passing trace

words rise slowly
then sink deleted
into a blank field
a white interface
for neurons firing
in utter darkness
traces of excitation
caught on screen
like collider photos

i love its accepting ways
whiteness as pure
as new fallen snow
its total disregard
for what settles upon it

like water tension it holds
ephemeral tracings
of a passing life
magnetically restrained
for a few instants
before it is released
into that which remains
infinite and untold

©John Greenleaf-Maple 5/30/17

after words

in the beginning was the word
and the word is satnam

words by many other names
only serve to obfuscate

but i want your words
i long to hear your true words

yes, all of your suffering and its meaning
all of your regrets and what they teach
all of the sweaty ecstasy of hot sex
and the mistakes made trying to complete yourself in another
the sickening heartache of watching your own child die
every moment when unexpected generosity made you cry
yes, every part of what it means to be fully alive
i want to hear all of those chapters of the common life we share,
events that reverberate and attune our human hearts and cares

but i admit (it is probably obvious by now),
it’s really your soul i am after,
not to possess it, no, far from it,
for we are joined in love for eternity,
which is quite a long time as measured
by the world in our immediate vicinity

i look toward you
and see in your heart
a shared recognition
of more than we are taught

i want to merge with you in this moment
to somehow share the miracle of tonight’s sunset
to see through one set of eyes this gradient light;
i only know that it is pure and beautiful,
coursing with life through our veins;
every cell is powered by it and
in this shared knowing i see divinity reflected within your open honest eyes

i see how you noticed the wind and sun dancing and singing in the ash leaves,
and how a pure golden light
remains burning in you forever,
an irrepressible holiness

words are insufficient
and unneeded now anyway
what was closed has been opened
and is now received when given away

©John Greenleaf-Maple 5/30/17

Spirit Fire

Ah, the memories of our last meeting:
swirling campfire sparks, smoldering blankets,
sunglasses at night to deter blinding smoke,
gales of gusty wind and choking laughter,
the surprisingly cold shiver on skin arising
from metal benches cooled by brisk wind.

Today, breathing sweet spring sunshine,
I remember how we first hesitantly showed up,
uncertain flickering candles among circled chairs
full of disappointments and hopes wary
of baring souls unless another first dared.
Yet slowly courage and authenticity brought forth
expanding light, this brilliant sphere I now see,
a golden radiance in place of former doubt and worry.

It is not “special love,” for all are welcome,
but when I have shared the heart of my heart,
the very deepest part I ever dared entrust
to another to hear and understand,
and when this same holy light
is reflected from the souls of others,
their most valued trust also placed with me,
something greater than any individual
opens a gate, an unexpected new reality,
a greater depth and dimensionality
of firelit warmth we will always share,
and a knowledge that we still remain there,
that regardless of circumstance or uncertainty
there will always be this changeless indivisibility.

©John Greenleaf-Maple 3/22/17

Tar Sands Extraction Method

My brothers and sisters, when even the rocks cry out in pain,
it is time to add our parched voices, and yes, everything is illusion
but the love that lifted us from dust gives natural respect
to the mother who carried us and supplies without our asking
all that we drink, all that we eat, all that we breathe;
her steady patient heartbeat is our natural rhythm;
her water ripples and flows, feeds the sweet grass and trees.
We are warmed on the beaches of her vast lakes
and we are the salt sea surging and ebbing to her tides,
forever rocked and reassured, forever offered endless bounty.

Shunning sunlit glades and the honeyed breezes of deep forest
gigantic mining treads smash and rend all that stands,
plowing ever deeper ripping aside the layers of shale
sniffing for the last bit of dark blood while all around
stretches a vast wasteland laid to the bone and oozing,
hundreds of square miles as barren as the lands of Mordor.

Now the furnaces are lit, water heated, shale shaken to sand.
Light crude and natural gas are added, the thick slurry is ready
to be pumped thousands of miles to refineries on the Gulf Coast
through fragile tubes of steel already leaking throughout the land
everywhere and now we are plunging beneath Lake Oahe,
fresh water source for the Standing Rock Lakota Sioux tribe
377,000 square acres of deep unspoiled water tossed on the table
as the necessary price of progress, so say the white men in Bismark
who pushed this disaster far from their doors, naturally following
historical precedent, and now that it is almost invisible
don’t look back the Missouri River is next but do not worry
you will be escorted safely away by military police
before you are exposed to any unsightly sights that might
develop should terrorists attempt to savage their plans
or the earth rise and fall in a normal trembling shrug
no nothing can possibly go wrong for the next three quarters
at least, and that is all that is needed to justify all this,
a special few with shrewd intent now free to feed uninhibited.

©John Greenleaf-Maple 3/11/17

Evening Walk, West Road

– for Beth on her 37th

the point of it was never the easy way
our collies ranged ahead of us
on the familiar road closely pressed
by poplar, fir, spruce, beech, ash, hard maple
and white birch curls slowly unwinding
but rather that the owl flew
in graceful S curves ahead of us
nearly suspended in this crepuscular hour
of appetite and patient observation
security unsettled by the panting dogs
swift unseen swooping claws fading sun
dying and thrilled hearts all in one
sweet surrender and grateful acceptance
beneath the rising planets and brightening moon

©John Greenleaf-Maple 11/29/16

Redemption

This is a poem I wrote in 1977 and recently revised. It reminds me how suspicious I have been all of my life about any religion that tells us we must earn the worthiness and perfection that we inherited at birth, and that can never be tarnished.

I am enough, and you are enough, just as we are. I openly share my family’s suicidal tendencies (which include two deceased first cousins) because I want no one else to fall into this well of hopelessness. We already have all the power we need to live a full and meaningful life. But the stillness within is where it must be sought. God is not “out there,” for every breath we take is one She breathes into us, and all of the particles in our bodies are made of Him.
—–
Redemption

by day a pillar of fire flaps and smokes
from the Standard Oil Refinery flare stack
visible from the living room in Sugar Creek, MO
where my grandmother keeps photo albums
preserving me at age five

a dark headed woman out of focus
in the background is frozen
over-balanced in a cartwheel

in Claycomo her ghost frightens children
away from our tiny abandoned house
where she is trapped
her pale weary forehead bends repeatedly forward
against the cold barrel of a police riot shotgun

my father slumps over the toilet
in Kansas City bearing decades of self-blame
careful not to bleed on the carpet

beside him the soft tissue of the Living Bible
stands up in wrinkled furrows where
his red ink underscores have ploughed deeply,
highlighting every punishment he feels he is due
for failing to love well enough to save us all

©John Greenleaf-Maple 1977 rev 2/17

You have to be tough to be a poet

You have to be tough to be a poet
and since we mostly read to other poets,
I suspect that you may already know it
what it’s like to place your full heart here
to offer it wholly in spite of your fear
or whatever your particular art
you know this feeling of taking part
of your innermost self
and placing it upon a public shelf
it’s sometimes so very very hard
but it’s just what the heart does you see
when it bursts with joy into reality
intent on connecting you and me

but i will admit to you in all seriousness
that at times i am brought suddenly to tears
by the sheer miracle of our existence
the absolute thrill of being alive
have you felt such gratitude leap in your heart?
have you been overpowered by your spirit?
yes that is what i came to celebrate
it’s the reason i showed up to communicate
the absolute bliss of being fully alive
nowhere to be, nowhere to arrive

yet still, to admit it fully into this room
to share my heart like a tender bloom
is sometimes so very very hard
you have to be tough to be a poet

©John Greenleaf-Maple 2/15/2017

making it real

our quiet breath will be the only sound
we will be assured and silent and still
connecting roots and songs underground
yes the soft susurration of rain and wind
will ripple and flow through us until
it is time to speak with united voice
not with malice but purposeful choice
we are like fog and mist finally cresting the hill
see us now? we are rising coming into focus
to dispel this glittery foisted hocus pocus
by fearful aggregators with logos hoisted
soon obscured by the compassionate generous
and will simply once we clearly see
vanish into what was never or ever shall be
of substance in this moment of eternity

©John Greenleaf-Maple 2/7/17

Winnin’ It

Cycling this trail along Little Blue Trace
I feel the vibe of the tribe as the music settles in
And as the sky opens up now I’m just spinnin’
No effort at all with the whole human race
Startin’ to share their smiles along these miles
I start to feel magical cause I know we are winnin’
They can’t take our freedom as long as we are feelin’ it
Now we are rollin’ to keep it legit, and in just a bit
Our insistent prayer will make the world shift
Through the power of love and bein’ compassionate
My brothers and sisters we are winnin’ it
Your strength is more than you can know
Use your joy and your peace, let’s go!

Scattering Stars Like Dust

“We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust” – Rumi

We are soaring through new regions of our universe

at 1.3 million miles per hour,

hurtling somewhere, one might say,

where no man has ever gone before

shielded from death by a force field

made of the thinnest membrane of soft sweet air,

swathed in clouds we are propelled onward and held onto,

and somehow survive. Just think of it as we travel.

All of it, the particles of which we are composed,

were forged in the collapsed hearts of not just average stars,

but truly majestic ones, eight solar masses or larger,

those are the giants that go nova,

spewing their dust of obliteration across the universe

again and again, billions of these stars contributing this iota

and this one, accreted into you, the ocean, me, this trembling tree,

atoms from everywhere swept up into patterns that first appeared

like Kirlian photographs revealing the energy fields

to which they are attracted and still sustain us

in radiant outlines of fiery cosmic strands, we are

billions of temporary particles exchanging places.

We trail a glowing mist of our selves;

nebulae ripple in the waves of our wake,

yet the field remains as the atoms themselves

disappear and reappear at Planck speed

5.39 times ten to the minus 44th

we sizzle, pulse and flicker and yet

retain the most current revision of ourselves

the same general idea of hand and head, then add

shimmering starlight that sparks across the skin,

and we glide along the golden ley line follow

the perfect ratio spiraling inward,

Fibonacci curve to zero, all

for this particular dance of light within the neurons,

this plus this trace memory of ever and only now

sustained by a wave of intention

until we arrive, at last, nowhere.

And so it is at the entrance to stillness

in this unknowable moment.

Our alabaster whorl of disappearing inquiry

is washed quietly away

by a dark, foaming salty sea.

Notes about this poem:

– Everything heavier than hydrogen and helium was created in the dying moments of a massively large star collapsing in upon itself. Only stars that are eight times larger than our sun or bigger have the capability to go nova and spew their contents across the universe.

– If you cut the top off of a leaf, and take a picture of it with Kirlian photography, it will show the energy field of the missing portion of the leaf that was used to maintain its atomic / cellular order. Our bodies use a similar energy field blueprint.

– Quantum particles constantly disappear and reappear in our universe, spending part of their lives in an alternate dimension. Even the most fundamental particles in the proton, which were thought to be the one last remaining solid thing, are flickering in and out of existence at Plank speed, represented in the poem. One theory says that the particles are flipping between their matter and anti-matter states. The paired antimatter particle could be anywhere. Whether this is true or not, they are definitely not here all of the time.

– The Golden Ratio / Fibonacci curve is observed throughout nature, and in the spiral arrangement of our galaxy. 1+1=2, 2+1=3, 3+2=5, etc. The spiral whorl in a nautilis shell is one example. Geometrical symmetries that are seen throughout our universe are derived from the ratios produced by these numbers.

– We lose approximately 3 million cells per second from our bodies, which are constantly being replaced by new cells. Each cell contains approximately 100 trillion atoms. About 10 octillion atoms are in an average human, or a 1 followed by 28 zeros.

– Atoms consist primarily of energy. If one were to combine all of the proton particles that scientists say have measurable mass from every atom within all 7+ billion humans on earth, it would be about the size of a grain of rice.

John Greenleaf-Maple Poetry & Ruminations

Poetry is a gateway to discovering ourselves

Category: Poetry