Kirjahaku

This volume is dedicated by the author to two close friends, both deceased; one of its dominant themes is friendship and, related to it, remembrance and recognition. Simone Weil addresses elements of these criteria when, in her Attente de Dieu, she writes, S]i on revoit un tre tr s cher apr s une longue absence, les mots qu'on change avec lui n'impor-tent pas, mais seulement le son de sa voix qui nous assure de sa pr sence. 70] If after a long absence we see someone again - someone very dear - the words that are ex-changed with him do not matter. What matters is only the sound of his voice assuring us of his pre-sence. Perception, Remembrance, and Recognition. These provide Presence, the Presence, the healing Presence we so often need and so frequently lack. Friendship may be a "dying art," but it still remains a fundamental human need. If weak, may it be strengthened; if unknown, may it be experienced. If found, may it be deeply, deeply cherished and honored as one of the very greatest gifts we might ever receive.

These "Lines of Inquiry" mark the return of the author to verse after a lapse of 40+ years, during which time he served as a Greek Orthodox priest in four parishes across the U.S. His attempts to commit these inquiries to writing, and to frame them in something like a poetic form, are tentative utterances, meditations on life and death, expressions of a process begun at the age of 10 when his best friend died suddenly, also at the age of 10. Through the years, answers have varied. Questions have had a way of remaining the same.

Till Time Comes to an End Impressions vague and amorphous, images liquid washing one into another, colors exchanged with shapes and tones and feel, dozing I realize I want to try to write it, why I don't know, why stop to take a snap, but that it holds a bit of truth, of reality, a moment not to lose; notebook open pen in hand, and it's gone as quick as it came, it's gone like a hobo, grabbing the next train to anywhere, that was then, was there; strange to feel it come and leave so fast, like a life I guess, like a life more or less, yes, like a glance or glimpse of things receding in the distance brings; everything grows smaller till it disappears, now a part of someone else's store, for a brief while seeming to have, forever and ever, time for more; in truth no time at all for the one or the other, abandoned in a valley, each now alone, without the other traveling on or staying, till time comes to an end 2007 October 6/7

Fragments Bits and pieces - motes of dust or the stuff of both dream and reality? Floating on a bit of what I hope is a little of the two I confess a certain sense of loss a kind of bereavement This was the best I could do through a life lengthening from - but to . . .

Will there be a time when we, as in a dream, possibly a lucid dream, come upon a book of stories and, curious, we open it, feel its heft, become aware of its many, many pages, begin to read one of them, and find it and all the others are us, our life's story? - Our lives - particles and waves. The observer might see only contradiction. We don't see. We feel. Sense, with more or less clarity, the oneness, the transitions, some smooth, others not, from the bits and the fragments to the glow and the flow. We are both. Because we too are light. Images, however remote, of The Light. - The first was life . . . drawn across the sky, the moon, the earth, mine it was, the images, so quickly did they go, then gone, from sight and eye. Now . . . now it is afterlife I see with such clarity . . . hers and mine and all the beloved, the few who chose to be, and to be so close to me. Am I going, or is it they who are growing . . . small?

I gathered a little literature, late, quite late, in life, after I had begun my lines of inquiry. It should have been the reverse, I know; it was a case of time, time running out. I had to leave some small tales about those I had loved. 2012 September 11

Primitives dashed off like this with no known craftsmanship no known lineage of master-son no known technique passed on is it any wonder doubts arise as to what it is, wishes to be but fit and free to flit here and there on the odd piece of paper to hope for more empty space than that lettered and tattooed as it were with marks vaunting their despair at ever stating the Case 2013 March 2

More Than the Eye Can SeeEvery rock and every stoneEvery tree and every limbEvery bloom and blossomEvery little field mouseAnd great hippopotamusEvery little precious childBefore and after being bornAnd every boy and girlEvery man and woman grownEvery human beingIn fine, all that has beenIs or will be: Far more than you Than I can see2014 November 25Always We prefer to start things at the beginning, finish them at the end. Nothing, or almost, seems to observe that simple canon. I just found out that a fellow student, one from Massachusetts, died this October; we trekked around Europe together, student-style, in the 50's. We had lost contact many years ago. But I imagine that when he died he was in the middle of something. An exciting new project. The anticipation of a visit from his son. A TV show. Reading a letter. Remembering. Or maybe it was just the breath he was taking in, letting out. We never seem ready; always in the middle of something2014 December 1

Adam Was Asked The linearity Of the book A necessity Of a look May be May be not Of A life The same When Adam Was asked To name Everything - was not The essence The all of it Expected to make To create the Name? All Adam did Was to hear By listening To the sound Of silence Of being Being born As letters In a line In a row No pretense They could know All the stuff - Far more than they Could ever hold 2015 March 20

Story A friend found this new "translation" of a Chinese Classic. It was in contemporary American English, very modern, up-to-date, cool, soothing too. It became a companion after which my friend modeled himself, secretly. Then he heard that someone came along, someone fluent in both (classical) Chinese and (current) English, and translated it back into Chinese. He later heard that, having somehow made it into the People's Republic, not a single Chinese person could make heads nor tails of it. My friend confessed to me that he is currently at (in) a textual sea. 2016 February 27

The author continues his meditation on meaning, memory, preservation; perennial questions with which the human being who has been, willy-nilly, jarred awake is faced with. And though the answers may be slow in coming . . .

A journal in verse describing life with companion animals as well as daily visits by squirrels and birds, the less frequent appearances of lizards, frogs, ants, crickets, flies, sundry bugs, moths, butterflies and all manner of life-bearing creatures, all of whose lives, the author maintains, matter.

A second journal in verse describing life with companion animals as well as daily visits by squirrels and birds, the less frequent appearances of lizards, frogs, ants, crickets, flies, sundry bugs, moths, butterflies and all manner of life-bearing creatures, all of whose lives, the author maintains, matter.

A third journal in verse describing life with companion animals as well as daily visits by squirrels and birds, the less frequent appearances of lizards, frogs, ants, crickets, flies, sundry bugs, moths, butterflies and all manner of life-bearing creatures, all of whose lives, the author maintains, matter.

Notes, prose, verse, opinion, scattered over four months of 2016, with a brief Appendix entitled "A Treatise on Theology" in four parts, taking the compound word, theo-logy, looking at its Greek roots, and sampling the theological discourse found in "The Mystical Theology" of Dionysios the Areopagite and in some fragments from the Tao Te Ching.

Juvenilia. But, strange as it may seem, begins at the age of 66.