This Child and His Tree

By Qutbuddin Loren Ruh Smith

This collection of poetry and poetic essays reflects my experience of going deep into my own beingness. By following the ebb and flow of the tide of my own dissolutions and reconstructions, I have been able to access the source which has drawn me down the path I have walked, sometimes in darkness and sometimes in The Light.
This book began in December 1985, following a near death experience, and got its first impulse toward the core issues in my life in October 1986. They concerned my father, Rufus Grant Smith, his fathering, being revealed then and in the subsequent poetry. Almost exactly a year later, in October 1987, a very closely related piece came forth. Then, after a discussion with a very intuitive lady, Murshida Vera Corda, a psychological plug was pulled from both my heart and my mind and The Father Poems began to flow.
In June 1991, in a moment of enlightenment, it became clear that what I was writing about was, about myself rather than my father. There were more poems to be written about both my parents, as well as My Dialogues with Fear, but the main subject had become myself, or My Poems, which has now grown to well over two hundred poems and poetic essays.
Lory’s Tears and Laughter actually started on October 29, 1991 after I had attended a men’s group where the intention was to go deep and find a representation of our inner child...and...I found Lory...with all of our resonating tears and laughter.
This Tree and Me began on February 18,1995 with an amazing quote from The Revelation of Jesus Christ to St. John, that came through the novel The Monk Downstairs by Tim Farrington...which I highly recommend.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781463452810

Qutbuddin Loren Ruh Smith

Qutbuddin Loren Ruh Smith is a Poet and Gardener who first began writing poetry when working in aerospace and computer science. He has always been close to Nature. He was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, spent high school years in Arcata on California’s North Coast and has been living in the Foothills of the Sierra Nevada Range of Light for the last 30 years. He now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This Child & His Tree is a collection of poetry and poetic essays that reflect his experience of going deep into his own interior beingness by exploring his family tree and his place in it. They include The Father Poems about his relationship with his own father, My Poems about himself as a man, husband and father, Lory’s Tears & Laughter about discovering his inner child and This Tree & Me about the core and branches of his ancestral tree.

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© 2020 by Qutbuddin Loren Ruh Smith. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   02/03/2020

ISBN: 978-1-4634-6829-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-5282-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-5281-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011915073

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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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

NOTE: All rights to the poetry/prose or translations of others within this book belong to and are entirely their property. I make no claim upon them except that of being inspired by their ideas and the beauty of their works!

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I

THE FATHER POEMS, THE PARENT POEMS &

MY DIALOGUES WITH FEAR

Part II

MY POEMS

Part III

LORY’S TEARS & LAUGHTER

Part IV

THIS TREE & ME ITS TRUNK—ITS LEAVES

Dedication

This Child and His Tree

is dedicated to my son

Rashid Loren Adrian Smith and his family

Jade Loren Smith and her son Jareth Aidan Tipton

Grey Emeries Llewellyn Smith,

his daughter Lelia Cley Smith, and

his son Finley Stone Smith (born 01-08-20).

Acknowledgments

I wish to acknowledge those who have been my grandparents, my parents, my wives and companions, and my children. This Child and His Tree is a collection of poetry inspired by my experiences with them on this long and sometimes difficult road as we have all emerged from under the covering branches of this family tree. The first among my teachers was my mother, Laura Lockwood Smith. Her struggles were made extremely difficult by the loss of her feet when four years old, but never-the-less her indomitable Spirit carried her through life and, of course, some of Her Spirit was transmitted to her three sons: Myself, Bruce Wayne Smith and Donald Victor Smith. It was my mother’s father, my grandfather Frederick E. Lockwood, who held and guided my Spirit and was the Wise Elder in this family tree.

For my poetry and writing, the first inspiration was provided by Tranquil Calley, my wife and mother of my two sons, Loren Adrian and Kalyn David. She was my first publisher, having gathered my initial poems, typed them neatly and put them in a beautiful notebook with enough capacity that I might be inspired to fill it in the future, which I have many times over.

Bhakti Banning, my second wife of twenty seven years, was an artist in fabrics and with a camera. She was there with me as we shared many beautiful adventures midst Nature’s colorful images that appear throughout my poetry. She is the mother of Kellie M. Bliss, who became my loving daughter.

I wish to express my love and gratitude to Malika Marissa Mei who has been my Sacred Marriage partner for fifteen years. She is a gifted flower essence practitioner and intuitive healer. She has been both inspiration and back-ground for three quarters of the poetry that I have written.

Much thanks go to Christine Irving, who lived here in Nevada County, California, and was a deeply loved and appreciated fellow poet. She gave generously of her time and deep insight to edit all of the poetry in this book.

My spiritual path was brought into focus in Sufism; for that I must thank my teacher, Pir Moineddin Jablonski. He took me deeper into the wonder of Selfhood, through the use of Wasifa, the 99 Beautiful Names of God, and the teachings of his direct teacher Hazrat Sufi Amad Murad Samuel Lewis and his Sufi lineage teacher, Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan, who brought Sufism to the West.

On the Smith side of the family, in the 1800’s, there lived an ancestor named Johan Ludvig Runeberg. He was a Finnish-Swedish poet who became the Poet Laureate of Finland. His most famous work was an epic poem about the Finnish War with Russia, the poem became the Finnish National Anthem. He was born in Finland on February 5, 1804 and died on May 6, 1877 (age 73). Synchronistically, The Urs of Hazrat Inayat Khan is February 5, and I moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico on May 6th when I was age 73. I feel that I have an ancestral connection with Runeberg and that in some way he is inspiring and guiding my own poetry work.

I wish to thank everyone I mentioned above and especially Malika Marissa Mei for her editorial support.

Qutbuddin Loren Ruh Smith

Introduction

This collection of poetry and poetic essays reflects my experience of going deep into my own interior beingness. By following the ebb and flow of the tide of my own dissolutions and reconstructions, I have been able to access the Source which has drawn me down the path I have walked, sometimes in darkness and sometimes in The Light.

This book began in December 1985, following a near death experience, and got its first impulse toward the core issues in my life in October 1986. They concerned my father, Rufus Grant Smith, and his fathering, and were revealed then and in the subsequent poetry. Almost exactly a year to the moment later, in October 1987, a very closely related piece came forth. Then, after a discussion with a very intuitive Jewish Sufi Lady, Murshida Vera Corda, a psychological plug was pulled from both my heart and my mind and The Father Poems began to flow. In June 1991, in a moment of enlightenment, it became clear that what I was writing about was, far more often than not, about myself rather than my father. There were more poems to be written about both my parents, as well as My Dialogues with Fear, but the main subject had become myself, or My Poems, which has now grown to over three hundred poems and poetic essays.

Lory’s Tears and Laughter actually started on October 29, 1991 after I had attended a men’s group where the intention was to go deep and find a representation of our inner child . . . and . . . I found Lory . . . with all of our resonating tears and laughter. This Tree and Me began on February 18,1995 with an amazing quote from The Revelation of Jesus Christ to St. John, a revelation that came through the novel The Monk Downstairs by Tim Farrington . . . which I highly recommend.

This Child and His Tree is a poetic and sometimes prosaic foray into the understanding of who I am, certainly for myself but also for my family and community. My path has had some pretty hard and deep ruts, I do not deny this, and that is why it took so long to get into the study of who I am and why I did not seem to have been able to avoid those pot holes.

Robert Bly and his book Iron John, A Book About Men took me inside myself in a manner never before experienced. Followed by John Bradshaw’s TV presentation On The Family, I really reached a new understanding of myself. Bly’s legacy, The Mankind Project and its men’s support group methodology, called I-Groups (Integration Groups), has deepened my understanding of why my trek took some very nasty turns and hairpin corners when there need not have been any, or at least far fewer, had I grown up a little sooner than at the age of 60. After my seventieth birthday, I felt the burden of the family tree taken from me and I began to accept myself for my own unique failure’s and accomplishments. I am now 83 years old, having lived twice as long as my father and having now become a Great Grand Father three times.

Part I

The Father Poems

The Parent Poems

&

My Dialogues With Fear

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Mother, Father & Child

Introduction to

The Father Poems

I do not know how deep into the family tree I need

to climb, but I do know I have

not been able to do it alone.

I have now stepped into the light

the light of prayer, hope and love

from the depth of my soul,

the breadth of my heart

and the height of my mind within

the processes of a mind seeking

purification in the realms of Light,

and as that Light is shed upon the

Wounds of Generations.

God willing . . . I can heal some of those

old wounds, some of my own and

maybe even my son’s.

I will seek this personal Trinity

this strong, triangular structure of

generational continuity, to take myself

forward into a wholeness of being.

But I will be more aware this time.

I’ll not fall back into the web, the patterns,

the repetitions and rebellions of the

Wounded Child.

My shield shall be Love,

love of this being, of my entire self and

of all the beings who have lived within

the shadows of my family’s Tree of Life.

The Father Poems

6 Agape #1 Time’s death

8 October Poem #1: for Dad, 1986

11 October Poem #2: for Dad, 1987

13 Father’s Poem #3: January 1988

16 Father’s Poem #4: May 1988

17 My Parents’ Poem #1: May 4, 1988

20 Father’s Poem #5: december 17, 1988

22 Father’s Poem #6: April 10, 1990

24 Father’s Poem #7: December 29, 1990

25 My Grand Father’s Hands

26 My Father’s Hands

27 My Mother’s Hands

28 Dialogue with Fear #1

31 Dialogue with Fear #2

32 Dialogue with Fear #3

34 Father’s Poem #9: June 11, 1991

36 Father’s Poem #10: december 8, 1991

37 Father’s Poem #11: May 19, 1992

38 Father’s Poem #12: June 8, 1992

39 Father’s Poem #13: Be Here Now!

41 Father’s Poem #14: Hi Dad! Remember this one?

42 Father’s Poem #15: still Crazy? Sure!

45 Father’s Poem #17: A Letter to Grand Father

47 Father’s Poem #18: Another Letter to Grand Father

48 Dialogue with Fear #4

49 My Parents’ Poem #2: Thank You, Sharon

51 My Parents’ Poem #3: Perspectives

53 Father’s Poem #20: Well . . . Dad . . . ?

54 Father’s Poem #21: Change or be among the ‘walking dead!’

55 Father’s Poem #22: Would That You Were Here!

56 Father’s Poem #23:

57 Father’s Poem #24:

59 My Parents’ Poem #4: Mom! . . . Dad!

61 Dialogue with Fear #5

63 Father’s Poem #25: reaching to the Light . . .

64 My Parents’ Poem #6: Well, My Parents Are Gone . . .

66 My Parents’ Poem #7: Father’s, Mother’s, Mine

67 Father’s Poem #26: Muddy Path

68 Father’s Poem #27: dad! Thank You!

70 Father’s Poem #28: My Integrity’s Review

71 Dialogue with Fear #6

Agape #1 Time’s Death

In the garden, the thyme is dead!

        she said         and I thought

            When were the other times?

     The highest were with you

        You’d smile . . . .         and your eyes . . . .

            the room would disappear

            if there were others

                   they’d be gone too;

            and time died . . . and times since

        I’ve been time loose in time’s warp

        have been released in those moments

               of greatest beauty

               grandest vista         deepest sounding.

            Yes! Always when time dies

               Sound clothes me, caresses

               heightens, deepens, carries me

            through my heart to my soul

               towards oneness.

     A time before

        my sons were calling

        from so far away

beyond death

            darkness flashed

        groping, a heavy, heavy weight

            pinning me

               broke away steering wheel

            blackness washed over

        DAD! Dad!         You OK?

            Yeah! Sure!         The horse?         Dead . . . .

        Twas before your eyes . . . but time had died

               pain was brighter than light

            I stood, stepped, fell

the deep, dark well took me.

            Out of darkness, pain, but less

                       and homeward bound.

            You, in the future . . . still to illuminate

the paradox, to clear the wonder

                       of time’s dying.

            Then, later, the desert seemed empty

my city ears new to such quiet

                   were slow to open . . .

                       then time died . . . .

            The Huuu . . . .

sounding through my heart

                       through Death Valley’s bowl

               antenna for star song

                   for the paean of Angels

the star hymns re-addressed my soul

                   returned stars . . .  your eyes . . . now

                       for time had died.

            On Tathagata’s mountainside

resounding with life

                   Songs bird sung

                       bees were reed tuners

                       trees, a lace of light

                   in a silken mountain’s crotch

            sat I at my fathers side

though he’d been dead

                   some twenty years

we talked refleshed our relationship.

            Twas all in your eyes . . . .

                             when time died

and time must die

                   for one to glimpse one’s Soul

                          through your eyes . . .

October Poem #1: for Dad, 1986

     Hey! Dad! How long’s it been?

        How long’s it been since we’ve talked?

     Huh!       How long?

     And there’s more distance between us

        now, than there is time, isn’t there? Dad?

     Dad?  Can you hear me?

     We never did talk much did we? Dad?

     Oh yes! In my 40th year, on that hillside

        we reached out to one another you came

           from over there . . . I from my meditation.

     We crossed the void in mutual communication

        came to an understanding of Bruce’s needs.

     But we didn’t talk about all of it did we Dad?

        We really had never talked, had we Dad?

     I was 18 when you died. Murdered!

        We hadn’t talked! We hadn’t talked since

     I’d smashed your new teeth with

        my fist over the breakfast table because

     You were hurting mother’s wrist.

     We hadn’t talked Father to Son to Father

        in my entire life, had we Dad?

     Are you here now? Can you hear me?

        Let me tell ya what I remember, Dad!

     But, first though, let me tell ya that I LOVE ya!

     But this is what I remember: I must have been

        three or four you were ‘punishing’ mom.

     Beating her around the house. I remember

        a wall, a kitchen, dining and living rooms

        a hallway connecting bedrooms & bath.

     You were beating her up the hallway into

        the living room, into the kitchen and back.

     And this I remember: Bicycling or hitch-hiking to bars and

        the card rooms in Port Angeles,

     Arcata and Eureka, from the 4th grade into my 11th and

        12th grades, standing, waiting, drinking coke while you

        lost your paycheck and your ego.

     I remember you too: at Heart-0-the-Hills Lake,

        the Elwa River, Agate Beach, Crescent Lake . . . going to

        those and other places with you, but you not really being

        there with me.

     I don’t remember conversations. Was

        conversation difficult for you Dad? Particularly

        with your eldest son, particularly in the later years,

        my high school years?

     The year you died?

     I remember: Grandpa Smith, for the negation his

        presence generated in you. Your brother Victor was like

        that also. Victor, who feared Loren, that California cultist,

        came home to the funeral to rip off Grandpa’s estate

        which he’d already spent.

     Have you had the opportunity to meet any of my

        step-fathers, Dad? Bob? Al? Jim?

     Curious lot aren’t they? They were all a lot alike you. You

        know what I mean.

     Bruised and battered egos. Broken by brutally un-aware

        parents, and war, either directly or indirectly, like your self.

        No place to go.

     No counseling adept enough in those days, or that could be

        afforded. I know a bit about that one. When

        you’re down and out and there is no Father

        there for you . . . What do you do?

     You drank, gambled, continued down, and got

        yourself murdered.

     Yeah! I remember that relationship too . . .

     I’d just turned 18. Grandpa didn’t care enough to

        go after your killer; and frankly, at that time, I

        didn’t either. Looking back, it would have made

        no difference at all. That guy was down.

     That’s what being down, and making the decisions

        that keep you down, can do to a Man.

     Yes! That’s the reason I didn’t understand you.

        Why did you choose to stay down?

     Why were your habits any harder to break than

        those of any one else?

     Why did you continue to subscribe to your

        father’s and your brother’s oppressions.

     Tell me! It may help me to throw off

        my own yokes. My own limiting foibles.

     To set them aside and proceed with my life.

     Hey! Dad! Talk to me! It’s Time Now! For a Talk?

        Isn’t it? Hey! Dad! Dad . . . ?

October Poem #2: for Dad, 1987

Yes! There were the worst of times and there were the best. I remember the good times too. The Sol Duc Hot Springs up in the Olympics; and camping at Crescent Lake, the Elwa River, picnics and fishing, agate hunting at Agate Beach, and much later, that great hike we took into the Desolation Wilderness above Lake Tahoe in 1947 or 8. The BEAR! Remember the bear. I turned tail and ran. You said: Stop! Look! The bear is running away faster than you.

And Sandy. How beautiful that heroic dog was. How evident your pain when you had to put him down. He’d probably saved my youngest brother, Donald’s life two or three times. How, after him, there were three Sandy’s. How none ever quite measured up to the first. I went home again. To Port Angeles, Summer of 86. Saw our old houses, on West 7th and Cherry Hill. The 7th St house was in the better condition. The big old cherry tree still stood in the middle of that old orchard.

And I remember the fishing trips. And ‘smelting’, in Washington and later in California on the sand dunes of Humboldt Bay’s northern peninsula. The ‘nets’ were homemade gunny sacking, split down one side to form a scoop when attached to two poles tied together at the butt, leaving a foot or two for handles. We’d stick the poles into the surf, spreading the gunny sack wide in the surf, holding the handles rigid, the smelt would come running through the surf into the our scoop traps.

I remember: Our three homes in Arcata, in Sunny Brae best of all. In the country midst creeks and farms and the paper route. Although, that’s a loaded subject, isn’t it Dad? What did happen to the Scholarship money? Paper Boy of the State of California. Wow!

The paper route I created, morning and evening papers. From 32 customers I built it to 132 customers. From 2 to 5 news papers and Paper Boy of the State. But, not for me! For my kid brother Bruce who had better grades!

And I remember the Runeberg Lodge. The gathering of Scandihoovians, mostly Swedes, Christmas parties, Summertime picnics, and dances like the Beer Barrel Polka and the Schatiche. Remember:

        "Put your little foot, put your little foot,

                put your little foot just so."

Yes, I remember the good times too. I’ve not forgotten them. Nor will I. I just had to get the bad stuff off my chest. I hadn’t

understood how it can weigh so heavily. How you hadn’t had a Father either, at least a loving father, and

        How