There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.
— Charles Dickens

I have come into this body out of darkness,
out of the starless sea. I am not to blame
for what happened there. Those were difficult
times and I was nothing more than a thought.

The world just had faith I would eventually exist,
the way a pool of water imagines sunrise.
All night long, the waters dream about dawn.
Still I was loved; in stillness, I was loved.
In the Nightland we are all loved.
Which is why, in time, we all return.

I would not have you misunderstand.
Death is not natural, not a part of life
or an event in it. Life is life and death
is something else. We go on, but we go beyond.
So death is not something we can be ready for.
We are alive and live in the light,
and between light and its absence
there can be no compromise.

Yes, those were hard times. Everything
waiting to be born is under stress
and every thought – even those loved
beyond life, beyond time or even thinking –
is a prayer for change.
The darkness around us is deep.

And then I was, I am. Not the One I Am,
just me. Out of everything that is nothing
into everything that is. The infinite light
and this body, Being, and the others left behind.

From that moment until this and until the last
which comes at any unknown, unnamed time,
there is you. There is us and we have played
in high sunlight on the shore and in moonlight
climbing in her arc over these hills and all along
the great valleys. We have never been apart;
not separated by miles or by pain,
or even by the whole body of the world.
I wish it was that way forever, except that maybe
we’d forget the desperate rush of love.

Now I struggle even to remember the middle
of the journey of our life. I look for myself
and see trees, sometimes a man
in the crooked distance – just a speck
in a black coat, years from now.
And that man in the black coat turns,
searching, lost. I am powerless to help.

Still we have each other and these hours.
The climbing moon — bright in a night of breezes —
is sweeping in her gentle arc and singing of the sea.

Kyle Kimberlin
May 20, 2016

Note: This poem is for my Mom. I sat down in mid April to write a poem for Mother’s Day and managed to hack out the first 3 stanzas. The rest wouldn’t come. Finally, late last night, in the midst of a long binge on The Grateful Dead, it arrived. Replete with allusion to Dante and homage to Bly and Stafford, it fell from the middle distance homuncular, and with a sigh. 

The dog sniffed the bushes
lately washed by rain
and the ocean rolled
in the wind. I saw
three gulls pass over
the field, a blue kite
doing risky flips and turns,
and a thin cloud like an arrow
pointing north. I thought
north is not the heading
of intractable Time.
But then through
the cloud above the kite
a jet arched along the coast
for San Francisco.
So I thought of you.

Kyle Kimberlin

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We are of the same mind,
the same lights and breezes,
the same nights in which no one
looked up or noticed the stars
turning in the distant past.
We go in and sit and call
on love and other incantations
to keep us here
and anchored to the earth.

Kyle Kimberlin
2.24.2016

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All the old clocks are stopping
and time is draining away.
There are rats in the hedges
where the blue jays
used to play. In a dry time
the people go to funerals
to avoid loneliness.
There is music there and afterwards
coffee with sugar in paper cups.
So much can happen after a funeral;
maybe more than has happened
before. But then we all go home.
Soon will come Jesus walking
door to door, looking for someone
to raise from the dead.

Kyle Kimberlin

After a poem by Rumi.

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Is it wrong, sacrilegious,
to want this life so much,
and for the musical words
to come, like raindrops
after a long crossing of sand?
No water, not for a hundred
miles. Scorpions, pigweed
by the highway when we
finally reach the pavement
scoured by wind. And the dull
buzz of the wires overhead.

The tracks of the box turtle
cross and cross, forming
documents to prove
the loss of days and weeks.

I wish I had slept beneath
the yew for luck, for an hour,
just to dream of anything
except the escape of everything
I love, bit by bit. And the fear
of waking after nightfall,
alone in a house full of papers
and bones. Oh please
don’t leave me while I sleep.
Keep watch against shadows
and pray. And someday
I will do the same for you.

Kyle Kimberlin
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We think about death.
We sing, write, paint, and build for it.
It is all that we believe in, after all.

Death is what makes everything matter.
And finally, it’s all that we fear. But I
don’t want to think about endings tonight.

I will close my eyes in this darkened room
and remember faces, so dear and far away
and death will be nothing anymore.

Kyle Kimberlin

Creative Commons Licensed

Somewhere in the house a dark door
opens and death appears, which is silence.

We go in to pray for a thousand years alone
and to long for the voice of the sea.

I see there is today and you are here
and the sunlight and the singing birds.

Nothing beyond the house — the hissing
of snakes and the foul traffic — is worthy of us.

That dark room must be tomorrow,
and the cold rain against the glass, and the clouds.

J. Kyle Kimberlin
Draft 2
11.08.2015

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

for my mother

I know that I was born onto Earth
and that my life is in this place,
that I was born out of Heaven into
paradise, with a craving for stillness
and music that sways
like trees in a little wind.

What if I was born out of Heaven
into Heaven and somehow got lost,
drawn here because I heard you
crying and knew I would be loved?
For a moment here with you, I
will not be missed in the eternity
for which I’m bound.

When I arrive, I will find the house
well lit and a soft bed
and music in the sky.
But I will not be home.

J. Kyle Kimberlin
10.19.2015
First draft

Our heavenly Father understands our disappointment, suffering, pain, fear, and doubt. He is always there to encourage our hearts and help us understand that He’s sufficient for all of our needs. When I accepted this as an absolute truth in my life, I found that my worrying stopped.
— Charles Stanley

To My Soul

To my soul I say child hush,
you have caused enough pain.
Be still and watch the birds.
See how they disappear
at sundown, looking for home.
Or maybe they carry it with them
in ways that we humans
cannot even comprehend.

Be still and know that God Is
so we are not, and if trees
can stand for a thousand years,
you can sit for a moment,
drinking water in the shade.

My soul will only misbelieve
and long for the rhythm of waters,
how the storm comes bringing
the destruction of change.
Still, quietly, I sit here
and pray for forgiveness.

Kyle Kimberlin

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