Trinity

By Bradley Bates

Basic goodness means being good to yourself and others, yet we so often forget this simple truth. Too busy with the harried nature of life, we overlook quiet moments of calm in which we are given the opportunity to be kind. Those opportunities slip by unnoticed when they could be embraced and the goodness shared.

Trinity is a collection of poems meant to reinvigorate the goodness in us all. Utilizing imagery, sensory devices, and poetic techniques, Bradley Bates creates a world of good in which love and kindness are treasured virtues. It is truly an experiential book as the reader gleans what they can and applies those teachings to his or her everyday lives.

The world is a cruel place, but that is no excuse for acting with cruelty when goodness achieves so much more. As we make kindness a practiced skill, we will notice not only a change in ourselves but in others, as well, as goodness spreads. Its never too late to change the way you look at the world, so slow down and enjoy the sensation of feeling good and being good, too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781491782309

Bradley Bates

Bradley Bates lives with his wife and daughter in St. Louis, Missouri. He studied at the University of Missouri, Northern Arizona University, and Pacific University, where he earned his MFA in writing. He taught composition for ten years and is the author of Buddha Copper, Two Eyes: To Wander Like a River, One to One, and My Own Voyage.

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Copyright © 2016 Bradley Bates.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-8229-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-8230-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016901100

iUniverse rev. date: 02/23/2016

CONTENTS

We Listen

No Burnout In The Canyon

Moccasins

An Elegy On Paper

Trinity

Please Watch

Tonight

Love

Our Four-Year-Old

Keats Leans Against His Own Music

Music

Ten Medicaid Years

Sense Of Place

Let Our Daughter

Dad And I Flew To Florida

Cold Rain

Sabrina

Year One Of Sabrina Bates

Bend In The Road

The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe

I Slept Every Night In The Country

Golden Sun

If This Were A Nature Poem

Alle Tangko

Ten Thousand Responses

4023 Bilron Drive

Blood

Willow Tree In The Backyard

A Sense Of Home

The Tableau

Community

Good Boundaries

God

Fall Sunset

Pain Upon Pain

The Old Joshua Tree

Dear Madeline,

Buddha Wires

Hymn To Those Who Practice

And As It Does, So We Shall Sing

Energy Lights

Green River Earth

Universe

Today

It's Easter

Evolution

The Boundary Along Trees

Forests

Moments

The Vietnam Memorial

Flagstaff

Geography

Beauty Of The Landscape

Sense Of Place

Walt Whitman

Speak---

Those Days

Scar

Mistakes

Without Regret

Love

We Listen

Let's Be Whole

Please Let Walt Whitman

Time Passages

Memories

The Center Of Our Lives

Aware

One-Time Dream

Bright Balloon

Sun Is Prayer

Contour Of The Mind

Dial Of Life

Holidays

Christmas Time With Our Daughter

Breckinridge

Can You Plan A World Of Difference

Land Is A Winery

Oh These Glasses Upon My Face

Remembering Thanksgiving

The Last Visit

In Between

Resource

Denial

To Use What I Have

Quietly

The Last Song Of Memory

An Oasis---After Neruda

It Is Nature

China's Summer Moon

Han Shan---A Recluse

A Song Commences

Three Illustrations

Why Write?

Cold Mountain

Homage

What He Wants To Do

Han Shan's Daughter

Who May Know

Diabetes Type I

Thanksgiving In Texas

Diabetic Alert Service Dog

Our Diabetic Alert Service Dog

Before We Get A Diabetes Alert Service Dog

Diabetes

The Black Lab's At Home

Breath

Blue

Happiness

What A Diabetic Wants

The Need For A Coffeehouse

Coffee

A Two-Year-Old Service Dog

The World Trusts

And The Moon

Spring

Gentle

Wood

Traveling

A Painting, Revised ...

Seesaw

Off

Tattoos

A Bat

Marley Loves

Yang

Breath And Pottery

Mountains

Feelings

Phoenix

There Was A Line In A Poem,

Recount My Own Youth

Weather

Yang

Length Of Time

Nature

Days Of Summer

Traveling, Spring Break, And Florida

Thirty More Years

Revise Oneself

Unbelievable Moments

Drive-Through

Men Of Beauty

A Silence ...

The American Spirit

Seeing The World In Its Entirety

Photo Album

Our Season

Our Daughter Makes Us Laugh

The World---A Dream Of A Dream

Dense White Beach

The Plains

One Tear To Fall

Light

Jack Frost

Outrageous Sun

Color Blue

Flight Home

The Edge

Take Time

Bamboo Light

Secret Of The Night

WE LISTEN

sun.jpg

NO BURNOUT IN THE CANYON

Even when you think you returned to the start, the top of the inverted mountain, two mile switchbacks to go. Leg muscles ache, burn, dream a way out. The fullness can't keep you forever. Please tell where you want us to place the muscles after the hike's complete, and no one wants to hear the stories any longer. When that happens, you'll know. No burnout in the canyon. Life requires it. Evolution. Genetics. Nothing but fire and ice, pending the season. We tell it like it is. Before the sun sets, we're in the dark, hidden by tree leaves and needles over Labor Day Weekend. What can we do but hike? We must take the land back from the government and return to earth her belongings, missed since 1910, the inauguration of fire suppression.¹

How can we detour?

The asphalt leaves the roads paved

monsoon landscape breaths.

MOCCASINS

I wear moccasins.

I wear moccasins. I'm tribal.

I wear moccasins since everyone who watches

The Lone Ranger wants to be a cowboy.

I wear moccasins to promote my history.

I wear moccasins opening heart to eyes as feelings go undetected.

I wear moccasins to quiet my steps,

as spiders tremble across walls.

I wear moccasins to tell a story.

I traveled a landscape and found a meadow with my dog.

We played forts without jails and hiked back.

I wear moccasins taking control of my life in the Midwest.

I wear moccasins, thinking of my ancestors, to honor them.

I wear moccasins.

AN ELEGY ON PAPER

For Phillip Levine

Like a phoenix who returns

and keeps returning

in memory now

more so than a month

or two down the line

as what happens with our own

grandparents,

but this is a friend

who's been alive

as we've been alive at the same time,

during the same time frame,

the same time frame as flowers

frame a face and then

begin to wilt and slowly

remove themselves

from the center of the table,

to the outer edges of the kitchen,

until their faces don't glimmer

anymore. We look out and see

snow covering the ground

of any city we might live in,

and as we see the prim white

snow first falling

after the cars have had time

to dwell for a few days,

the dark dirt of tires

wears away the glow.

When we think and mourn

the loss of someone so near

to us, the ache of kinship

exists beyond family,

or is family for as long as one loves.

We think of flowers as poems growing

in botanical gardens

or gardens across the world

and see a hand caressing them

with a simple touch

and sending one down the river

catching the light

at the end of any happy day.

TRINITY

Clouds become images

of other items carefully designed

by the master of the sky: an eagle

feather, pine trees hiding their

teepees, and a full headdress

representing a different type

of trinity for tribal people who

love expression of a homeland.

To claim an image isn't the crest

of what's to