CurranPoem

Time is a deep river beyond our fragile rafts That keeps us afloat as we watch the distant Shore thinking that soon we will be there Time is a deep river invisible to us and our prayers To an unseen essence we call spirit that binds the Universe together into a mystery of which we Are mere players and also the slayer of dragons But sometimes the dragons devour us and we suffer Not knowing that if we but laugh at the demons they Will mourn and melt before human courage which They can neither slay nor destroy nor bless nor love There is a place that does not exist that is the only Place there is—the river flows into mystery taking With it our rafts, our joys, our suffering, our angels And our blessed demons into the depths of a river That has flowed deep and wide for countless suns And moons since the angels touched earth with the Spark of life on which we float our fragile rafts and All the forgotten generations of creatures before us ...

Trees were old Before humanity Was young They watch us With the silence Of saints and they Will pray for us After we are gone

I never give up….. I stumble, I fall, I fail, I hurt, I bruise, I bitch, I moan, Sometimes I even scream At the sky…but I never give up …and then I laugh

My whole life has been a struggle in A world determined to drive me crazy. I never surrendered…I will live my life. Early morning walk smiling and nodding At each broken soul I pass acknowledging that The same spark in me is the same spark in them. I buy my friend Andula breakfast At McDonald's knowing that maybe she is Jesus And maybe I am the Buddha and maybe We are all just fools taking care of each other And maybe that's the Kingdom of God and maybe It's right here, right now and we just don't get it.

To sit just after dawn Soft light— Last night’s dreams are gone Lost in things remembered From the day before dreams Deep breath— Is this breath Any different than Dream breath? I hear my soul laugh At the confusion I awake from a dream Into the real world The cup of coffee Is solid but the dream Still talks to me I listen to the dream And sip the real

Father Sun—Sister Moon Dancing in the beauty bright Turning round in beams of light That defy the dark of night Music of the blessed spheres Melodies for those who hear Poetry does what prose tries to do but never quite succeeds because it is always going somewhere.  Prose is about from here to there.  Poetry forces the mind to stop and look at what is right in front of you.  It is not about from here to there but from here to here. Prose runs.  Poetry walks.

Pragmatism—I use to think of myself as a liberal but as I got older I found myself realizing that people who call themselves liberal could be just as self-righteous and obnoxious as people who call themselves conservatives.   It was all about the “I am right—you are wrong”   game which is one of the worst games human beings can play.   If you carry it to the extreme, it is OK to kill the people you don’t like. I don’t want to play that game.   So what does that make me?   A moderate?   A centrist?   Someone sitting on the fence?   So I started to call myself a progressive.   That worked for a while but soon I realized that many progressives had not thought through how their ideas would work.   So I called myself a practical progressive…too many syllables.   I have come to think of myself as a spiritual and political “independent.”   My faith and politics are based on values, not creeds or ideologies.   I support c...