quote from "Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes" by William Bridges

    In fact, the transitions that punctuate many people's careers after the age of forty or forty-five are the unmarked ruins of this natural time of transition. Whether such transitions take the form of a time when everything "goes dead," a time when things keep going wrong, a time when long-successful strategies suddenly stop working, or a time when the gray fog of depression covers whatever was once bright & interesting, this natural (if often delayed) time of transition starts with an ending, a sense of loss. And after we have acknowledged the ending, the sense of loss is replaced with emptiness, meaninglessness, a feeling that all our accomplishments actually mean very little. We say (if we have the courage to talk about the experience) that our careers aren't going anywhere; we may wonder whether we've been in the wrong career all along; we may consider an early retirement, although we probably at the time lack the funds to pull it off.
    Those questions come from getting caught up in the content of our situation and from overlooking the underlying pattern. The feelings that we encounter at such a time are best understood as signs of a life passage that has been stripped of its rites and tossed aside as no longer useful. We are so distant from this sense that life has natural chapters, along with introductions marking transition, that we hardly know what we are missing. But life remembers . . .  and tries to remind us. 

White Wind Poem by Douglas Spangle (35th Anniversary of Mount St. Helens Eruption)

White Wind


Listen,
just listen.
Intolerable with fusion,
                                            the world is erupting into silence.
The wind and the ash have blasted
                                                                our town into white sleep
like Utrillo's Paris;
                                   not so much blank and barren,
                                   not so much cold
as blind and reflective.
                                            You can feel it with your fingertips.


Close your eyes
and follow the streets
where they unroll like bandages;
                                                              travel them like traffic
in the veins of last autumn's leaves,
                                                                   echo of the last cry
of the dead nestling
                                     crushed at the foot of the red cathedral.


Ash, the salt
with no savor,
falls indiscriminate as death,
crusting the eye and the nostril,
                                                           scoring a curse
on the steel of the engine armature.
                                                                  Ash torments the crevice,
tender junction of petal and sepal.
                                                                White powder twists
frail flames behind heels and wheels;

the cut rose forgotten,
                                          engraved gray with dust,
supine on the doorstep.


Close your eyes,
blink back tears,
just wait.
Wait and listen;
                              as it rasps your face to parchment
the white wind is grinning,
                                                  burning from ear to ear.


Non carpe diem,
don't seize the day:
the summer itself is a seizure;
the world and its death are so close at hand
                                                                        that they blister the skin
and the words spit like flames 
                                                        as they leap through the teeth.

photo by Carmen R. Andrews

http://oregonpoeticvoices.org/poet/379/

amphitheater of faded flower

shame in the house. shame speaking. blossoms wilting and it's not even warm, not yet. freak among freaks takes the window seat, tries not to think how his life would read. fathers & daughters arrive but pose instead of play, insisting every moment be framed. outside, a little girl in striped salmon pink twirls in circles with her arms stretched out, her palms up, a crimson colored blossom weighing one down as she turns round & round. there is a dead fly in my frame that dangles from a spider thread, also turning round & round precisely beside my day-dreaming eye. across the street, a family performs their affection for a hired eye, kneeling on the dandelioned grass before the rhododendron's amphitheater of faded flower. i take a sip of strong black tea, haunted by the knowledge of what i am no longer becoming.

lawn jugglers

if you wanted to
leave, if you had
to, needed to, flee.

lawn jugglers. candy-
colored blossoms.
the circle is full.

a young man on a scooter wearing a tangerine bulb on his head floats around the bend like a headless jesus. the neighborhood has staged a contest to provoke running. bushes shroud us where we lean forward, looking for change or sense. giving up rusts my esteem.  i suffer the curse of seeing too much, of being seen seeing and i can't seem to shutter my gaze is too cursive, swirls when it should ride the rails straight into oblivion with the rest of them. thumbed, thingful. clinking table. verdant swarms swell. eye relay. orbital bibs. i rely too much on both force & farce, trying to make work work, which i know doesn't work. dwarfed by the gleaming, steaming machinery she operates, black lashes feather her pale twin beds. outside, a man kneels on the bright green lawn, before the fuchsia amphitheater, repairing his inflatable rose. the juggling around him ceased. seeking a living conclusion, a denouement that breathes. can you do too many things alone? lap screens glass them, silica asks what's next, clicks. i watch a little girl enjoy some cake beside the reflection of her yellow plastic puppy. i notice her mother warms herself with the image of a winter tree. inside, there is a gang of half-empty water bottles that loiter on the corner of my heart. my hurt is thirsty, but has no lips to drink. the neighborhood's monk graciously smiles past, wrapped in curry robes. there is a cherry red car parked beneath an old elm tree, the shadows of its leaves shimmering on its flanks like a resting animal drinking shade. the music coils around inside my head as i ponder which failure to roommate with. a long thin shaft of darkness pierces the side of the bright green lawn.

buckman's robots are winning

ontological insecurity

consumption equals happiness is the massage people receive in our culture.

i am never so alone as when i am waiting for the bus

JESUS FUCKIN' CHRIST ARE YA GONNA STOP FOR EVERY FUCKIN' PEDESTRIAN DUDE?!!! i look up. there is a person crossing the street, neatly traversing the marshmallow stripes. crosswalks always make me think of marshmallow fluff, which i haven't had since i was a kid. there is a minivan behind an SUV. there is an older woman with a leathery face and a brown ponytail who is gesticulating behind the wheel. she is the one who shrieked. i laugh out loud and turn to look at the young woman who is also waiting. she is wearing an olive drab jacket that looks vaguely military, a coarse sooty gray skirt, red rimmed black sunglasses, and cherry red lipstick. she is leaning against the belmont's puce colored brick, her earbuds black & in. her head tilts slightly in my direction but she does not smile, she does not grin. we won't be sharing this moment. it is warm & sunny. i can see my bus just up the street and i sigh with relief, for i am never so alone as when i am waiting for the bus.