The Spring Seed Catalog,

contains seminal

thoughts about

the kind of

human reunion,

that begins

within.

So swiftly the hours

fly away, ascending

as vanishing colors

to merge with

Gods great carousel

 in the sky.

to be profoundly

and existentially

lost.

It is a condition

explored beautifully,

with corrective suggestions,

in Paul Tillichs meditation

about salvation as

 accepting that we are accepted

in his book THE SHAKING

OF THE FOUNDATIONS.

It always bears

repeating:

(from p. 162)

... when despair destroys

all joy and courage. Sometimes

at that moment a wave of light

breaks into our darkness,

and it is as though a voice

were saying: You are accepted.

You are accepted ... by that which

is greater than you, and the name

of which you do not know.

... Do not seek for anything;

do not perform anything;

do not intend anything.

Simply accept the fact

that you are accepted.

The red, red  robins

are bob bob binagain

in Sarasota. 

Spring is singing

its sweet love song

of pure, simple being.

the heroes

of the film are left

exactly where all of us

 in fact do find ourselves

  as Sartre said:

... alone, and

 with no excuses.

Such a conclusion

is not necessarily

godless, inasmuch as

God Himself, in the Book of Job

(which inspired

and informs the movie)

discounts the possibility

and the need for

ultimate answers.

Groundhog Day on the Bay Bridge-Tunnel

It attacked at the toll booth

  My window was down,

     the attendant protected

             by latex gloves

I was not

  so defended

   and really what could I have done

     at my age?

The first long draft of warmth

  the change evident in a season

   of

     despair

  the infection immediate

Me

  powerless

    unable

      to do more than ride the railings across the bay

    certainly not to raise

       the window

There it was

            of a sudden

  the departed come home

  camellia from a lost garden

  sinews stretching under a younger man's sun

  red hair on naked skin falling

            thin blue curtains brushing

            the house shuddering with opening doors

  infants cooing on creaking swings

  rain evaporating from a hot engine's hood

  the wide, wild wonder of the ocean

            shedding the omen of winter

Some fragrant stew that was

some potent inquisitor

When at last

I replaced the glass between memory and me

I sighed a lament

  for youth

Not that it was lost

  but that the young

    should be so ignorant of what was in the air

With no capacity to resurrect moments that have not yet been

  they skim the surface of a shallow sea

It is for those with age to know

  what ledges and depths these waters conceal

And to be occasionally

  assaulted and affirmed

  by all that will not die.

-- Alex Joyner, 2011