This post contains a few poems I wrote over the past few months.
Let me provide some context.
I am no poet. The urge and ability to compose poems came to me quite unexpectedly during a time of intense isolation. COVID restrictions have limited the social interactions for all of us; for me and my wife they were even more intense because we lived in a senior residence. My wife’s diagnosis of a rare and aggressive cancer 2 ½ years ago made that isolation even more extreme. The demands of medical exams, scans, treatments, and then daily care taking as the disease progressed caused the world to slip away.
My only time away from my wife was a walk in a beautiful regional park. Alone on the trails, daydreaming, feeling the pulse and rhythm of my leg muscles, words would emerge in my mind. It was surprising. Being able to put the words onto a page was helpful to me as I navigated the daily uncertainly of full-time care taking. We knew what the end would be, but we had no idea when, how long, or how much physical and emotional pain we would experience.
My wife died peacefully at home with me by her side three months ago. It was a good death.
Also, a year ago, just after my wife had completed chemotherapy, we were forced to evacuate in the middle of the night as the Glass Fire approached our residence. That midnight evacuation was on the night of Kol Nidrei. The following morning, safe in my daughter’s home, we recited the ancient
Unetaneh Tokef prayer: “Who shall live, who shall die, who by fire, who by water?” These ancient words, previously considered an empty ritual, were now a dreadful reality. I knew in my bones how vulnerable and fragile I was.
As I emerge into a new stage/phase of life, I find I have a deep wish to keep death close. I don’t wish to ‘get over and move on.’ Soon after my wife’s long illness and death, my brother also received a diagnosis of cancer. After a few weeks of concern that it might be a death sentence, it was determined to be quite treatable. Since then, I call my brother every day.
I have felt that somehow my isolation of dedicated care giving for my wife over the past 3 years has prepared me to be a loving care giver for my younger brother. I have a deep sense of what I cannot control but what I can be present for and with. We are now closer and more intimate than we have even been. It was her death that opened this portal for me and him. Striking.
As I learn to live as a single person in this next phase of life, I am coming to understand that I have many selves within me. I am not a single coherent integrated personality. I have layers.
One layer is a rational analytical humanist. My pre-frontal cortex helps me control my emotions, resolve conflicts, and complete daily tasks.
Another layer is my active subconscious, expressing unresolvable paradoxes and fears, creating imaginative dreams, full of symbolic meaning.
Another layer is my physical sensual self, attuned, if I pay attention, to the rhythms, colors, intricate designs of the natural world.
The attached poems seem to come from different layers of my many layered self. As I age, Wisdom may not be attainable, but being attuned to my layered self may make each day alive. Even with death hovering, we are commanded to ‘Choose life.’
This Grief
Composed Day 5 – July 1, 2021
Experienced Day 3
— David E. Jackson
This grief is not sadness,
nor sorrow.
This grief is a force forming within me
a storm – its solidity swirling erupting from deep.
This force grows steadily into a looming wave
crashing onto my rocky abandoned shoreline
splashing into my vacant visceral spaces
releasing projectile spray that plunges into every
nerve, muscle, sinew, and synapse.
Tremors, streaming tears, throat chocking sobs
overtake my physical being
ebbs and flows unanticipated unregulated
successive waves of intensity into relief / exhaustion.
This force – its own dynamic
mocks my intentional efforts to control
or understand.
May I have the sense and strength
to let it be – let it fill and shape my being
let it take me along the path to transformation.
This grief is a blessing
my crooked path to soulful existence.
Where there is deep grief,
There was great love.
Why Did You Take Her From Me?
September 7, 2021
David E. Jackson
For hours now I had been chanting
ancient prayers and melodies.
Words – their meanings – didn’t matter much.
I don’t believe in an anthropomorphic God
but the melodies stirred me.
Sound of the Shofar
over and over again
three cycles of three notes in three rhythms
ancient calls with deep resonance
moving me focusing me
The final long blast
mesmerized me
my eyes could see
sharp beam of sound
come right at me
like a laser to
pierce my heart
it was physical – that piercing.
Words I could never imagine
my conscious cognitive self saying
emerged from deep within
formed and took shape
curled around in my brain.
“How
could you take her from me!”
“Why
did you take her from me?”
I demanded to know.
Of course,
no answer.
as I awakened to my conscious self
trembling sobbing
surprised and shaken by my demand to
a non-existent God.
Humans alone
abandoned to death and grief
demand answers
knowing
there are none.
Rising Tide and the Human
September 21, 2021
David E. Jackson
Slack tide dead tide*
thirty minutes ago
the very lowest level when
mud flats extend to the horizon.
Water in tide pools
still as glass
Human was calmed.
Now still water becomes
ripples
such a soft sound
lapping at the edge of the sand,
Human was soothed.
Mud flats
slip beneath the surface of the sea
teeming beings buried in mud are again
engulfed within their life-giving liquid.
Soon ripples become
waves
white caps even
pounding onto the beach.
A thrill vibrated through the human.
Human feels Joy.
“Come in. You’re welcome,”
He/she/they whispered.
* The moment when the tide turns and changes direction, the current ceases, and also changes direction. This moment of no current is called slack tide or dead tide. You can have a high slack when the tide reaches its maximum height or a low slack when the tide reaches its lowest height.
Glass Wildfire Evacuation
“It happened to me.”
Experienced: September 21, 2020 (Kol Nidrei Night)
Composed: October 9, 2020
– David E. Jackson
In Sonoma County CA
‘this worst year ever’
I paid close attention
to wildfires and evacuations.
In just this one year
three major wildfires
raged near me, but
never came too close.
I was very cognizant
of the real danger and destruction
but a “head in the clouds” denial
reassured me:
it wouldn’t happen to me.
This time –
it happened to me.
Late at night
after Kol Nidrei services had ended
the first warning
a loud urgent siren sound
from my phone
woke me up.
A small fire had started
to the north east
still 37 miles away
no evacuation warnings or orders
near me.
Two hours later
wildfire had jumped the highway
moving south west towards me
Should I go,
Should I wait,
should I go,
should I wait,
my wife wants to go.
I say, not yet
still secretly hoping
“It won’t be me this time.”
Time to go, I realize.
This time it’s me.
I don’t wait for the Mandatory Order.
Out into the hall
brief hushed comments with neighbors
in the hallway
anxious inquiring confused faces.
It’s dark, very dark.
Slow steady exit onto local road
full of cars bumper to bumper
crawling along away from the fire smoke ashes
drivers acknowledging other drivers
letting each other onto road from driveways
with silent gestures
relieving some anxiety
ashes visibly falling onto my windshield
like bright white snowflakes in winter.
eerie the ashes
confirmation that this time
it has happened to me.
90 minutes later
I arrive at daughter’s home
ushered into downstairs den
couch already made up for us
with sheets and pillows.
My body starts shaking,
waves of imperceptible tremors vibrations
I utter barely comprehensible
expressions of gratitude.
“You have to keep me safe,”
I say to her. “I’m old,
I don’t know if I can keep myself safe
anymore.”
Coda I
Yom Kippur the next morning.
with my daughter by my side
via Zoom on a tiny screen
we chanted:
On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed –
how many shall pass away and how many shall be born,
who shall live and who shall die,
who in good time, and who by an untimely death,
who by water and who by fire,
who by sword and who by wild beast,
who by famine and who by thirst,
who by earthquake and who by plague,
who by strangulation and who by lapidation,
who shall have rest and who wander,
who shall be at peace and who pursued,
who shall be serene and who tormented,
who shall become impoverished and who wealthy,
who shall be debased, and who exalted?
But repentance, prayer and righteousness avert the severity of the decree.
Ancient Words
once shallow ritual
now – a shattering reality.
This time it happened to me.
I am not immune.
I am old.
I am not safe.
If only it were true that
“repentance, prayer and righteousness avert the severity of the decree.”
The natural world – wildfires, floods, hurricanes, pandemics, disease, old age – do not respond to human beliefs in repentance, forgiveness, morality or justice.
But I do so wish it were true.
Coda II
Rosh Hashanah – September 6, 2021
Not Even One Year Later
I did not know it then.
How could I have ever known?
Glass Fire was
1 month
after chemotherapy.
Cancer metastasized
7 months later
My beloved wife of fifty years
9 months later – not even 1 whole year later
took her last breath, and
slipped away from this world.
As the Ancient Words proclaim:
She did not live.
She died by intractable disease
in good time
after a full life
at peace, serene.
now at rest.
I was by her side.
She reached out to hold my hand in love
from a semi-conscious state
from her deep subconscious soul being
thirty-nine hours before
she slipped away from this world
away from me.
She was loved beyond words.
Coda III
September 16, 2021
Yom Kippur morning
A full year
since
waves of imperceptible tremors
shook my body
since
I uttered barely comprehensible
expressions of gratitude.
“You have to keep me safe,”
I say to her. “I’m old,
I don’t know if I can keep myself safe
anymore.”
Now again
with my daughter by my side
via Zoom on a tiny screen
we chant the Ancient Words.
This time
my granddaughter
sits between us
listening to the Ancient Words
cuddling her mother
dozing with purring beloved
cat on her lap.
Now
this time
this day
we are safe.
May we be inscribed
In the Book of Life and Health
For one more precious year.
David has been a lifelong educator. Almost by chance, David found his passion for education and social justice. With a high lottery number and being denied conscientious objector status in the Vietnam war, he signed up to teach in an impoverished section of Brooklyn NY, Ocean-Hill Brownsville. For such service, they were giving draft deferments. Much to his surprise and that of his physician father, he loved teaching young children, and that first year became a portal into nearly 50 years in education. He was a first grade teacher, elementary school principal, Assistant Superintendent, a public school Superintendent, and Head of School for two private schools. The themes of his commitments were supporting teachers, believing all children can learn despite economic hardship or brain differences, and creating genuine diversity in predominantly white schools. If you ask him to tell you some stories, they will include both notable successes and heartbreaking failures.
As a volunteer he has worked in non-profit organizations that enable students of color seeking to be the first generation in their family to attend and graduate from college to overcome the many obstacles to that aspiration.
Phyllis, his beloved wife of 50 years, passed away a few months ago soon after they had moved into Saint Paul’s Towers. His two daughters, two sons-in-law, and four grandchildren live in Berkeley. He is a member of Temple Sinai in Oakland, CA.
You say you are not a poet. I must respectfully disagree. What a poetic tribute to your wife, to your faith and the power of love. May your memories bring you comfort.