Ted Kennedy

Death has taken you
You who survived the horror of drowning
survived your high minded brothers
Noblesse Oblige
The knights of Camelot
Camelot as Jacqueline put it
Well

More than survived
You changed the nation
You enacted the dreams of your noble brothers
You turned wealth and privilege into
Work
For the poor the disenfranchised the victims of
Bigotry

From the day my father amazingly voted for
John F. Kennedy for President
To the day in my high school Latin class
When we heard murder
To the day brother Robert Kennedy was shot down
In the height of his love for and by so many
People

From those days to this
As I have learned to admire your commitment
To me as a gay man in the South
To the cause of health for every citizen
Even as death by cancer took you
You have been the ideal the good American
Statesman


Jack Miller, 8-28-'09

Elevator

Storm, Savannah
photo by Jack











Elevator

You call inviting me to
Your marsh
Riverside
We cannot bridge
Secret public
Instead across Savannah
Storm spreads
From the twelfth floor
I see steel gray
Shadows rain and lightning
Bolting
So many steeples poking
Up into these shadows
Wet aching
Like our lovemaking


Jack, Summer '09

God the Gerund

Opening of a
Wildflower
photo by Jack

God the Gerund

God is Being
God is the unfolding of a flower
God is the nurturing of nature
Spinoza -- the naturing of nature
God is the experiencing of ecstasy

Loving is God
Living seeing understanding evolving
growing dying existing in memory
Ascending rising like bread
Swallowing a rare red wine

God is diving into the deep
Awakening from sleep's delusions
The feeling and the burning with passion
Having compassion
Finally the arriving at the Beginning



Contemplating God is our realizing
Of the ideal out of the real.


--Jack 8/11/'09