Posted in Poetry, tagged creative writing, gardening, modern poetry, Poetry, quiet living, Serenity on 08 Jan 2026| Leave a Comment »
this seed
on my fingertip
dark hard smooth
small as a gnat’s wing
shiny as a starling’s eye
is a kernel of hope
a dream undreamt
of warm sunshine
and cleansing rain
and to plant it
in this black loamy bed
heady with life
is to say a prayer
for food
for flowers
for beauty
for peace
Posted in Creativity, Writing, tagged atheism, atheist, creative writing, death, mortality, vignettes, Writing on 06 Dec 2025| 2 Comments »
This morning, I awoke surprised as last night, in my dream, I died, that fearful thing we were always told would mean we’d seen our last waking day. Yet here I am alive and telling my tale of how I dreamt that, after a struggle, I’d succeeded in my grand task, but failed to save myself.
I lay in a hospital bed. The room was bright, the machines beeped, but when the klaxons sounded I turned my head and saw the monitor’s lines go flat, its numbers tick down to zero. I know it was it I who watched, as I felt my conscious self hanging on for a few brief breathless moments as my candle guttered out. There was no sudden pain, no last struggle against the dark, or if there was, I was unaware as my form and I had already parted ways. I heard no celestial choirs, saw no flights of angels. What filled me as my vision faded was neither terror nor fear, not even anxiety.
I felt free.
Free. Released, unfettered, one final exhalation filled with serenity and peace, the struggle over, the grand task complete, a life, concluded. I wanted nothing after, did not pray for heaven, feared no hell. I was simply content to have loved well and done my best.
That’s it.
Love well.
Do your best.
Naught else is worth tallying.
Posted in Creativity, Poetry, tagged aging, creative writing, modern poetry, perspective, Poetry, quiet living, Serenity, vignettes, youth on 26 Nov 2025| Leave a Comment »
the boy stood there as I drove by
staring at me as if
he’d never seen my like
and of course he hadn’t
for I was a new thing
the first of my kind
to him
and I thought
oh, please, give me those eyes
those new eyes
eyes that have not yet learned
to see the world
as pigeon-holed types
sorted and rendered into
a broad-brushed tonal pastiche
driving on I prayed
let me see things
in their wondrous uniqueness
not just as
a house a fence a woman walking her dogs
but as
this house
clad in bright happy greens
partnered by a particolored sweetgum tree
brass bright on its red door
mullioned windows glinting
in shafts of the morning’s autumn light
this fence
gap-toothed and silvered with age
mottled with lichen
bent by the storms of years
a ragged highway for squirrels
racing from yard to yard
this woman
bundled in her well-worn tweed
grey hair peeking out from under a magenta cloche
breath puffing like word balloons as she talked
to the tired waddling retriever his snout misted with age
to the jaunty-stepping shepherd that looked up to ask
am I a good dog today?
let me live in this real world
let me revel in this multifarious creation
let me see life as it is
give me new eyes
again
Posted in Creativity, Poetry, tagged creative writing, haiku, modern poetry, nature, novel writing, Poetry, quiet living, Seattle, Writing on 13 Nov 2025| Leave a Comment »
rain, cold, and woodsmoke
a cottage in the deep green
homespun alchemy
Posted in Creativity, Poetry, tagged aging, creative writing, getting older, modern life, modern poetry, Poetry, quiet living, retirement, self-care, vignettes on 10 Nov 2025| Leave a Comment »
I do not recognize my hands, today,
hide-wrapped and rough,
fingers moving all as one, a unit lacking youth’s independence,
working like
a team of horses, fingers yoked in tandem,
brushing crumbs or combing hair,
reaching out
claw-like, deliberate, mechanical.
Gone is the fluidity
that typed like a piano etude,
that tested the strength of rain
fingers splayed, palm up to the lowering sky.
They seem, now, more like my father’s hands,
leathered, laced with welted scratches from thorn or cat,
thick fingers slightly curved, open,
as if holding the memories
of tools and wood and mugs and plates
and books and pens and paper
and forks and spoons
and a sweetheart’s hand.
They do not close as once they did,
so tightly that they could catch
my breath on winter days,
and when now they speak
in gesture they are
slow, brutish, leaving most
to context and implication.
And, of course, the pain they carry, that is new as well,
the constant reminder of dull aches,
the sharp-edged recriminations of grip and release.
I have always seen them, in many ways, as extensions of me,
strong and supple, quietly expressive,
nimble in deed and thought, switching with ease
from fountain pen
to computer keys,
from kitchen knife
to garden tool,
from dovetail jig
to a viola’s strings
to my true love’s hair.
This still is true, I suppose, as they and I both are
a good bit older, a dash more tired,
content to spend time in restful contemplation.
We still do all the things we used to, only
with a mindfulness that comes from
a slow paring down of life from what we need
to what we desire
to do, to feel, to create.
Perhaps I do not recognize them
because I do not know who I am,
in this time.
Perhaps they are teaching me.
Clever hands.
Let’s learn together.
Posted in Poetry, Politics, tagged creative writing, modern poetry, no kings, Poetry, resist, Trump, Writing on 23 Oct 2025| Leave a Comment »
don’t give in to the maelstrom’s song
the downward spiral toward denial
of what your bones know is righteous or wrong
don’t let the harmonies that sing in your blood
go quiet and numb, muffled and choked
by the unfeeling actions of criminal hearts
there’s so much so much this onrushing tide
of gleeful cruelty and polished-brass venality that
to think of nothing to jettison hope can seem the softer path
but love dies when hearts go silent
and despair takes root when tears dry up
numbness saves no one not others not us
so let the feelings come seek them out
lean in and swim with the building wave
shout out rise up and take the beachhead
for this is a fight we dare not lose
Posted in Poetry, tagged creative writing, modern poetry, nature, painting, Poetry, Serenity, travelogue, Writing on 09 Oct 2025| Leave a Comment »
with paper before me and
a pen in my hand
a cloud is
rising blooming billowing scudding
cumulus nimbus a thunderhead
dark foreboding airy bright
with paper before me and
a brush in my hand
a cloud is
gradients reflective limned
shadowed grey sunlit white
rounded flat-topped
with paper before me and
nothing in my hand
a cloud
is
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 