Riverbridge Creative Arts

On the northern side of the Apple rows,
Where the orchard opens into farm fields,
A circular, rock wall now barely shows
Above the loam in places where earth yields
To memory and imagination.
Was this a cellar where old harvests went,
Still storing Echoes of conversation,
Between loadings, after many hours spent,
Light fading, and the porch across the way,
Beckoning with the promises of night — 
Moments now submerged beneath the clay: 
Not even stone survives time’s appetite. 

I stood above the wall in gentle rain,
Then I went walking on my way again.

Tobias A. Ryan
12.30.2024

Apples fall early – my son, almost 2, 
Laughing, singing, under the orchard trees, 
Gathers, in his tiny hands, the green fruit,
Runs to me, and holds me about the knees —
As I look down into his smooth, young face, 
Think of his mother, the love that made him, 
His first weeks, and the shelter of this place, 
My life cries out, and all before me swims: 
Birdsong dances — whirls — as swallows race in 
A breeze that shakes the low grass, an owl calls — 
I lift him, he reaches out to hasten
The coming bounty of our wondrous fall. 

What future hour so full, or apple-sweet, 
In paradise should we expect to greet? 

By Tobias A. Ryan
July 1, 2024

Old road, where branches swing in on the view,  
Grey house, within a clearing decades old,
Where squirrels and snakes, bats and birds, now room
With what signs of humanity still hold
In a domain where spiders, and fliers, 
Hundred-legged crawlers, all who share the dirt,
Capture and devour, come to conspire, With hares, and moles, and mice; the deer assert,
Rights to the orchard, and the yawning gate,
Cannot restrain them; outer walls split wide,
The slope pulls back, and the foundation breaks:
The forest leans in to heal the mountainside.

Above, the owls look down from nests again,
On ruins where my family once had been.

By Tobias A. Ryan
May 26, 2024

All remembering is a trick of time,
Because memory is too sensitive:
I remember you leaving for Berkeley,
You were going to learn in the sunshine, 
You were smart, determined, and so alive:
The week before you said goodbye to me,
Ships were in port, and sailors filled the streets:
“Young Navy boys,” you sighed, “Can I have one?”
Blushing, softly, you looked down at your feet. 
Could I forget how you had just begun?

So alive — and we both thought you were free; 
So alive — but you did not want to be

By Tobias A. Ryan
May 30, 2024

Deep sleep may stir to heal your memories
As vagaries long past resolve in time, 
For love may fill your rest with reveries
When soothing hours, and seasoned years, combine. 
If then you see a smiling face again, 
With soul as placid as a lake in June, 
Reclaim the promise of what might have been, 
Though you were parted before it came true. 
In slumber, ease replaces obstacles,  
Resistance is undone with mortal grace, 
For firey time, reshaping cold shackles, 
May mend the bonds that we could not erase. 

History reveals a crooked seam, 
Embedded in the entropy of dream. 

Tobias A. Ryan
December 3, 2024

Each heart has a church: mine has the forest: 
my choir and congregation are the trees; 
the rushing river, my choir’s chorus.
Each breath is sacrament; I am my priest.
Beneath the great green of the canopy,
we offer up our prayers to the sun;
the oldest souls are in my ministry
but we blessed share blessings in common.

Our creed is simple: to live by the wind;
to stand head high while rooted in the earth;
to strive to sway and bend before we break.
How will I hold these beauties in my mind, 
when other hearts would wonder at the worth 
of what they can destroy but not remake?

Tobias A. Ryan
(2006)

The stone that slips beneath your sole,
I brought from the highest mountaintop;
See below all that I stole — 
Find above what I’ve yet to crop.

I am the reason the river refills; 
I am the force that holds you close;
I gather the water from the hills;
I carry the streams to the sea below.

The ache of the climb in your legs or hands — 
The need of the wing for lift to soar — 
That’s me, that from you, strength demands, 
I am the force none may ignore.

Time can ravish your wind and skin,
Time may break your spirit within,
Time will end all you begin: 
I made time and the world spin.

Rise of the moon and fall of the sun: 
I am the master that lets you see!
Ruler of light, I yield to none 
But void and vastness bend to me!

Tobias A. Ryan
March 5, 2022

When first I climbed the hill, I found a cave
I thought was safe enough a place to hide
And live my life away from everyone — 
No sanctuary, but a vault of stone
I hated, once I found myself inside,
For its resemblance to an early grave.

When next I climbed, I found an evergreen,
With all his branches, on all sides, bent back
As in high winds, but rooted still in earth;
Fifteen feet 'round he measured at the girth,
As if to show the company he lacked
Had made him stronger in the days between.

The pace I keep now in my third ascent
Feels steadier, as I circle to climb
Breathing slowly, though I am not as sure
As when I pushed aside all barriers
Of wind, or lonely stone, from out of time,
Between me and the summit of intent.

Here I make a turn between two trees,
Or go around a place blocked by a slide — 
I take each step prefiguring a path
Will soon be buried in my aftermath,
Made real by elemental force denied
No lifetime, no matter prayer or pleas.

Above, I hope to find a wooded spring,
Where I dream I will sit, and sip, and sing.

Tobias A. Ryan
4/23/2006, 1/31/2009, 11/22/2021

1. 

Partisan of light and dark, 
How do you divide your divinity
Among your many selves? 
In a world that trhives on constancy, 
You make a virtue of variation — 
Your fidelity is following after, always returning
Coming and going to teach change. 

2. 

Representative of white and black, 
What helps you hold the pivot 
Between two visions? 
Your loftiness, ivory irridescence, 
Filled with hollow darkness, 
I look up into the night, 
Into the mystery of my own emptiness, 
Into the beauty of nothing — 
Which one of those shadows is your face? 

I took the tour,
Followed the leader into Garcia Lorca's summer home,
Amid the gardens of Granada.

I spoke softly in Spanish,
Happy to be heard and understood,
Passing slowly up the staircase 
To his writing room.

He had a large window,
And a modest desk,
High ceilings and marble floors.

I remember the smile on my face;
I remember the comfort of the room
In spite of the Spanish summer;

I remember waiting till the tour moved on,
Slipping out of my shoes,
To stand alone,
Letting the cold floor cool my feet.

When I dream of him now,
I conjure him in that calm, writing in that soothing silence.
This vision has replaced my transcendent horror
At imagining him thrown into an unmarked grave.

No high priest walked these graded walls, 
But knew a fear of God — 
Now only human wisdom calls 
To pierce the holy fog.

This vaulted temple to the sun, 
This other to the moon — 
Here the sacred is undone, 
Beneath the solar noon. 

With each great step, we dare to take
Upon ourselves a height, 
From which to top, and then to break, 
Our antecedent might.

No high priest am I in this realm, 
No wizard, and no king — 
I only stand before the cell, 
Where sacrifice would sing.