Teak, The Poet Tree

  The Words By Teak Kilmer Circa 2008   I love the way the words are strung about the neck of my mind ─ like ladies in waiting that but moments before stood mute   “Did I hear you speak,” I seem to say. “Is it time to play?” Oh, words, oh lovely words ─ my gratitude, my dance   you made me love you and, indeed, I was born to love you thus in my heart I pledge to you forever … room and board  

  Meditation By Teak Kilmer Some day late in 2004 Mental health journaling group     Let even the words go, especially the words go Be still; be very, very still   I listened for an instant ─ to the sound of no sound but, oh, how words, how thoughts entice me   Why, how does stillness seem so lonely when surely it is where You, the All of All await my coming Home.

  In the Winter Now by Teak Kilmer     It is in the winter now When I must walk the path within Softly must I walk, so I can hear my story Slowly walk, so I may comprehend   With temperatures of degrees far too few And photons so few and so obtusely angled And I, by illness long, easily brought to chill   I am locked within with only silence and Whisperings of the ancestors to teach and comfort Guide and nudge my rocking chair   No rivers here, no birds’ songs, no breezes Telling me stories about truth, about mystery   I must rather recollect these and remember too The present, the gift most precious     And its peace that holds me dear      

  In a Nutshell A Story of One with Emotion Sickness by Teak Kilmer   I was born disturbed, oversensitive.   I was agitated, cried a lot, banged my head into the crib walls and onto the floor, and this continued through my infancy.   In fact I soon reverted into the head-banging behavior when my father always punished me whenever there was any disturbance with either of my siblings.   I never got to defend myself, and I was always sent to my room – banished until morning.   I would cry, scream and bang my head in protest into the bedroom wall until so exhausted I could do it no more, fall asleep, wake up and start over.   No one came to my rescue. To this day the left side of the back of my head is pushed in   Parenting was nonexistent to brutal.   My mother had been variously diagnosed including with paranoid schizophrenia.   By age of seven, I had lost what there had been of my mother. When at home, she was a vegetable who lived on the couch and in the bed.   She was

  Peace on Earth By Teak Kilmer   Peace on Earth, good will to men Was a slipping of the pen Peace on Earth toward men of good will Was the lesson and is so still

  How August 8, 1988 (8,8,88) Came To Yield 22 By Teak Kilmer, May 20, 2010     Minneapolis, MN, winter nineteen eighty-eight…Christmas season; Jo Anne and I had met on two-fourteen of that year at a Valentine’s Day party – twenty two years ago; it’s now twenty-ten, ten years after the millennium change, you remember – the year the world’s computers did not blow up the planet, but alas I regress.   At the Valentine party, we had but fleeting interchange, and I was still in the year of abstinence from romantic, sexual and economic co-dependence recovery type thing; but she was beautiful and played sing-a-ling piano songs, and I sang like I used to only at piano bars, only this time I could stand up at the same time. Her smile and her spirit were as bright as summer sunshine, but true to my pledge, I did not play the flirt; yet I was noticeably happier just by being near her.   Then in July of that same year, I attended A Course In Miracles spiritual retreat in Wisconsi

  HOME by Teak Kilmer, circa 1996                 You ask me why I make my home in a mountain wood   The wild rose sweetens the wind that gently strokes the cottonwood    Mariah greets me daily with the leafy hands on limbs of birches        The water falls and streams and ruffles everlasting mantras                         Salmon climb glistening stairways and                       family style, serve themselves for winter                        so black bears have Thanksgiving dinner           My lawn is mowed and trees are pruned by moose and deer            Evergreens and mountain peaks are my abundant steeples                     Squirrels and chipmunks, marmots and the rest                          nibble up the crumbs that naturally I left           Birds praise God with their melodic praying without ceasing                      and are thus rewarded with the gift of flight   I am at once at home and in awe as I, Thalas “Teak” Kilmer, re