Posts Tagged ‘personal’

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Dusty Boxes

July 6, 2012

Dusty Boxes

Unopened
Under the dust
Several van line stickers
Boxes packed
But unopened
Full of text books
Just sitting
For years
In how many basements?
Through all the moves
Unopened
 
Fanning the pages of each book
Preparing for recycle
Nothing between the pages
But each page filled
Filled with bewildering information
Equations – endless equations
Diagrams and graphs
None of it intelligible
The name on each book is mine
But the contents
No longer mine
 
Can that knowledge be retrieved?
Of course
One book at a time
One page at a time
Hours of lectures per chapter
Many more hours
Homework
Spread over five years
I could once again own
What’s in those dusty boxes
Now opened
 
But why revisit
All that led to now?
That which nourished
My mind and spirit
Prepared me for work
Fed and clothed my family
Led to now
And most importantly
The fruits of that labor
Many years ago
Remain a part of who I am today
 

© 2012 Thomas W. Cummins

 

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Posted in Personal, Poetry | 3 Comments »

I continue to hope

July 1, 2012

Fear, hatred, and bigotry. A palpable presence in our civil and political discourse. The coded language, positions taken, and policies subverted abound. Nevertheless, come Wednesday I will put up our flag and continue to hope.

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Posted in Personal, politics, Social Justice | 1 Comment »

Sabbatical – Unplugged

May 16, 2012

I’m heading off on a bit of a sabbatical – an “unplugged” sabbatical. The little one-room cabin has no phone, no internet, no cable, no Direct TV. If the antenna can’t pick it up, we don’t watch. Satellite radio keeps us informed.

A Caribou Coffee  in town has Wi-Fi. A 28 mile round trip doesn’t sound like much, but it’s enough to limit checking email to once or twice per week. Even when I’m going into town for something else, I forget to grab my laptop. That is becoming unplugged, on sabbatical.

The little place by the lake has lots of physical labor involved to rouse it from its long winter’s nap. The dock is on the front lawn, the boat is in town, the screen house is in a pile in the bunk house. Leaves from last October are everywhere.

After a few days, things look like this:

 

 

 

But I do try to wrap up “work” around 1:00 each day, and the rest of the day is for reading, writing, fishing, sitting on the dock with a glass of wine or Scotch while watching loons and eagles in the late afternoon.

My library is being packed: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, T.S. Eliot’s Collected Poems, Anne Porter’s Living Things, Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth, Franz Pfeiffer’s Works of Meister Eckhart. And, of course, writing materials including the slowly growing manuscript of my book.

As I rake, fish, read, or just relax, I carry with me the hundreds of men I have spoken with at the prisons, and who remain behind locked steel doors and would, to the man, so love to be doing what I’m doing. But I return to them refreshed for which we both benefit.

1500 mile round trip always asks for safe travel.

 

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Posted in Nature, Personal | 2 Comments »

A Patch of Light

March 31, 2012
 
 
A Patch of Light
 
A work day
Arkansas, hot, humid
That office building, quiet
Each World War II era corner, quiet
An advance of towering pines, halted
By a peaceful expanse of lawn
 
Many beyond naming had sat in my office
In the late 70s one day
Just me
Sitting
Discouraged, unhappy about something
Or frustrated
 
My eye caught
What was it?
By the desk … a movement on the floor
A square of light, sunlight
Leaf shadows danced
In an unheard breeze
 
Movement
That patch of light filled, alive
A surplus of meaning
Its little space filled, my heart filled
With listening!
Something was being announced
 
There was beyond my work,
Beyond that moment,
Beyond my attitude, grace
Grace telling me
Julian of Norwich reminding me
‘All will be well’
 
© 2012 Thomas W. Cummins

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A Gateway Lullaby

March 20, 2012
A Gateway Lullaby
 
Sometimes it is barely audible
But it is always there
A distant hum, a hum with a pulse
As it pulls itself out of the Meramec River valley
 
Every night as I lie down
I can hear its beat
Year-round the sound is there
It’s there for a long, long time
Not just passing by … lingering
 
Being lulled to sleep by diesels
Sudden memories of years ago
My aunt’s house in St. Paul
A train yard nearby
Switch engines shunting about
Occasionally a lonely leonine roar from Como Zoo
Drifting in on coal-scented breezes
 
Transportation on both sides of the family
Maternal trains, paternal planes
Sounds from iron horses
Steady, peaceful
Roars from steel birds
Fleeting and frantic
One old and romantic
The other exciting, exotic
 
But for now
Steel rails
Crisscrossing this Gateway to the West
Carry in the darkness
A lullaby
 
© 2012 Thomas W. Cummins

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Standing there long enough …

March 11, 2012

At dawn on this daylight savings Sunday morning, it was so quiet outside. I came around the corner of the garage and headed down the driveway. Both papers were already there, of course, since I got up at least an hour later than usual following an evening of bridge.

As I approached the street, something drew my eyes upward away from my objective, my only objective, of retrieving the New York Times and the Post-Dispatch. The sky was incredible: a  gold orange-ish pink accented with brilliant, sharp horizontal slashes of light, the sun wanting to emerge from the bright yellow spot stuck behind a tree across the street. I found myself just standing there.

Standing there long enough, mentally released from my task, the calls of early morning birds  spoke softly yet failed to disturb the stillness.

Standing there long enough, my eye caught  movement in a rosy-grey layer of clouds, a fog too high to interfere with the sunrise event.

Standing there long enough, my skin announced a slight, cool breeze. Announced because I had been ignoring the gentle caress until I allowed myself a moment of solitude.

What drew my eyes upward? Why did I decide to stand at the end of the drive? Seeing, hearing, feeling. Is there something which all too infrequently says, “Hey, stop and be still.” Or is it not infrequent? Is that call always there?

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Posted in Spirituality, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

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