three leaves

these last days of autumn

shimmer down to something
close to the moment before
sleep, when the world outside
contracts into darkness and
the ether of dreams comes
drifting

out a dining room window
of our simple maine farmhouse
a red maple stands with half his leaves
still blazing, still clinging
to branch, while two thousand miles
away they eulogize my uncle

who was my father's best
friend, chumming together in a
small maine town in the 1950s and
who married my father's sister,
thus becoming family, and who,
like that indomitable maple, let fly
a thousand brilliant souls each year

there is a launching in a death
a love in a passing on
a joy in a giving forward
a strength in a receiving
an awakening in a faith
a salt in a sweat of real toil

i look at my shedding maple
while a northeastern rain tamps
down a landscape that has become
a watercolor painting while on
the radio simon and garfunkel
carol about bookends

i love jack's youngest boy
like a brother, more than i
loved jack i suppose
but only because i knew the boy
more than i knew the father;
we were chums of a different
age while our fathers looked on

a physical relationship
made fallow by the circumstance
of distance but a love and
kindredness bonded by a conjuring
unknown to either; our affection
a hit-or-miss lesson found in the
mysteries of tornadoes and falling stars

jack left maine years ago, took
his wife and their children across
the wide world, to build bridges
between men and god; to sing of
a savior to whom he devoted his
life; to pray; to prostrate himself

there is distance in time
and in space but not
in blood, so this poet calls
across the separating miles
while he stands at the trunk
of his dripping maple to
ponder the fallen at his feet

to find three leaves in
communion among a thousand
in a placid congregation.
how my eyes fell on these three
is a question for the interpreter of
fortuity; all i care about is
that i am here, awake

jack was an orphaned irish baby
from boston who came to maine
in youth and who played baseball
and basketball and ran track with
my father - that's history
i've seen all the black-and-whites

two men hatched in poverty
but rich in something else,
something made of the iron
of will and fortitude of soul;
how they both bled from their
flesh and cried from it to
no one but their own hearts

there is nothing more
eloquent about the men
of that generation than how
their graciousness in maturity
was informed by the tribulations
in their youth

i believe in the lesson there,
i'm attracted to the value of
their constructs: how, brick
by brick, they fashioned a life
for their families in the form
of a thousand selfless decisions

my brother daniel and his siblings,
progeny of the felled man,
is living my foremost fear
as they now are witness to the
coming of an age in which
the foundation of their lives
has been smashed

i took a picture of the three
leaves at the base of the tree because,
of all those countless gifts,
these three measured the most
and blazed most brilliantly
and came to rest in a certain
embrace at the feet of their
beloved giver

all great good men
stand for something
larger than themselves by
the exquisiteness of
their humility. the
shadow they cast is thrown across
time and space, no impediment

and while his generosity was spread
and spread wide, his gift of fatherly
charity coursed through his limbs
and infused into the hearts of all
those receivers, i believe
it lingers most in the
blood of his children to whom i
bow as i do to these
three leaves