Part 1
REFLECTIONS


AN AUTUMN NOT FORGOTTEN

Feathered souls fly southward, seeking gentler rain.
             Naked sun children wax their victory boards and stow them fondly.
                         Children in sweatshirts bed down for a last pine-scented night.
                                      Morning finds them again prisoners of slate and hardwood.
                                                   The city says good-bye to summer sun.

Golden hue and call lingers longer in the hills of San Pedro.
             Sea wind rustles emerald grass and honey hair, gently.
                         Fog peaks about the shaggy cliffs, shyly.
                                      Rain falls on Spanish tile, softly.
                                                   A sleep town welcomes Indian Autumn.

A stranger wanders sleepy streets, seeking gentler rain.
             Naked lovers steal softly into borrowed beds.
                         Life grasps at stolen hours, and longer shadows.
                                      Rain falls, fog peaks, and He simply watches.
                                                   A gentler world welcomes winter.

Long Beach, California
Summer 1970




THE HEART IS INDEED A LONELY HUNTER


The Heart Is Indeed A Lonely Hunter
But how does that translate in a world full of so many of them?
What coin in the realm?
And what glory, even for the extroverted and bloodied?
And for those to whom each day is a soul on the auction block?
With whom does the priest celebrate after midnight Mass?
My flock is well this night,
And my God, still safe in Heaven.
If this be service, then why, on nights like this,
Do I feel so much like a high mountain shepherd,
Bereft of all real company, save his faithful collie?

Rusty Miller
Christmas Night 2001




EDEN REMEMBERED

Once a millennium,
             with the suddenness of pearling on snowfields,
                         there steals into our midst,
                                      a creature truly rare.

A tiny fragile fawn of a child
             so lovely she trembles,
             so shy she runs from falling leaves,
                         so filled with wonder she evokes the Divine.

Such a creature is, I am certain, a gift from God;
             a reminder that despite Cain and Babel,
                         Gomorra and the Great Flood,
                                      He loves us, still.

Desperately,
             and with grace.




STARDUST AND DREAMS

What I would give for a world of stardust and dreams,
             tethered nightmares and galactic slipstreams.
Of Love sought by instinct and loyalties green,
             what I would give for a world of stardust and dreams.

What I would give for a world of sadness and rain,
             chill memories and truth brought to blame.
Of love sought by needing and loyalties strained,
             what I would give for a world of sadness and rain.

What I would give for a world of lyric and song,
             late night cafes and Dylan gone wrong.
Of love sought by compass and loyalties long,
             what I would give for a world of lyric and song.

What I would give for a world of deer park and blue,
             dewy fresh dawns and fried eggs to chew.
Of love sought by woodsmoke and loyalties true,
             what I would give for a world of deer park and blue.

What I would give for a world of peace and of crown,
             plowshares beat blunt and swords rusting brown.
Of love sought for love and loyalty round,
             what I would give for a world of peace and of crown.

Measure for measure, and for too long denied,
             this is the life for which He surely once died.
Of love sought for all and by all sorely tried,
             let Humility rein and the Cosmos abide.

McMinnville, Oregon
January 1986

TO WHITE ROCK
A Love Song


I crossed over today and watched the sun set on Boundary Bay.

Dusk came gently to White Rock;
             children walking home from school in the gathering twilight,
             housewives doing the odd bit of last minute supper shopping,
             old men leaning on gnarled walking sticks,
             Irish setters frolicking in forests
                         beneath flights of southbound geese.
                                      The hills were a-twinkle with homecoming.

There is a tautness to this land and a gentleness to its people.
They have not forgotten notched timber, frozen flesh pump handles,
             or the crispness of egg-gathering at dawn.

They are a red-faced and sturdy lot, a race which remembers sod and fen,
             the Bogside and Derry, Dunkirk and Coventry,
                         and the banshee skirl of the Highlanders call to clan.

They are shipwrights and railroad workers, fishermen and provincial officials,
             Mounties and merchants, Methodist and Moslems,
                         and they are as old as the Druids, the Celts, the Gaels,
                                      the Angles, the Saxons, the Normans, the Britons,
                                                   the Vikings and the teeming refuse
                                                               of the five continents which once flew
the Union Jack.

Proud without the defiance which profanes and the conceit which conquers,
             beside them, it is the land which is young,
                         and beneath the wisdom of their compassionate callouses,
                                      it may remain so.

It is an inspirational land, theirs, and a rich one;
             like America under Jesus,
                         and Eden under Abel.

If Mecca ever again assumes vestal form,
             the pilgrimage will be made here.

                                      July 1, 1979
                                      White Rock, British Columbia

HITCH-HIKING'S NOT A REAL FUN WAY TO TRAVEL

America was settled by wanderlust, some will tell you;
             perpetual pioneers pushing the road before them;
                         perfecting the packing and elevating farewells to an art form;
                                      while all the while, building towns which reduce Zen
                                                   to a peddler's equation.

Freedom is motion, some will tell you;
             Steinbeck and the fruit bums; Walt Whitman's autumn leaves;
                         Lewis and Clark's Sacajawea; and let's not forget Jim Bridger,
                                      Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan and Babe, the Big Blue Ox;
                                                   Custer and Sitting Bull and General Crook;
                                                               leaving Weyerhaeuser and Earth First
to mangle the bloody remains.

Now there are no earthly frontiers, some will tell you;
             we look instead to the Zodiac and embark on yet another new age,
                         propelled by the same unresolved contradictions
                                      which plague any road tramp too honest for effective                                                                                        introspection,
                                                   and lacking enough presumption for the attempt.
                                                               We yet weave the romance and rationalize the                                                                              colonialism,
claiming to be lonely, when we're
                                                                                               actually only rude.
We net the dolphin and
                                                                                                                     worship ET.

Somewhere, in the midst of it all, there is something quite endearing;
             like the birth of a shark or the cavorting of a baby cobra.
                         It will take, however, an invincibly older species than ours
                                      to consider us more than lethally cute,
                                                   or to contain us,
                                                               as we come of age in the cosmos.

December 12, 1983,
Sacramento, California
April 12, 1991
Seattle, Washington





ORPHAN GENERATION

Recent history weighs heavily;
             we are entering the Age of the Orphan.
If we are not very careful, our children will have lineage,
             but no link.

The lakes, the rivers, the seas, the plains, valleys and mountains,
             the rain and the air we breathe;
                                      when these are gone, we will be gone as well.

To the universe, it would be but another failed experiment;
             the stars have seen many and there are no tears in the cosmos;
                         only patience and an infinity of worlds.
We are chaotic stewards of one of them.
             One of those struggling experiments is us.

Now is not the time for hedonistic self-immolation;
             the Neroes of our species are trite; the Caligulas
                         hardly unprecedented.
Must we continue to build such fragile rationale,
             and defend them with a ferocity worthy of motherhood?

God did not say, "Conquer."
             She said, "Care."

The planet was Hers first, after all,
             and finding us wanting as tenants,
                         She's still perfectly capable of serving an eviction notice.

Ask Eve...or Noah's wife.

McMinnville, Oregon
October 31, 1984