Morning - August 30, 2008

It was a privilege to hold you as you died.
To hear the cooing of you final breaths,

Your small body laid across my chest,
Your face turned toward mine.

You were the brave one then.
The one holding my hand at death's door.

Your soul just beneath your skin.

Our Boy

“Were is he?” Were is he?”
She is waking. Sitting.
Leaning toward the edge.

But he is not on the floor.
In this room.
This house.

Our boy has fallen,
But not from this bed
Rather from the thin ledge of life.

And in the morning she’ll lie prone
Screaming on the laundry room floor.
Trying to dig a hole in the water of her grief.

My Mom

My mom is sitting at the kitchen table.
I’m looking at her, into her,
The woman who birthed me, her son.

“I see you search my eyes for
Answers I don’t have," she says.
"And it breaks my heart.”

She is right.
I find no answers there.

But there is comfort –
Pain and love. Shared loss.
And the death of my own son
Otto Charles.

Otto Charles

He died in the morning
Before the sun rose
In the arms of my wife.

I took his body still warm
Held him on my chest
Skin to skin, son to father.

An owls wing across his back
And sage along his side.

( Breathe in )

Were you watching as we wept.
As I screamed, your small body
Rising and falling on the broken
Heart beneath my ribs.

( Breathe out )

Now in the living room we keep a candle lit
And its undulating light wanders down the hall
Into our bedroom while we sleep.

I dream you ask for water
And the flickering light kisses my eyelids
Your lips touching my brow
Tender and silent.

Petracovich

Creating graphics for Petracovich is always fun because I get complete creative control and I love their music.

Ok, full disclosure: The songstress Petracovich is my wife and I'm a lucky man. But don't let that dissuade you from checking out her new blog about life, music, and the creative process.

Also, she just released a Christmas album: "Old Long Since | Winter Songs" which can be downloaded for FREE from her site: petracovich.com. For me this is right up there with Aimee Mann and Sufjan's holiday albums. For those with an artistic ear, its well worth the listen.

Created new header for the Lotus Bodywork blog. For tips on health and well being check them out: Lotus Living.

Holiday Gift Idea. . .

For the past several years we've been giving holiday gifts from Heifer International a nonprofit organization that addresses world hunger through creating sustainable agrarian systems in impoverished communities world wide. How it works: You give a sheep, cow, flock of geese, etc. to someone in your family and then that animal becomes part of a sustainable self-reliant family farm in an area of need. Its a great way to embrace the larger global community with the holiday spirit and to avoid contributing to the accumulation of stuff we don't need. Plus, its fun to give your step-mother-in-law a goat.

They're at: Heifer International

PS. If anyone wants to give a gift in the name of our son Otto who passed away this fall, we and he would be honored.

Happy Holidays everyone!!

Otto Charles

My back to the earth
And face to the stars,
I ask you where you are.
“I’m right here,” you respond.
I roll my head to the left -
Grass growing into air
Where I wish your body lay.
And when I revisit my longing to the sky,
A shooting star burns its way
Through the atmosphere,
Fiery dust and a thousand kisses
Falling upon my head.

I walk the rail hewn

I walk the rail hewn
From the timbers of my heart
Over hills and along wet valleys
Through fields of nettles and wheat.
Sorrow over grown with joy,
And joy buried beneath the miller’s stone.

I wish your course ran
Parallel with mine.
My arm around your shoulder
We would balance.

But your path has diverged
Along another boundary,
Or perhaps for you
There are no boundaries now.
And you float above, below, within.

If this is so, will you come for me?
Wrap my heart in the down beneath the feather
Steal me off this sorrowed rail.

Or are these wings, these powers
Meant for you alone?
You who held your breath
And kissed the face of God.

You who ascended the cold
Sinking in the canyons.
While I swayed atop
The splintered edge.

My hands reckless in their wanting.
And everything, everything
Bloody from the fall.

(For my son: Otto Charles - Aug. 22-30, 2008)