The Paul Gruchow Foundation

"When the artist is alive in any person, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-impressive creature. Where others close the book he opens it and shows that there are still more pages to see..." Robert Henry

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REASONS FOR LIVING
 
                 Paul Gruchow
 
A great gray owl
teetering at the tip
of a young spruce
examined me yesterday
and did not fly away.
 
The moonlight shining
on the snow last night
sparkled so brightly
that the dogs begged
to be let out to bray at it.
 
The paper birches swayed
this morning in a balmy breeze,
dancing as lightly as spring,
and I felt that I myself
might become a sprightly birch.

photo by John Gregor
Reasons For Living, 2
 
Crisp, clear
morning.
Moon as big
as day.
Old snow
lies over
the land
like a
long lost
lover.
Its lithe
shadows
lick
the dawn.
 
 
Reasons For Living 3
 
Lucille says she's glad
she made it to eighty-five
because just yesterday
she learned two brand new
things about herself.
 

photo by John Gregor
Reasons For Living, 4
 
In the next life
there will be that many
fewer secrets.
What would it mean
to live as if you
understood yourself
or might be required
to acknowledge
the secrets you
only peek at every
now and then
under cover of darkness
and when you are sure
no one else is near
and even you yourself
are not paying attention
for fear of having
to admit something
preposterous
about yourself
if only to yourself?
It is not the blankness
of death that intimidates me,
but the prospect of going
anywhere without a mask.

Reasons For Living, 5
 
Whoever does not awaken
does not know sleep,
and whoever has languished
or labored
has known best its sweet peace
running like a swift stream into
some quiet pool of forgetting.
 
 
 
 
Reasons For Living, 6
 
To die of oneself is
to become as banal
as a funeral sermon.

photo by John Gregor
Reasons For Living, 7
 
What is done cannot be seen,
for the most part, or known either.
And what is done well is hardest
of all to see.
                      The work of a life
is like the work of the bluestem,
which sends up a few blades of grass
and a three-pronged florescence,
its tiny red and yellow blossoms looking
royally purple only from some distance,
its flowers and blades conspiring
to conceal the hundreds of miles
of vital roots in fertile darkness.
 
A prairie, it has been said,
is like a forest whose canopy
grows underground.
                        A life is like that
too. What it produces is buried
in the hearts of others and lies
hidden there, still alive, still working,
not in its own name, but in names
unknown, which may not call upon
or welcome or know their influence,
but which nevertheless do the work
implanted in them, and not in vain.