Musings from Restaurant Overlooking Oakland Bay
7/25/01

I sit, stilled, calmed, meditative
to the point where I jump
when the waiter asks to take my plate.

Seagulls and pigeons flit to and fro;
sailboats and yachts bob and weave,
their masts empty save for their riggings.

The boardwalk stretches the perimeter of the hotel.
Marine blues atop hulls white as expensive lace
speak to a quiet spot in my Center.

On the horizon, mountains loom dun and gray.
A steamer sits at anchor while a stiff breeze
caresses the streamers of a red, white, and blue windsock.

I am calm here, yet tired.
It is the lull before the cascade of passion
I must share with colleagues local and national,
friendly and critical.

But yet and still, the chop on the waves
Sparkles, too bright for diamonds,
but maybe like good cubic zirconia
against almost forest green waters.

I shall walk here and then sleep
a sleep untroubled, a sleep grateful
to be alive, grateful to be alive.



Above Salt Lake City, Utah
7/25/01

I sit here, a small dot in the enormity of the universe,
at 39,000 feet,
looking down at an earth-toned patchwork quilt
buttressed by gentle rounded peaks and a blue Salt Lake.

The towns and people below are but models
Placed on the infinite vastness of a landscape
made when God wanted to hear us humans exclaim,
“Wow! What beauty!”


The Strength of a Freighter, the Heart of a Tug
(Outside my window overlooking Oakland Harbor)
7/27/01

Teachers are the tugboats that push,
pull, strain against inertia,
then finally guide students,
the cargo ships of the future.

How can one stout-hearted teacher tug and nudge,
by almost imperceptible movements,
young lives toward the future?

One passion-filled lifeline is
sometimes all it takes to turn around
a freighter laden with potentialities,
to transform a student’s life forever.

Sometimes the tug must relax its lines,
sometimes to team in tandem with another.
At other times it must steam alongside,
parallel, yet close enough
to provide support or a noodge where needed.




Family Heroes

Some arrived aboard slave ships.
They worked from “can ‘til can’t,”
rising before day and falling onto
hard pallets for troubled slumber
long after the setting of the sun.

Money was in short supply,
but love was always in abundance
for family and adopted family alike.
If someone dropped in at dinner time,
a miracle meal or watered-down soup appeared.

Children were nurtured and taught the manners
that would help them make their ways
in the hard world that reality and experience would bring,
once the safety of home had been left
and the protection of parents could be no more.

Simple pleasures built one atop the other,
making a solid framework of mind memories
that would grow and twist like grapevines in the mind
as everyone sought to make a way
out of no way and to survive to smile in the sun.

No one told them the way would be easy
or that their humanity equally valued,
yet they, whose ancestors came on slave ships,
dared to work, to struggle, to raise families,
to survive in the accomplishments and memories
of those who came behind.

I marvel at their tenacity and the strength of their spirits.
2/4/99

Ancestors

Along the centuries, my ancestors have worked
and learned and taught.
Some had it easy; most did not.
Many cried, and others died while
trying to make life better for their children
and their children’s children’s children.

Today, I wonder if what I’ve done and what I’ve taught
will make any difference to those of my family
that has grown to include the world.
How many will cry because someone died
a senseless death, a sacrifice to the new slavery
that binds us to addictions and to material things?

I wonder just what the missing links in the chain
of humanity that has preceded me think
about what we think and where we go
and with whom we talk and how we obsess about
that which, in the long run, will lie in tatters before we’re debt-free.

What must these predecessors think when they see
the lack of love we show for ourselves
and for others when we practice, “Me first” and violence on a grand scale?
Do they wonder if all they endured went for naught,
or do they see a brighter day coming about which we know not?

2/4/99

Acrostic Poem

Books make up her world,
Art satisfies her need for grateful expressions.
Religious groundings never leave her, for she sees God the Good in all.
Beneath her calm exterior lies a soul that has had to learn to survive
An array of challenges and growth experiences,
Ranging from childhood economic poverty to
Adulthood’s learning how to overcome adversities by faith and work.

Determined, diligent, and duty-bound are adjectives to describe her

Personal quests for knowledge, goodness, truth, and beauty.
Always observant, she writes about her world; her word pictures
Respond to experiences both real and colored by remembrances.
Kindness was what she has had to learn to give to herself, because
She was always expected to do for others.
Little did she know that loving herself was necessary in order to
Experience all the joys that come with being a cheerful receiver.
Excellence in every endeavor is what drives her life.

2/4/99

Plaza Observation
(Outside H. D. Woodson SHS)

My eyes smart from the pollen
blown by the chill wind
that nips at my cheeks,
blows through my hair.

Jets roaring overhead
silhouette themselves against
low-hanging clouds,
portenders of possible rain.

Clusters of dandelions
dot winter’s uncut leftover grass.
Birds sing frantic love songs
and build nests in the light’s fixtures.

The gray-brown underbrush
frames trees topped in chartreuse,
tipped in burgundy-yellow buds
waiting to open on the next warm day.

Butterflies anchored in hair
whipped by April winds
sharing first one, then another
rainbow of colors to feast the eyes.

A flagless, rusty flagpole
standing naked and forlorn
in front of the gray concrete fortress
held down by the blueness of the sky.

Spring has come to the Plaza:
boots walking, dogs barking,
red dump truck rumbling along NHB;
class cutters scattering across the field;
new growth greenery
coming between the concrete cracks.

4/19/99