Full Fool, Fool Full
Dinner interrupted
is food for thought.
Hunger is constructed
where meat is naught.
Sustenance savored
in gratitude
is satisfaction flavored
with attitude.
- Brenneman T. December 2, 2002
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I Heard the Green Worms' Beat, But Didn't Listen
While the wrinkle deepens,
and all skin loosens it's grip,
winding the clock,
like ratcheting time to continue,
brings me a certain comfort.
A breath away from stopping,
the pendulum continues her swinging,
planar existence.
What is, was, and will be
is pulled to continue
by the ever-dangling lead weight of time.
Unwound by me,
cycles of day and night,
spring and winter,
wet and dry continue.
No life is linear.
Measure it's length or area,
and miss it's depth and influence.
Nor is it only three dimensional.
Where then is memory,
war, joy, and perspective?
A green worm fell
from the rose.
I found him on the table, and out of context.
I threw him away.
Another curled on the table last night.
Again, almost without thought, I tossed him,
and another metamorphosis was interrupted.
This history comes to mind this morning.
My participation in a green worm's fate
is somehow unsettling.
The gray whiskers on the dog
are among a myriad of reminders.
A bell asserts brevity's dominion every hour.
Whether I eat or sleep, bring peace or death,
inhale or exhale, live or die,
rhythms shall combine
in a symphony unending.
- Brenneman T. December 3, 2002
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Bad Timing
Violence,
it knocks.
The bomb is ready,
and our leaders become
arrogantly
ticking
clocks.
- Brenneman T.
December 4, 2002
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Refreeze
To he who stares,
the sleet prepares
her an invisible sheet of 'nice.'
Melt Inflection's mood,
her cold altitude
freezes clear as crystalline ice.
- Brenneman T. December 4, 2002
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Breaking Limbs Her Own Way
Safe as rain or snow,
ice,
no weightless vapor,
pulls the high low.
Once life-giving water
has frozen into brittle molds.
Leaves and stems,
entombed in crystalline coffins.
The sun rises.
Crackling crashing melts in the warming dawn.
Dripping bones of the dead
litter the streets.
Weakness is starkly revealed in stress.
I shake the flexible eucalyptus.
It bent, and did not brake.
The river birch, spared earlier by a cold wind's breath,
has raised her squirrel's nest off the porch roof.
Water permeates good and evil.
The outside moves indoors.
I drink while inhaling.
My esophagus funnels water,
while trachea direct the air.
Yet I know
liquid has her own way,
quenching here,
then drowning there.
- Brenneman T. December 10, 2002
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Overripe
All good fruit that ages
may go bad.
Full of color, its thin skin tightens,
then shrivels, thickened, sad.
- Brenneman T. December 13, 2002
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Saint Andrew's School, Twenty-five
Years Later
My initials on the tree,
however distorted by it's growth,
are still clearly anticipated in memory.
The calls and 'V' formations of Canadian geese
over athletic fields
are no longer endangered.
The stone stairs wear along the banister side,
still there,
seems no deeper to my eye.
That December breeze
still whips through my jacket.
I face it directly, angling a shoulder toward it's rush,
as I walk again from the science building to gym.
It is today, and it is also yesterday.
My bones feel the stretch.
Ten aquariums full of frogs and crayfish,
the wrestling room,
the ways of hard learned lessons seemed softened by time.
Smelly burgundy mats,
and the same pull out wooden bleachers
echo the pounding feet of a 'pen'.
Stones,
and the textures of many intricately carved,
stained woods
may never change.
Nor do messy room smells,
and art.
Seeing again,
all of the challenge of youth and want,
so well directed toward learning,
causes me to hunger.
An intriguing banquet of books and teachers,
of personalities and passions inspire me.
I struggled here once, but not in vain.
The legacy is an appreciation of what has real value.
Gold actions, words, and diamond characters remain.
True family is not captured in a picture.
People do change, and the small school allows me the perspective to understand.
In that sense,
I thank God I may never graduate.
The painted turtle, larger now,
slips back into Noxontown Pond.
The depths of meaning,
coloring my experience in pastels past,
are today vibrant and bold.
My heart is full of gratitude.
The good grass grows a long, fresh green,
and all Saint Andrew's gifts seem ever more fruitful.
- Brenneman T. December 18, 2002
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Heavy Heart
The smallest resentment
wields great weight.
All hope is bent
when trapped in hate.
- Brenneman T. December 19, 2002
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Red Footsteps
Red boot is filled with leg.
All war can think to do;
pick up the heel,
let loose dead foot,
and fill the steps with you.
- Brenneman T. December 20, 2002
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In Her Cage
A bird of paradise
calls to me.
and as she sings,
I am set free.
- Brenneman T. December 21, 2002
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Tying Tomatoes
Discipline slips
like loosely tied tomatoes.
As I grow and bear fruit
I need more self-support
to hold me up.
I don't need
the heavy strands of fundamentalism
that strangle change and perspective,
but the thin string
will no longer hold me high.
Strange,
for good or evil,
on this earth I am
both the plant and farmer.
Does the fish know it is in water,
or the bird discern its medium of air?
To the root,
pushing through dirt
is birth, love, and purpose.
I see in all the colors of me.
Age has allowed perspective,
but little has been done
by understanding alone.
Balancing is a higher way
than forcing or filling.
At some point
the bucket of time
is strained.
If it breaks,
the delicious and delicate are lost.
In water, air, and earth
the slow and fast,
the large and small,
all find their singular truth.
Life is more than me.
- Brenneman T. December 21, 2002
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Baptized by Reality
Imbued with an attractive modest, yet holy humanity,
her old soul is seasoned with a confident, yet quiet spiritual calm.
Uniquely adapted through experience, paradoxically imperfect and complete,
her virtue grows ever more inclusive toward one simple loving wholeness.
Beyond the much-maligned dangers of intense self-awareness,
her appropriately respected ego encourages in all a full spectrum of emotions.
Without neglecting the leaven of perspective and humor,
perceive her wet, shivering, or smiling and shining warmly.
Baptized by reality, her ripened soul balances well,
living fully the now, yet within an enlightened historical context.
Time is to her a friend. Gentle hands and kind words are always more than enough
to redirect even the strongest neurotic or violent urges in herself or others.
Irrespective of all plenty or poverty,
the free grace of gratitude raises all from secrecy and shame to glory.
Tomorrow's world of unresolved conflict is only as imminent
as the gift of her understanding, never absent, is today overlooked.
- Brenneman T. December 24, 2002
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Got Spirit?
The gift is free, unexpected,
and always waiting to be opened.
I may never understand most things,
nor my doubt readily bow to belief,
but I shall taste the cream of life
in the residue my growth has left
upon my upper lip.
My experience of love
is beyond dissection.
- Brenneman T. December 25, 2002
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Dear Patron
Thank you! In consideration of your generous gift,
we will publish your name on a list of our angel donors.
(Enclosed you'll find another envelope.
We hope you will give us even more money.)
- Brenneman T. December 26, 2002
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All Nature and a Tree Will Again be Free
A stately willow oak's branch
ties strongly to it's trunk.
Above my fragile head,
it stretches boldly outward.
No word from me can weaken or support it.
No wishing can alter the brilliance of it's turning leaves.
But my saw has real teeth,
just as ice has a true, yet soundless weight.
I think "How well my mind can direct the saw,
and plan against the armies of ice!"
The time shall come when my tender nerve is damaged,
but I will not yet be altogether dead.
When my last thought passes,
movement will no longer be the servant of the mind.
My eye will see the image of the leaf,
then stop processing. The limb will follow its own, or another's plan.
Gravity will ultimately direct the mind of every man.
When the skull lays silent upon the earth, all nature and a tree will again be
free.
- Brenneman T. December 26, 2002
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The Good Sibling
A difficult word is not needed.
Let us be simple, understood by all.
Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the US
are all one family; God's children of different ages.
We speak various languages,
yet we all find pleasure in our play.
The youngest child does not speak eloquently,
and tumbles through all boundaries.
The older child is more developed,
and so is given more responsibility.
The baby cries, and the toddler falls,
but the good sibling is there with help and understanding.
- Brenneman T. December 27, 2002
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