek bodies
thrusting then coasting with ease above the myriad colors of long reefs swaying filtering fans and billowing
schools of bright fish. what stops us now from floating into this open ocean deep in our memories?
it is the bit of sea in us even now that is pondering this, isn’t it obvious? there is no barrier to this

©John Greenleaf-Maple 5/1/17

today I woke up alive on a warm sunny planet
filled with birdsong and beings whom I love
the flower scented air shimmers with susurrating light
and the wind of all vibrates through the skin
we are the honeyed taste of music
and the sensual lingering touch of delicious appreciation

©John Greenleaf-Maple 4/11/17

Fish love is based on fulfilling one’s needs through another, or seeking to complete oneself through a partner, a form of gratification (like taking a fish from water to consume it). True love is based on giving, not in expectation of a return, but because love precedes it, i.e., because I first love you, I give you something, a part of myself. Then I am invested in you; we share something meaningful.

This is why I want to occasionally speak a few small words of heartfelt appreciation, that Love, through bravery, will keep expanding across the vast plains of commonality that we all share together. The point, though, is that bravery is needed and is indeed an indicator of where the possible lies. Where it is required, there we must go, for on the other side is the gift of transformation and greater connection, a treasure truly worth finding and sharing. Do the scary thing to genuinely share your heart with others. Although you won’t be asking for it, love will return to you many-fold, and all the world around you will be a better one because of it.

the death of my first son,
born to live through one painful turn of this earth, is no
longer the seed of my own unending death, no longer an
empty gesture of the wind,
no longer a life in partial realization; i am still,
we are both still
but rising on the movement unraveled by lungs and a
portion of the wind,
by water and the touch of wind on water;
and the cast-off leaves also belong to the water, to the
earth above and below the water;
and the water collects in lungs;
sunlight penetrates the water and the earth and the
graves of the earth.
many years ago i sat beneath a willow and saw the
pond turn down,
the shadow of winter water roll up to be
touched by fingers of sunlight. but when the
clock struck eleven when the clock struck
eleven
i could only see the earth sloping down,
a cold hillside matted with chaotic grasses; forgive me
my son.
forgive this blind succession of nights and days, the
stomach shriveled around fetid whiskey
in the solitary hotel rooms of Iowa;
again iwaited for the train back to Kansas,
the train lumbering through the frozen darkness of
Minnesota with its thousands of tons
of lumber, grain and steel, coming to
exchange its movement
for my hours of insuring its movement, the train of
endless destinations coming. forgive the palpable
stab of the headlight,
the empty light by which i roared through river valleys,
swept past the smell of cottonwoods rotting in water, swept on in
the fumes of diesel fuel.
and when the deer leaped into the light and serenely to its death,
the eternity through which it always had moved,
i saw only the glazed reflection of my terror;
forgive me.
forgive the anguished
words by which i tried to
keep you; forgive the
damning words.

Born of this earth are skies
and the working of rocks upon the skies
which bellowed forth from volcanoes of the earth;
praise to the clouds and all movement of the clouds.
stirred from the water from beneath the water
are all living things upon the earth and beneath the earth,
change wrought within the water and upon the earth
and in the air above and within the earth;
praise to the oceans and streams entering the
oceans; praise to the mud where ocean enters the
earth; praise to the earth;
praise to the sun streaming forth its death
and the death of all things upon this planet;
praise to the sunlight spilling over the
branches of elms and aspen, spilling onto my
naked skin, the skin that has been touched by
hands
in expressions of love,
and the skin touched and touching
in their layers of death.
o my son,
all movement has stopped and forever continues;
these things you are forever teaching me.
in my own forgiveness i no longer expect,
no longer cry you down from your uninterrupted flight.
praise to your time and all things offered;
praise to the return and all things that be;
praise to the ceaseless, unmoved.

©John Greenleaf-Maple 1978

after the operation they wagged their heads at us,
                               led us,
as the mindless require,
through the delirium of doorways,
past polished machines throbbing
with their cycles of liquids and air
                           led us
to Phillip,
            yes,
here is Phillip, he is here,
has escaped the plastic shell of incubation
and at last found mama·s breast;
delicate sparrow wing hands
are crumpled
into weak purple fists.

we choke on the mechanisms
forced into our throats,
give the numb chrome touch of death
to the dead, now dead.

we clutch our arms,
drift into the fluid night.

©John Greenleaf-Maple 1978

Don’t get me wrong. I am glad to be able to think, and when problem solving or planning is needed, you can’t beat thinking for getting buildings built, surgeries performed, books written and published, and aircraft safely landed at busy airports. In such cases the question is probably fine for soliciting an opinion about a logical matter.

Since I have been retired, however, and especially when I am feeling content, thinking is not my primary objective, and I don’t react well to being asked what I am thinking in relaxed settings because:
1. It presupposes that logical, rational thought is what I should always have rolling through my head
2. It immediately forces me to drop out of the flow of most of what I directly sense and enjoy – unique combinations of color, scent, sound, taste, texture, air flow, movement, etc., – and substitute for it something similar but “less than” built out of words that can be conveyed to a listener
3. If I am trying to listen to what creativity may be unraveling in the way of metaphorical thought, it is most often destroyed by the premature request that I express something that has not yet made itself known to me, let alone anyone else
4. It presumes one has a right to my thoughts whether I wish to share them at that moment or not
5. It often sounds like uneasiness or worry about what I am thinking rather than a genuine interest in what I think
6. You will never get a completely honest insight into who I am by asking about my thoughts, which are just temporary collections of beliefs, after all.

If my actions and the manner in which I do choose to express myself have brought us to silence, then we probably don’t have much else to talk about right now and can go back to just being ourselves. Unless, of course, you have something to say that doesn’t involve coaxing me to produce thought and opinion statements when I am really not in the mood. Then we can appreciate the moment as it is.

My beloved, we are one,
not as our mind can comprehend,
but as your light is entangled with mine,
as the orbit of time is in one sublime instant
no longer receding or preceding, but altogether gone.
My beloved, this is Now, when we are One.

©John Greenleaf-Maple 4/3/17