Old Welder

time is an outlaw that silently steals

what you do not miss until later

how I wish for the time before the time

before this

when sparks flew unconstrained

by convention

when shouts and language

‘was what it was’ - whatever

who could dare

 to challenge it anyway or give a damn

how poor and desperate we were

we were full up to here and couldn’t take any more

who stole the time

when clothes and convention could be 

dirty or wrinkled because they could never

be who you were inside

no they could never

make someone look up to you

without reason

who stole the time

when you could look down at your own two hands

dirty and creased before you unashamed

in fact proud because those hands told you

and you knew

that you had done a good days work

Clinker - March 7, 1995

BUSHES THAT GROW ROCKS

(Or, a little life goes a long way)

I was climbing a high red-rock column in northern Arizona when I noticed a small scrub brush that had found a home in a crack in the rock.  Always amazed at the tenacity of life, I went to look.  In its center held up by the branches was a little stone.  Perhaps a strong wind gust had picked it up and left it there.  I wondered how it was for that little plant to bear that weight.  So thinking, I gently picked up the pebble and cast it away, and continued my journey.

Near the top of my climb I found another, larger bush growing in the rock face.  I looked, and there suspended in this network of branches were not one, but two much larger stones.  Surely they could not have been blown by wind in the same manner, nor thrown by any hiker.  What was going on?  Why were there rocks suspended in these bushes?

In the beauty of the desert, things sometimes stand out in bold relief.  A person sees things.  

It came to me then.  These bushes, which began as any other plant with the tenderest of shoots, clinging to a bit of sand in a crevice.  They were pushing through and seeking light.  They had to strike roots down, but also grow a network of branches above.  Coming from below, those branches must have actually lifted and carried the rocks above then as they grew.  The bushes must be lifting the ancient stones into the air.

I remembered then:  What is considered weak in the world are often sources of great strength.  Small things add up.  Grass breaks concrete.  Water smooths stone.  And in the desert, little bushes lift rocks.  

All creation shouts it.  There is a power in small but persistent actions of love.

Duane Clinker copyright 2014

on revolutionary transcendence

The one who wishes change, must become a traveller.  Whether the journey be described as through a single mind of thought, or around the whole of our globe, or beyond the stars, is not the point.  

The revolutionary is called to a life lived consciously.  One who is on a journey to a destination cannot change that goal based on a momentary change of feeling, or wind, or even gravity’s terrain.  One may tack back and forth as if by sail, or stop at the edge of a cliff to think and look and find a way around, but the energy is for the direction of the goal.  

One may get lost, but the energy when lost must be for the finding.  One may even give up - for awhile.  But if the revolutionary call is true, it will rise again, within and without,  understanding of causes, of repentance, of renewal, and then once again, of action.  Redemption and revolution go together and are a part of the same process.  

The revolutionary goal, that magnet that pulls us through our own time, that animates our hope, is nothing less than Love working itself out in the creation process of life.

We are incomplete navigating time’s landscapes.  We are crushed by institutions of humans’ own making, and by the process of creation itself.

That is why we seek change; revolutionary change.  

We are all broken people.  We do not have all knowledge.  We have made mistakes and given ourselves at points to hate, to revenge, to inactivity, to self-absorbsion and the betrayal of creation’s Love.  Those who admit it, can see and travel better than those who can’t.  That is why - if we permit the process of Love in our lives and demand it in the deconstruction of our institutions - we can heal.  

We can learn to travel by a humble compass of Love, de-linked (at our best), from the full blindness of ego’s mirror.

copyright duaneclinker 3/5/14