Lincoln Log

 

From: Chuck Darling

September 17, 2025

.

Strange events.

Seven Years ago (nearly exactly)

I was sleeping outside St. Stephen's

Roman Catholic Church, on Pennsylvania 

Avenue, nine blocks from the White House.

 

It was a rainy night, and I had a clear plastic

sheet over my blankets, to ward off the rain.

 

I must have gone to sleep around Seven,

and I woke up after Ten pm to see this

amazing image.

 

The folds of the tarp had formed an image

of Lincoln, sleeping next to me.

 

The church has unusual stained glass windows around the Baptismal Font

area, at the rear of the church, near the front doors. 

 

I puzzled over the abstract windows

for weeks.  What was it saying...?

 

St Stephens was extensively rebuilt

just before JFK...

When I was six, in 1st grade, we heard the news report of JFK on the radio, as it happened.

My dad died 77 days later.

I knew, because Nana and Aunt Ceil cried the same way...

 

 

 

From: Chuck Darling Date: September , 2019 [5779]

 

 

Upon the feast of Stephen

Twas brillig round about

in stippled tooled relations

the moonbeams danced around

this lore of bushy squirrels

so comical and yet

within the mixed up jurors

each kangaroo's a vet

for every kiwi fruition

tuition is reversed

the state of parted feathers

advisers nearly curse

yet we are called to bless them

no matter what their part

the racous crows at sun up

awake us with a start

the civil reveal nothing

and empty are their hearts

 

Change imperceptible

Seasons turning

stapled to the calendar...

Thirty-One becomes Five

Blazing Solar Heat

suddenly shading

to thin

Charcoal gray

of a pre-dawn

September morning

 

          Copyright Chuck Darling

          September 5, 2019

          Public Domain

 

Each year north of

the central belt

the molecules of Hydrogen

and Oxygen vault skyward

in a mysty timeless dance

above the salted sea so burdened 

by the chlorides and the sodium

almost two pounds per cubic foot

below the rivers and the streams

that flow enlightened

'bove the briny deep

whose mile of darkness 

circling round the lands where

birds sit in the trees whose 

leaves are wrinkled by the heat

of time and sun and violet

til the dancers in the wind

call home the risen blossomed

greens that feed the ocean

wide and deep

 

          Copyright Chuck Darling

          September 5, 2019

          Public Domain

 

After: September Midnight - Sara Teasdale

 and

Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith - Mary Oliver

 

[Miriam's wanted a Dream...]

 

Miriam's Wednesday

in conjunction with 

persons unmentioned

yet considered contemptable

enprompted 'Yagatta'

 

Well, no I don't.

Yagottit? Yagottit? Good.

 

Be that as it may

I choose to explain.

 

One day I dreamed

of my senior Italian Professor,

perhaps two decades after

my last 'Poesia del Novecento',

seated upon a chaise lounge,

in a sunny field,

with a characteristic small cigar

in one hand, and a cold drink 

in another.

 

He smiled peacefully at me,

and confided:

 

'You...

are on an entirely 

different level.

 

          Copyright Chuck Darling

          September 4, 2019

          Public Domain

 

 

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