Four Poems — distributed 3-20-1991

Bill distributed these four poems on a flier in March of 1991. His introductions are in above each.

Dear friends,

Poetry has been good for me lately. This first day of spring seems right for collecting a few and sharing them with some of you. I owe some of you written copies of one or another of these. Others of you I simply share these with as time and circumstances (including our April trip East) permit.

Peace/love, Bill

(Asilomar, by the sea, 12-9-90, with friend Jon).

All engulfing song of surf,
all encompassing, sequined sky -
my ears and eyes applaud
as my soul
heaves
sigh
after sigh
after
deep and wide
sigh.

(On my mail route, 2-4-91, after a lovely, clumsy moment shared with a beautiful human being, one of my postal patrons)

How long do we have to say anything?
How long do we have to wonder
 if these words or those words
 are right or wrong?
How long do we have to discover
 there may be no right,
 no wrong?
How long do we have to embrace
 silence?
How long do we have to discover
 there may be all the time we need?
How long do we have
to wonder
how long we have?

(On Mt. Tamalpais, March 4th, 1991, early in the morning in a wild storm, by myself, near a cabin called “Peace in the Woods” where I was sharing a weekend with friends Jon, Bill and Frank)

March forth,
dance on
and sign your song.

March forth
dance on,
the journey's long.

March forth,
dance on
and as you do,

remember, friend,
somewhere,
I'm marching,
dancing,
singing, too.

(First Unitarian Church of Berkeley, 2-24-91, during and after the 8:30 am Meditation Service, as later published and illustrated in the News Bulletin of the church)

Two chairs
by the "In Memoriam" wall,
in dialogue,
in relationship.

No persons present,
but what presence
of spirit
of souls
of silence

as the phoenix
takes wing
between the songs
of the windblown branches and leaves
of the deeply rooted
many trees
of life.

Retirement and Unretirement (An April 1st Tale) 1990

I retired April 1st [1990].

For years I planned to begin retirement with a walking bridge between the world of work and a world beyond work. I would push a mail cart from San Francisco to the United Nations in support of peace and the U.N., from April 25 to October 24. But on April 26, at Martin Luther King, Jr., Park in Berkeley, under the city’s U.N. flag, I announced that I would not walk.

The doubts and fears about a solo walk which I had tried to push aside had finally overcome the energy of my dream, hopes and preparations. I became depressed and distressingly suicidal. For about two weeks I stewed in my own juices, ashamed, disappointed in myself and wanting to die.

Years ago my older brother had killed himself in his late twenties. I knew how hard that was on family and friends. That knowledge, my deep belief in the preceiousness of life, support from famly and close friends, and some crisis thereapy led me to loking for some way out of what felt like a self-made trap.

When I had announced the cancellation of the walk, our postmaster said something about the people on my route would like me back. Now I decided to find out whether there was a way to cancel my as yet incomplete retirment process. There was. I went for it.

June 9 I went back to work on my old route through a process part bureaucratic, part very human and part miraculous. I am still depressed with varing ups and downs. I am glad to be alive and back on my “appointed rounds”. Acceptance and affirmation from postal workers and patrons have been helpful factors for which I am grateful. I have no dates, calendars nor slogans for any second retirement. One day at a time sounds good.

I am in theapy and counseling seeking healing and understanding. Instead of walking “from sea to shining sea” I am on our inner peace pilgrimage across a personal continent of questions and cofusion, perhaps a pilgrimage from me to shining me.

Possible moral to this tale: Don’t put all your retirement legs behind one cart.

Bill Trampleasure