These are magnificently shaped poems with an impressive lightness of spirituality. Reading them is to sense a looming presence of true feelings of everyday life, depicting the beauty through nature. This is a vivid and extraordinary book that reflects a relationship between God and our lives.
Zhanna Hansen
Whether she’s describing the ocean breeze, the freshly fallen snow, or the pain we experience in a fallen world, Diane Prebula observes with great compassion and turns her prayer into poetry. She offers genuine insight into the natural world and into the hearts of the women she serves.
Sarah Price
Working with addicts in a unique recovery program is wonderfully reflected in Diane Prebula’s book Fall and Recovery. Her work spans the emotions of frustration, heartbreak, hopefulness and success. Throughout the book, lines struck me as profoundly accurate—such as the line in Selah “I want to try again—to get it right” captures the struggle of the advisor and the addict as we all try to succeed together. The heartbreak of losing a resident is captured in Outrunning the Weather. And throughout this beautiful book Ms. Prebula takes breaks to reflect on the journey. This is an excellent book for those of us who work in addiction recovery, for the addict and the family of addicts.
Jean
Lockhart,
Director of Women and Children’s ministries,
Boise
Rescue Mission
Fall and Recovery
Diane Prebula
Published by Borderline Publishing at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Diane Prebula
For
Tommy, David, and Iris
&
City Light
Ladies
Contents
Disappearance of the Nye Beach Hotel
Echoes of the Nassau Beach Hotel
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my husband, Tom, for helping me with the many computer issues that were starting to drag me down. I would also like to thank my mother for all of her encouragement and financial help.
Introduction
When speaking of poetry, the award winning poet, Stanley Kunitz, wrote as part of an introduction to his book, Passing Through, “ The craft that I admire most manifests itself not as an aggregate of linguistic or prosodic skills, but as a spiritual testimony, the sign of inviolable self consolidated against enemies within and without…”
In order to master our craft we must be diligent technicians. But poetry is so much more than a clever manipulation of language. For me, poetry is an honest rendering of my journey as a spiritual being as I relate to my creator and the world in which I move.
As human beings we all share in the joys and battles, the victories and defeats of life. We must face reality—the truth—because when we don’t, we experience consequences. God never gives up on us; all these consequences are opportunities to grow, to accept reality, to face our fears—our pain.
This book is an account of my journey. Written over the last three years, it reflects my efforts to heed the call as the New Life Program Manager at City Light Home for Women and Children with Boise Rescue Mission Ministries. Women who have fallen into the hole of addictions—drugs, alcohol, depression, anxiety, self (absorption) idolatry—and a host of mental illnesses related to abuse and addiction, arrive at our City Light home to work their recovery as they learn to turn to the Lord for their life.
We’re all in recovery; the addictions are too numerous to mention here. The bottom line is always whoever or whatever we cling to (our attachments) other than our Creator, in order to numb our immediate pain, will block our growth and cause us serious, long term trouble.
Fall and recovery fills the Bible, from Genesis through Revelation. This is just another story of one person’s journey, reflecting many falls and many recoveries.
Because God is the ultimate reality and has graciously given us free will, He never forces our hand. We are free to use our space and time in any way we choose. But if we accept His free gift of new life, we are in for a spectacular adventure—we can be all that we were created to be. When we let go of the controls, we are in the hands of the One who created us. Time is short; let us choose well.
Ocean
1.
She
finishes her drink—the pain of arrangements,
road and weather
conditions that change daily.
With early April, the possibility
of
a spring blizzard is always a risk.
And
when she travels alone
she unravels in the stress of it.
Still,
she anticipates the break
in the tough shell of her year—
to
breathe the fragrance
of the almost unreachable core.
The
weather recedes. The road clears. She steps
into the pungent mist
of the Oregon ocean air.
Lifted
by this and the sudden sun
glistening long streaks on the
water,
she settles into the tantrum screams of gulls
claiming
home where she can only visit.
2.
The
trail to the high rocks blows through the evening
with a spray of
salt and opens to the tall stands
of evergreens across the bay,
the flickering lights
of town, and the infinite ocean horizon.
Waves
fall, shedding heaps of lace
in the spill. Some race and crash the
rocks.
Some slow down
and draw back.
She
stands on a prominent rock
that watches the dark green ocean. The
moon
spills some light on her dress.
She turns and the wind
lifts her hem and hair.
Pulling
the lace of a wide tide over her shoulders,
She walks off with her
shawl and leaves
a train of fragrance from her open shell
in
the wake of a generous spill.
Disappearance of the Nye Beach Hotel and Café
Dance concerts, jazz gatherings, the Monterrey Rock Festival,
Hendrix, and four decades of performing arts
shake our senses in color-surround walls
postered in a vibrant reminder—
while the west end opens its glass doors to the Oregon ocean
and the garden deck beckons.
The old guy in the foyer at the front desk,
staged three steps up, shakes his head of long white hair
at the squawking parrot who could have flown out
from this festival of rainbow posters.
We feed on espresso, ocean air,
and the psychedelic drop into yesterday.
Splash me over this wave in colors that soak us
in a bloom of passion, infused and driven to fly—
(no gracious restraint this time…)
And that was the last time we would rock—
and tumble the waves of hippie bliss
at the Nye Beach Hotel and Café.
One year later, I stand here with my grown kids on this vacant lot—
my world ripping for the moment, like the tearing clouds that disappear fast
in this ocean sky. The tall grass, by the remains of a deck, still leans
in the wind. The water is sparking the sun—a mirage,
floating a carpet of diamonds, beyond a ghost hotel. These days
seep into my bones. We can come back, but we’re always changed.
Hallowed
Puddles and pools fill the hollows of rocks below.
Spent waves scatter through stone toes at the end stretch
of a run. Light breaks blue from thinning clouds
and opens the sky. Gulls bathe
and fan-fly rocks and waves, curving calls that ignite
with the morning sun on this final day of ocean,
pulsing our pores and washing our bones white.
As the hours empty, the birds drift and float the sky.
The sea begins to rise to Your voice in the fire
of the evening, burning the last clouds to run
like the waves and ebb into blue. How You hold us
in the hollow of Your hand as creation dances.
We Danced
Horses blew us through a run of youth; they kissed us
through the sun of summer with velvet muzzles.
We swam the river; we washed in the pools of their eyes
and draped their naked backs, hugging their necks
down canal roads as we pounded dust.
Winter came and left us running in fields of alfalfa
that waved in the scent of citrus blooming nearby.
Skipping time, only the moment mattered as the desert flowered,
the river rambled, the seasons glistened anticipation;
and we danced.
Reflection of an Idol
Summer is old enough to shed the constraints
of childhood and young enough to sail
with intrepid abandon—light and free.
In those days when we ran and flew,
we would bound beyond our thoughts.
We burned through nights like a storm
of stars and cut the order of the day to its knees
with a laser of merciless light.
Then the weight of a library of days
began dropping on our chest,
and eventually all that air escaped—
we collapsed, broken and free.
2.
When the glaze of vision changes, we begin
to see the break of June with new eyes;
branches shift in the wake of a wind,
under a heavy soaking of fresh leaves
releasing a blessing of songbirds like incense.
Filling the air with a tasseling fragrance of sound,
sparrows weave under the azure and drop by
for a brief breather. In a push of breath
clouds pile up. When we release our clutch,
the Lord will ease the weight of the day that hooked us
in a snap of attachment. Like a fleeting wall of white hush,
He reminds us to let go.
Fall and Recovery
Exhale, inhale, weather weaving through—
traveling our veins, settling our bones,
as branches shift, leaves shiver,
release and turn, suspend and…
Autumn drops like a dancer falls.
Doris Humphrey captured a glimmer
in her classic bend of choreography—
nature’s dilemma pulling us to our ground floor.
When we look up from the cellar,
redemption draws us.
When we walk the path thick with leaves,
the wind calls through empty branches
like a runaway train that bays
with finality, and prostrates our best intention.
Collapse winters our plans.
Frost stamps our confidence to breathe its last.
Snow fills our mouths and deadens rampant desire
until we lie still and see
our glimmer of sun reaching through branches
to pierce our eyes.
When the snow shrinks, we are walking
on a muddy road we never intended to travel.
Standing beside a fierce river and facing the hills,
we move without thinking, growing more certain with every step—
that this is our spring to surge.
Quickening
on the foothills and frost on my car windows.
As evening comes, light from the amber signal
brightens the gold feathered branches.
Cold descends quickly on November evenings—
a reminder that winter is approaching our heels
and will soon engulf us in a stark whisper.
But for now, this bright and brisk autumn
strikes a fresh sound in our bones, washing our senses
in a brief sweep of silence—a preview that quiets every question
and every intrusion to vanish like a mist of cold breath.
Quickened, we rest in the wake of a fragrant symphony
that has finished its exquisite praise. Morning breaks
our fast with the calls of Canadian Geese.
Looking up with gladness, we connect
to continue our call to follow.
Perfect Flight
We turn to the calling geese and our burdens lighten
as they fly their choreography by us. You allow them
to capture our attention and release the joy
of Your silence. Thoughts fall like sudden snow
evaporating on contact. Free to absorb, we watch—
our eyes as still as ponds, and our minds quiet.
You have dimmed all motion like the drop of evening
as twilight shutters to a close. The hallowed charm
of Your beauty eases our blood and bones
until we hum Your desire with the breath
of agreement. As morning breaks the quiet
soaring geese perfect their flight.
Watch
The drop of night falls like a weighted curtain.
Darkness clings like a virus and a nagging vibration
hangs in the air like musk.
Glazed and disoriented, I keep prayerful watch
from the roof until a few stars perforate the skin of sky,
exorcizing the air, restoring balance to the night.
I climb down, thankful that the infection left
like a frightened phantom. With the funk vanished,
I walk the calm of the night with gladness.
The path before me is level and clear; more stars
break through to spark. You touch me with darkness
to illuminate my intention.
New Day
I say hello; hello to the ocean I’m leaving
for now (I’ll return soon—a new day brewing).
The gulls are drifting and soaring