Recent Poetry

Stroke

Sometimes I overhear a conversation
I would have passionately
been a part of,

The inside doesn't match the
Outside, and that's an occasion for mourning.

But if I saw things clearly,
It would all be an occasion for rejoicing,
The Buddha arising and all that.
In each moment.

But even if I don't get there,
Just wanting it,
Changes everything.

Every now and then,
I overhear a conversation I would
Have passionately been a part of,
And can't be now.
And that "can't"
is part of the secret.

Raymond O'Neal (1930-1968)

My father always did things right.
But died in '68. Only 37.
But he'd had Scarlet Fever as a boy,
Which accounted for the weak heart.
He always did the right thing.
When they pulled up in the truck
At lunch hour in his little Ozark-
Mountain one-room school, and said,
"Hop on. We're going to California."
He hopped on, though I'm sure he
Left many friends behind at the one-
Room school. But he did the right thing.
Later, when, as the first of his family to
Go to high school, in Central California, he
Got a girl pregnant,
He married her, and the diagnosis called
Borderline Personality was a few years away yet.
But he did the right thing and began to settle
Into 1950s working-class normalcy.
Would he, if death hadn't claimed him young,
Have eventually accepted his children,
Who were anything but normal?
No one knows. And we have to be generous.
But he always did the right thing.



Lois Darlene Johnston O'Neal (1931-2008)

She grew up in the first house on River Road
In Ceres. They had indoor plumbing by
The end of the '30s, and she didn't have to
Bunk with her brother any more.
When she died, at 77, I still remember the
Shock of love that arose for her.
The love she'd been braced against her whole life.
For the first time she wasn't there to prevent it.
As shocking as the blue of the Dutch Iris,
I threw on her coffin.