SamadhiMuse » Christchurch

2007-12-13

Dennis — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 08:01:14 +0000


A month ... and the silence has gathered.
The cars and the buses moving through the city
   are like a repeating film clip.
My busyness has eroded against the silence
   and I've seen the waste of time.
The name and parts of the days are getting lost
   and meaning fades away with them.
I chided Alan about being impaled by pointlessness -
   the old man's dilemma.
I just couldn't imagine a place
   where I couldn't find a passion and a purpose.
Like a child in a candy store,
   I've had my fill now and must remember
      where I was bound, if I can.

                              gallagher
                              13 Dec 2007
                              Christchurch
                              - a rainy afternoon

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

2008-01-14

Dennis — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 08:01:23 +0000


Outer-directed, I see that the world is coming apart.
Huge movements, inertia grinding, mismatched.
The news reports the beginnings and the denials of the end.
History is reforming itself slower than most can follow
   but the signs are there - the vast disassembly is begun.

Inner-directed, I stood up from watching
   the apocalyptic video,  "What a Way to Go", and walked
      to the balcony to see how far the moon's phase had advanced.
And I found there, the gray twilight clouds and a soft rain
   and I found the breeze and the moisture like a lover.
I smiled my thanks to the Beloved for this and for all my blessings,
   so many, so very many
      and I felt peace and happiness welling up in full measure.

Inner and outer - the world ends - and a man might find peace.

I am here, transient.   The world, as I know it, is the same.
   I don't know my future or the world's
      what every it will be, it will be - but love is now.

If we live or die, if it lives or dies, so be it.
   Do as you will, Beloved.
      For this moment,  I can feel your rain and treasure my blessings.

                                      gallagher
                                      14Jan07
                                      - Rainy Christchurch

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

2009-01-02 – a dream of love

Dennis — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 21:51:35 +0000


In a dream, I've just awoken and I'm musing on the day to come.
Today, we leave for Germany and then, later, Thailand.
It's early morning, and we'll be gone by five this afternoon.
My son, Chris, is there; he's three or four years of age
and being prepared for the day by his mother.
Such love and trust in his eyes.

She's explaining that by the time he gets home, we'll be gone.
You can see that he's scared but that he wants to be brave.
By now, I'm in the next room sitting on a couch and I can hear
that his mother is telling him that while we're in Thailand,
perhaps he can come and visit.

She says that we're going to tie something around his wrist
so that he can remember us and feel our love.
It's going to be a thin green twig and as I'm sitting on the couch
I'm looking at a half dozen of so of them.
I can't imagine that any of them are going to work;
they are too big and inflexible to tie around his wrist.

He's ready to go now and you can feel things are shifting.
His mother's saying it's going to be alright
and you can feel his small heart breaking as he's taken away
and as all this is happening, I'm wondering what to pack.

Now, I really awake from my dream of waking
and I am sad for that little boy and sad for myself and Sharon
as I feel my real life and my decisions gathering around me
in the early morning light.

When we love, we are each, each other's children who need love.
And we are each our own adult
obsessed with our own thoughts and desires.

Sharon and I are this for each other
and out of my fears about my mortality
and my obsessions with my own dreams
I've left her child torn of its dreams and hurt.

Its ever been the same with me;
that my dreams and obsessions are always the pain
of those that love and need me
and I ever turn restless under the limitations
that I feel love imposes
even though I am a child and need love as well.

So, here I am in New Zealand half a world from her
and living the life of a runaway ghost
surrounded by married friends
all a drift in their own stories and lives.

I am unfulfilled and she is torn and our marriage hangs by a thread.
Do I really think, still, at 61, that I don't need love
and that I am not bound to give what I want?
Do I imagine that I can begin again?

I am forever a fool in this life.

Gallagher
2Jan09

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

2010-01-11

Dennis — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:16:22 +0000


I wrote a long E-Mail to Sharon this evening.
A long and last appeal for our marriage not to end.
I poured my heart and my feelings out there
   and, indeed, it makes me sad to read what I wrote.

But what makes me sadder is that
   when I was done and reread it,
      my heart spoke to me and told me
         that she would not be able to hear me.

She pours concrete behind her
   and she cannot come back.
And, without coming back,
   there can be no deep forgivness.

I fear she has never seen as much good in me
   as I've seen in her.

11 Jan 2010
gallagher

— Copyright 1965-2010 by Dennis Gallagher —

2010-02-16 – Another cut

Dennis — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:22:09 +0000


I wonder if we know what we're losing.
Tonight, in bed, the memories and feelings began to turn and haunt me.
Tomorrow, I will have all of my personal life shipped here to New Zealand.
A sad ending, another tie broken.
And then I realized how few ties there are left and how tenuous they are.
The accounting and the computers are now all that connect us.
The house, no longer my house.
Never to sit in that meditation chair she made for me again.
To pet the cats, walk down to Paradise, admire the pond in the front yard.
All cut off and unreachable.
Never to stand and read again  in the kitchen while she prepares a meal.
To sit in the TV room and enjoy a show together.
To discuss our day.
To sleep in beds just beside each other.

All these things unraveling are tearing my heart out.
All these things that were part of a marriage until death do us part.
The end of shared experience is the hardest.
The real treasure lost.
Where we live, what we have or don't have, is so much less.
One day, the last cut will sever us.
The accounting books will be closed one day and then the ebb and flow
   of all that will be lost to me.
And the computer links that let me see our place
   will be closed as well and I will be blind and lost
      to all that was there, once mine.

These lives, these tragedies, these broken hearts are real.
It doesn't get any more real than this.
As the country and western song says,
   "This ain't no rehearsal."

I feel like I am being punished for having had a dream.
And for trying to carry us into a new life.
For listening to history and the future and heeding its whisperings.
The joy of creating something new with your partner
   was lost somewhere along the way - to this terrible place.
The marriage that was suppose to be forever
   has floundered on insecurities, distrust and anger.
Am I to blame?
Perhaps.
But then so is she; tied to her fears, her need for security,
   and her anger and lack of trust.
What does it matter who is the one?
A dream is ending and every time another part is pulled away
   I feel the greatest sadness of my life gathering.
We began so well, with such intents and promises,
   to end so very poorly.
I wonder if I can survive such heartbreak.

gallagher
17 Feb 2010 - Christchurch

2010-02-22 – How loyal I am

Dennis — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:39:13 +0000


Hours of laying on the couch
   with my thoughts turning like snakes.
Empty and aching - going over things
   again and again.

All of the ways of appealing to her again
   parading before me one by one.
And all of them now remembered to be failures -
   none of them effective before
      though each cut me to the quick with memories.

And the final words.   I walk up to them again
   and again - and I turn away.
Every time, my heart says, "There must be something
   still to be said - before this."

She told me once that I had no idea how loyal she was
   and I built my life upon it, never doubting then.
But somewhere,
   something fatal was lost.

I think it was when she decided
   that I was wrong and she was right.
Instead of seeing that we had a difference of opinion
   and that no one was right or wrong.

Loyalty was lost there.
   And I've come to see
that her loyalty only meant,
   "Until we disagree and I decide you are wrong."

I think we could have worked through
   almost anything
if we both could have seen and accepted
   the others POV as genuine.

But, so many ugly things have been said.

"I don't want your shit here - ship it."
"I don't want you to come home every six months."
"I don't trust you."
"I am so angry with you, I don't know what to do."
"I couldn't stand for you to come back this summer."

I don't know, when I read these things,
   Why I would want to be with this woman.
But when I think about saying those final words,
   I turn away again and again
      in pain and confusion.

Where is that loyalty now?
   Am I the only one who feels
      what the end of forever means?

"If, my mind says, "If".
   "It's the end", my reason replies.
"If I tried one more time", my heart says....

"You have no idea how loyal I am."

gallagher
22 Feb 2010
christchurch

2010-02-25 – Corrosion of the Soul

Dennis — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:00:46 +0000


It's a thing that corrodes the soul
   when the person you love the most in the world
has decided that you are wrong
   and unforgivable.

I sit quietly with music playing in my headphones
   on a park bench
with the willow trees swaying
   and people and their dogs running and walking by.

A sort of peace fills me
   as the wind talks to my skin
and George Winston's music fills my mind
   but I'm empty and most of me is gone.

Corroded, bleached, driven down, hammered into absence.

I think, "What am I interested in?   What's different?"
   and nothing responds.
      The one with the passions has gone.

Having the one you love most in the world
   feel this way about you
breaks the mirror in which you have seen yourself
   and felt loved.

And then there is the empty silence and your stomach.

In the sky, an enormous cloud with shafts of sunlight pouring through it
   and a bird winging its way across the tableaux
      but my stomach says to fear everything.

It is good that I'm not an insecure person
   with deep self-esteem issues
or I would have crumbled before this
   corrosion and disdain long ago.

But, it's faded me
   and crawls about in my stomach
and leaves me without ambitions
   or dreams.

25Feb10
gallagher