November 2013

you were the weaver of moments
the mender of dreams
as you walked your journey
a man without means

you were the Bishop of Salishan

you walked among the poor
sat with the outcast
you talked with gang members
the teacher who was alas

always the Bishop of Salishan

you chose a pain filled reality
a place of spiritual grace
in the midst of hunger & murder
you transcended that space

you were the Bishop of Salishan

you left in the season of changes
leaves burnished red, gold & orange
loved ones waited patiently
your work here now done

never forgotten, the Bishop of Salishan

you are still the weaver of moments
still the mender of dreams
as you now are with the angels
a healer with means

always the Bishop of Salishan

Image Taken From Morgue File

The city where I live lost one of its’ most loved advocates for the disenfranchised. He was a Lutheran Pastor who founded a mission on our Eastside and made it his life’s call to spend every day he could among the people who came to call him friend.
Pastor Ron Vignec will never be forgotten and I was most fortunate to be one of many who called him my friend.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/11/11/2885597/rev-ron-vignec-founder-of-salishaneastside.html

walnut trees growing
in Germantown, PA
as I walked beneath
their leafy boughs
another time & space

I knew how it felt
to touch their
rough tree bark &
believed I could climb
upon a branch &
share with singing lark

for she brought them
into her kitchen
to share in baking song
& made them part & parcel
to bring us all along

her memory of growing up
as she walked
beneath their shade
baking smells embracing
in Germantown, PA

My grandmother was raised in Germantown, PA and came to live on the West Coast as a teenager. Walnut trees grow in abundance there and so using them in baking became part of her tradition. There was rarely anything that did not have them in it and her coffee table always had a variety of nuts in the shell to wait for someone to crack them open.