Poetry from the Borderlands

August 2022
73 years 6 months

In my pretentious sophistication,
at twenty-two, I watched A Clockwork Orange.
I unraveled in ways I didn’t know existed,
but pretended otherwise.
Deeply shaken, I thought the world had shifted,
that something had died,
that something malevolent was coming.
I vomited that night.

Innocence is gone.
Age does that, a little here, a little there.
So do books and broken toys,
and those special toys spirited away
by our mothers when we weren’t looking;
the news, frustrations, and betrayals by
parents who should have loved their children
without question, without abuse.
Lest I become a resentful old man,
I must forgive them every day.

There was innocence and wonder
and imagination, then a need for comfort in an
uncomfortable world, a longing for something
of past good feelings seen through the lens
of life’s experiences, craving meaning
and connection, a Calling from the Wilderness.

At sixty-three, I entered one path
that opened into wonder, gazing
at the Milky Way or standing in awe
of nature’s primitive and beautiful places
and terrifying forces; and another
into the journey seeking the Divine,
the ultimate of the Sacred Mystery.
Walked simultaneously,
in and out of shadow and light,
with both love and suffering,
twisting, overlapping, merging together
until now, at this place, I arrived
better than I was yesterday.

~Marc A. Crowley

There is only a hair’s breadth between
the saint and the ruined righteous.

A child’s innocence lasts only a short time.
Its loss begins a lifetime of nostalgia and longing.

Watch out! There are persistent predators
that want to nibble away your purpose in life.

Now watch the grasslands wave summer into fall,
beyond the rains. What will be your greeting?

Will you stand in the grassland beckoning a new season?
Will you then set your blood on fire?

He said, Your ‘come hither’ glance led me astray.
She said, Well, if it was that easy, you cannot be my lover.

Marc A. Crowley

for the love that should have been

Many old roads,
beaten and pot-holed, I have
traveled in silence unaware.
Year by year I have slowly learned
to listen to my heartbeats.

Your wondrous touch
and heartbeat caught me off guard.
You became a mysterious map
to some curious byways.

I was asked if I feared
disclosing my vulnerabilities.
Not any more, but a friend has told me,
If you get lost, don’t ask for directions.

The Master Poet said that love
emptied of things is the greatest love.
I admit to you my greatest fear:
the loss of the work of our hearts.

You have a marvelous way of seeing.
The curious byways persist just so.
If again our lips should come together,
if our tongues soften and our eyes shimmer,
the old roads would be made smooth again,
and they would be our new way home.

~Marc A. Crowley

A Love Poem

I’ve met women who believe time
passes faster for them than for men.
I’ve met men too macho
to allow themselves to be vulnerable.
So many folks waste their humanity
in bad decisions, distorting themselves
to fit into expectations limited by naming.

Many lovers fear to journey
a sacred path into Mystery,
dreaming only of happy endings,
dreading things they do not understand.

They kiss half-heartedly,
their souls don’t rise to their lips,
unaware that love is the messenger
between the heartbeats of Heaven
and the passions of Earth.

The more we possess, the less we understand,
the less important love becomes.
We carry a greater burden, our real selves
drenched in the uselessness of lustrous things
we have dragged from one place to another.

A wise teacher told me that if I want
to soothe my broken heart and love better,
I would need to rid myself of the meaningless stuff
I have carried with me, that has sat on shelves
and in boxes and in my head for too many years.

Poet, he simply said, make it easier
for your old bones to move on.

~Marc A. Crowley

Penaleño Mountains, Southeastern Arizona

From this peak everything looks clean.
Time and our fragile memories remake landscapes
with our stories retold, sanitized of tragedies.

The towns that I knew so well then are still there.
The old photos show everything in shades of gray,
but I don’t remember which colors went to what.

I have the photographs of time’s moments preserved,
points of light that take me to a place and time
where I can stand and look around,

feeling the waves of nostalgia and longing,
wanting clarity out of the dim surroundings,
to see that one thing that will make a difference,
no longer needing to view from a high, distant place.

~Marc A. Crowley

Just north of Arcata, California

A voice emerges from the Pacific’s turbulent surf,
caressed with blue-green mist and cold wind,
stinging our cheeks, speaking to our hearts.

Walking on the edge of high tide,
a place of peace, it brings life, it takes life,
neither malevolent nor merciful,
singing to us of its ebb and flow.

What we think we know about
its depths is next to nothing.

To get to its very essence, just listen.
Its heartbreak is also our own.

~Marc A. Crowley

I am not a lunatic but madness might be a factor.
Do we wait for a savior, or bring one into existence?

Music resonates in consonance with the creator’s voice.
What isn’t transformed by fire is eaten by envy.

Many Boomers couldn’t get enough of the world;
everything opened, everything poured in, then too much.

One day, several years ago, I realized everything had changed.
Inner voices were unhinged by my confusion. Ageing does that.

Innocence has become more important as I have gotten older.
And I have wondered if idealism is another form of innocence.

Little by little, while on the road, a new voice
emerged that I came to recognize as my own;

the extraneous bits of life fell away.
There is no language for that,

only the surge of the soul
and the swelling of the heart.

~Marc A. Crowley

I know that I know nothing.
~Socrates

It’s easy to walk into this,
a swirling mist,
and remember the stories
of no words, from the beginning,
the ones no one could tell us.

It’s the realm of the Great Unknowing,
of wordlessness and silence,
where mythic truths come to us
to reside in our hearts,
notoriously and sensuously,
intangibly and mystically.

We are nearly perfect here,
remembering a world
that was the impulse of wonder
and imagination,

living from our hearts,
breathing the wilderness
where nothing is explained
but somehow known,
where fragrances are seen,
flavors are heard,
but our tears will remain salty.

~Marc A. Crowley

A painting by Wood Woolsey (1930)
Phoenix Art Museum
Phoenix, Arizona

You have had your time in the sun.
Your hands, stiffened by hard work,
are now at ease on your lap.
A cane helps you get around.
Memories are thinned and uncertain.
Are there old friends still alive?
Do you have children?
Who helps you day to day?

Your magnificent gray beard hides
the shape of your lips,
the jut of your chin;
your pants are ripped at the knees;
your boots have trod many miles;
your large, well-worn hat covers your head
to your eyebrows,
but it’s about your eyes, old man,
a weary, world view of life you can’t hide.

You have been through dust storms of all seasons.
How many miles did you ride with the herds?
followed how many roads?
pierced how many lies?
Was there one great love?
One great loss?

Whatever it is you left behind,
you know you can’t go back.
Would you even want to?
But you have wisdom no one else has.
It matters, yes, but who is there to listen,
to take heed of the lessons of an old man?

Your weariness has caught up with you.
It’s your turn to sit in the shade and rest,
to watch a world go by with some disdain,
to nurse the silence of your final years
while a plant in the yard
sprouts into new life.

~Marc A. Crowley

The child within the child within—

I have questions:
How is the sky?
How is an egg?
How is an egg a sky?

What is the eye roundabout?
But…how is round?
Just round?
Or is the eye a round sky?
Or a blue egg?
Or a planet?

Where is the all get around?
Round, round get around like that.
Rabbits and quail especially get around.
How is especially?
Does it run and leap great distances?
Walk on muddy paths in bare feet?
Is a yawn an especially?
Or a speciality?
You mean like Javelinas and Coyotes?

How is madness?
When I saw you for the first time,
reason went mad.
Where would reason go?
When are the mountains invisible?
How does faith go to cry?

What is the how of a horseless horse.
Who is a roundabout
stuck with the we of God.

~Marc A. Crowley

From: A Preface to the Universe
Unpublished MS