These Passing Years

Dennis Lewis in 2005 in his San Francisco garden

For my 65th birthday celebration, which took place in 2005, I wrote a poem about my life and presented it, along with some of my favorite poems, to those who gathered in Dasha’s and my former home in San Francisco. My good friend David Hykes, award-winning composer, singer, harmonic chant pioneer, and meditation teacher, was there with us and sang before, during, and after the readings. David’s singing was amazingly beautiful and especially relevant to the poems I read. Click here to learn more about the evening and listen to the celebration.Some of my friends who took part in the celebration, as well as some who weren’t able to take part, have asked me for the written version of the poem. Though I have been slow in responding (and I am sorry for that), I am finally including it here for those friends, as well as for anyone else who might be interested, for whatever reasons, in learning more about my life.

To understand the beginning of this poem, it may be helpful to know that my father, Cappy Lewis, was a solo trumpet player with Woody Herman and many other bands, and that my mother and I sometimes traveled with him for his gigs until I was about five years old.

These Passing Years

Delicious impressions of
a four-year old boy waking up alone
to the mysterious smells
of the warm, perfumed wind
blowing gently through the shadows
of dancing flowers just outside
the partially open window and to
the comforting beats of big-band jazz–
and waiting in anticipation
for his mother and father
to return to the motel room
from the jazz club just across
this mysterious garden of flowers.
I knew the very next day
that it was a small garden,
and yet, somehow,
it seemed infinite that evening,
impossible to traverse with feet or senses.
Perhaps my sense of these passing years began here,
but I do not really know.

There’s much more to say, of course,
but does anyone really know the whole story?

Delicious impressions of
the many books I’ve held in my hands
through these passing years,
beginning perhaps with Uncle Wiggly,
who wiggled himself into and out of
frightening situations
with ingenious regularity,
and ending perhaps
with the last revealing page
of the as yet unfinished
manuscript of my life.
Each book, more often than not,
throwing light on the shadow play
of my hopes and fears,
helping my thoughts break their bonds,
and opening me
to new perceptions
of myself and the world.

There’s much more to say, of course,
but does anyone really know the whole story?

Delicious impressions of
my relentless urge to merge with
the unfathomable smiles, bodies, and souls
Of the wondrous women I’ve held in my arms
through these passing years,
a special few, not taken
by their own beauty and power,
helping me to understand
that the heart of the matter
is only revealed
in the silent depths
of an awakened heart.

There’s much more to say, of course,
but does anyone really know the whole story?

Delicious impressions of
unconditional love while looking
into the loving eyes of my son
through these passing years,
and gradually learning
how to look at myself afresh
through the versicolored lens
of his own expansive heart.

There’s much more to say, of course,
but does anyone really know the whole story?

Delicious impressions of
exploring who I am
and why I am here
through these passing years–
Gurdjieff, Advaita, The Tao, Headlessness–
all the wonderful teachers and teachings
compassionately guiding me toward
what they had discovered to be “the light,”
and sometimes, due to its sheer brilliance,
blinding me from the inevitability
of my own real path–
the path actually taken.

There’s much more to say, of course,
but does anyone really know the whole story?

Delicious impressions of
turning pages, smiling faces,
sexual passions and diversions,
observations and remembering,
working, playing, and enduring,
thinking, feeling, loving, fearing,
touching, tasting, and regaling,
searching, writing, teaching, learning,
smelling, singing, always exploring
the ever-expanding edges of my own desires,
creating new territories and new maps
for inner and outer travel and discovery,
and quietly, oh so quietly,
being called from some unknown place,
to simple appreciation for the great gifts
I have received through these passing years.

There’s much more to say, of course,
but does anyone really know the whole story?

Delicious impressions of
The law of attraction at work,
Of how my being has attracted my life
through these passing years.
My many so-called problems,
whether of body, mind or spirit,
often glimpsed now for what they are—
low-frequency, fragmentary energies
called into my life and
given too much attention
through a basic misunderstanding of
who I really am and what I really want.

There’s much more to say, of course,
but does anyone really know the whole story?

Delicious impressions of
the underlying oneness of the
magical dualities of time and space.
No matter what my thoughts tell me
about my experiences of this life
through these passing years,
about how beautiful or ugly,
how pleasurable or painful,
or how real or illusory
they were or are
I have faith now,
a deep, steady feeling,
that it is all good; it is all God;
it is all part of the lawful
unfolding and embrace of Great Being,
the agony and ecstasy of communion,
of learning how to be here consciously
at both the center and the periphery
of the infinitely creative
spaciousness and silence of what
is sometimes called The Source,
and which now I am sometimes blessed
to recognize as who we really are.

There’s much more to say, of course,
but does anyone really know the whole story?

And now, tonight, delicious impressions of
this spaciousness, this silence,
resonating with the uplifting vibrations
of you my friends (and of you my Love),
breathing, laughing, listening, walking,
sitting, feeling, questioning, talking,
all of us celebrating together
the greatest miracle of all:
the mysterious Nowness of these passing years,
the miraculous Loving Presence that
calls us home again and again and again.

There’s much more to say, of course,
but does anyone really know the whole story?

Copyright 2005-2009 by Dennis Lewis