March 2020 – DJ Pasternak, Author

The Gift

The verse comes to the mind of the poet
The mystery of some bit of truth
Flowing from the mind of Truth itself
To an unworthy poet
Who has left the mind’s door ajar
To receive this gift
Tied with the bow called poetry
And given that others might know
The joy of untying the knot
To glimpse the Giver

Morning’s Gift

My eyes still heavy with the nights weight
Gazing through the pane the light crossed my path
Gently touching the side of a cedar.
And the heaviness rose leaving me weightless.

Night came a second time, I awoke in darkness Looking through the pane, the cedar was gray.
Turning the key riding past the same cedar
Light fell through a myriad of green
And the gray lifted in shades of life.

The third night passed, I awoke floating
For my mind had been touched by brightness.
A glimpse of pure beauty remained in thought
Flying past cedars bathed in rays
A glimpse of daylight in night
And the light to come, forever morning

Faith

To believe is to seek to believe
The truth just within my grasp
Yet just beyond my grip.
For it is free, this truth.
In holding it, my hand must be open
My mind willing
And my heart penetrable.
It does not stagnate
But the Builder strengthens
The believer.
For it is He we pray to know
And knowledge of Him is never complete
But ever growing as we
Seek to believe.

There is a place one cannot describe in mere words
And that is home.
Forty-nine years ago we found a sadly barren lot
Less than two acres
Two twenty somes with starry eyes and empty pockets
We imagined a chalet of wood and glass atop a shale ledge
A few wild cherry trees and baby cedars strewn here and there
No shade to shield us as we dug footings
The pieces of the place we would inhabit these many years of married life
Arrived upon a flatbed truck
It rose, a shell constructed by a master builder and one man who rode a Harley
The roof was laid, our work began
With staple gun I lined the rooms with silver insulation
My mate began and conquered every challenge
With books lent from Bloomfield library
And experience gained from his father
Married in May of seventy-one, saving for a year
And then the pain and joy of bringing dream to life
With help of family and friends
Sustained by food cooked on Aunt Mary’s Coleman stove
And ice cream cones in summer
Transported by our Willies’s jeep along with shovels, tools. and will
Clad in old clothes and young ideas
Scraping up each payment to the bank
Our wages gladly given: his for food and rent, mine for materials
In the fall of seventy-three we moved
Carrying with us a son; in the oven as my mom would say
And four years later a daughter.
We became a family, the house a home.
The years flew by and on this first day of March
As the sun rises, I am drawn to bring my coffee on the southern deck
And once again relive in the present that marvel experienced from the first
The spring coolness, the clean country air
The sun, the sounds of distant birds greeting morning
Being home.

Month: March 2020

Three poems from 2003

House and Home