New Shoes

Wearing new shoes,
Hoping for a good foot day.

Closing Gates

I take care to close the pasture gate securely;
It keeps the sheep in and the pigs and dogs out.
Each day, I loop the wire over the two ends
And double check, give it a shake, look back and see
If it is fastened.
It’s my responsibility.
You never know, you know?
I may be the last one through for some time
It may be the last time I am through.
Who knows when the last time will be?
The last time you see your children
The last time you catch a snowflake on your tongue?
I didn’t use to think this way
About the small and ordinary
Along the course
The daily actions that are now my ritual and sacrament
I do them for you and for me
As we add to the whole.

 

 

The Moment

Who put us on our way?
Who or what
And when was the moment
In a cavalcade of time and days
That we took that first unknown
Decisive, or hesitant perilous step
Determining our direction?
Was it across a well paved life
Or the slippery slope of pain
And why did we continue?
Where did we feel it,
In our heart out of love or fear
In our bodies out of need?
Did someone reach out to us
With a push or a slap or a helping hand
With a good book or a harsh word
Perhaps a gentle touch?
And how did we react
Did we shy or defy?
Did we blossom or whither?
Who might be the master
Of such consequences,
And when is the time to try…
And why?

 

People Take Notice

In a small town
People take notice.

~

He had a job at a nearby auto parts store
You’d see him at the counter when you stopped in for spark plugs or a fan belt,
Work shirt-ed with the embroidered “Al” on the left
Tire gauge and pen in the opposite pocket.
He always shook my hand…
And many evenings
In the summer when the grass was emerald or
And in the winter when sneaker’s-squeak echoed through the gym
He was Coach Al
The ball games were fun, everyone on his teams played,
And the practices even more so, everyone had a nickname.
And even long after his wisp of a shortstop-daughter had grown
Had gone on to have infielders of her own
He still held the clipboard
He still cheered “good hustle.”
I last saw him
As I passed through my old home town.
He was mowing center field at  Little League Park,
Grey hair riding above the green.
It was the last time.

~

At the end of the school year
When second grade kids gathered on the bus and found out the verdict,
The answer to the question, “Who’d ya get next year?”
Her name was not the most favored.
Sometimes second, often the third and last choice.
Kids knew who they wanted,
They learn from stories told by older brothers or sisters,
Tales and tears,
Or they saw on their own first hand
In the lunch room or at recess.
 They knew that her smile
Was really just painted over a deep etched grimace.
And at reading time,
The Tigers knew she favored them
A lot more than the Turtles.
The calendar on her desk blotter
Started the count down to the last day of school
At 100,
Which she once jokingly referred to the “countdown to ecstasy!”
School vacations were circled in clownish red smiley faces.
Some wondered how she could work closely with children
And yet come to work so manicured and coiffed
Tailored and in heals?
Some wondered, some knew.
 
~
 
Coach Al passed away some years back
My son “Strike Zone” sadly informed.
“The Sports complex was renamed in his honor.”
Strike Zone and my youngest son “Bull”
Shared memories of their teams and of
Coach Al for many minutes…
Passing back and forth game balls
Awarded by him 20 years ago
For a good catch
Or hustling out an infield out.
 
And she
With a blister pack of Xanax in her purse
With a retirement home in Florida
Already purchased,
She is all but dead in her tracks.
Counting down the days.

The Cat, The Sheep and I

The cat, black and white, paces a few yards ahead
He dismissed himself from our morning coffee and kibble ritual
And now sits at a seemingly random spot, looking, waiting
And so I stop too, and wait and watch the watcher
But having less discipline or comparative desire
I walk on, thinking that I know what this cat is doing.

The sheep, now in the higher pasture, are along my way
And so I stop and visit from a distance that they determine safe
(Something deep within has told them that my kind is dangerous
Or at least something less than trustworthy)
They eat with gusto the grain that the shepherd brings
Pushing and shoving.
Bleating…are they saying something to me?

I walk on, and look at my breakfast, hoping to find
A bowl of words, offered by some kind shepherd
As the grass in my pasture has withered some;
There has been a drought.
Still I am challenged, nay burdened to find the meaning of things
Perhaps also to find the meaning of my search for meaning.
The best I can do for now is walk a bit and wait for it to come.

Hatred

When you see hatred gather it up
And stuff it in the bottom of a paper bag.
You may need to tape the bag shut,
You may need to wear gloves.
Then hike out on your favorite trail
And stop at that beautiful place,
Maybe one overlooking a valley
Perhaps by a stream or a giant
Boulder.

You can do this alone, but
If it is your first time bring a trusted friend.
Sit quietly for a few minutes
Breathe in the peace and beauty,
Then carefully open the bag
And shred the hatred you have gathered
Into tiny-tiny pieces.
Try not to hate the hatred,
Just break in down, smaller and smaller
Look to see what it is made of,
Perhaps you will have a lucid moment.

At the right moment
Gather the pieces and offer them to the wind
Cast them high, cast them away.
A good breeze will dilute them
As you salute them with a goodbye smile.

Sometimes a Chickadee will stop and help.
They know what to do with hatred
They are not afraid.
After you are done you may want to sing
A song or splash in a nearby stream.
Think:
How else can you send hatred to a better place?
Does it burn?  Can you compost it?  Can the ocean
Wash it clean?
Ask the Chickadee, she may know.

 

 

The Naked Man

 Soon, and always to come are the days
Of the naked man.
The sun and the wind are
So demanding:
Push past the stories that cloth and
Be baptized by the rain.
It washes and heals the hidden
And secreted.
These are our teachers,
Exposing the truths
Embracing the soul
And the beauty.

 

Perfect Circle

Petra heard her mother call from far end of the beach.  She circled back slowly and even now, while retracing her steps, she kept an active eye on the stones in the sand ahead. The bottom of her left pocket stretched well down against her skinny sun-browned thigh.  There were already too many rocks in her pocket to walk comfortably.  Each step created a dull thud and clatter, moist and gritty, rattling with rocks, a sound that mimicked the clink-clank stones made as they tumbled in the waves further up the shore. Her right hand grabbed the stretching waistband of her shorts.  She had been hiding this favorite denim pair since her mother had jokingly threatened to throw them out.

“You’ve all but destroyed them, and in just one summer,” her mother quipped. 

“You know you’ll need to pick out just a few rocks to bring back home.”

That might prove to be a nearly impossible task.

Collecting them was a momentary obsession that she easily slipped into, and for some long clock-less minutes it was all consuming.  It was a simple-minded pastime and yet at the same time decidedly mindful.

And what fault is there in filling ones hands and then pockets with such earthly beauty?

She found happiness in such singular moments, and joy in the solitary safety of walking and collecting.

 

And this summer her collecting had been given a new dimension.  One simple idea, an aesthetic value was added to the process by two disparate members of her family. 

Her younger cousin Timothy, down from the city with his family, has shouted out for all the universe to know, and no one in particular to hear,

“I’m looking the round ones, the rounder the better they skip…”

When the water was flat, like on this morning, he could indeed skip a round-flat stone six or eight times before it sank. 

The rounder the better…

She humored him for a while by supplying him with flat round stones. 

“Bring me more ammo,” he would call out, in his war with the waves.            

He soon disappeared in the fog, distracted in the heat of battle by a horseshoe crab patrolling the shallows.

 

And she, distracted in another direction by the quest to find round stones.  Round flat disks, spherical not-quite-eggs, round in gray or brown, round and large or small.

Round, circular round.

The rounder the better.

Perfectly round.

At first it seemed a fool’s quest. 

Yes, there were many nicely rounded, but somehow in the mystery of wave and mineral, they had been shaped without a perfect radius.  The eye of a child could see the beauty and the imperfection.

So the collection was always small, the best kept on the windowsill above her bed.

One’s that were close. 

Like in horseshoes, she thought.  Points for being close.

And the stones that were judged less close were pocketed some mornings and returned to the water.  Deselected.

They needed more work, she thought.

We will meet again, she confessed.

 

The second influence on her collecting was her Uncle Newman.  It was he who invited family and friends to his old rambling beach house where they stayed each summer.  It was a wooden three story farmhouse with wrap-around porches. It had stood for a century and a half at the crest of a small hill overlooking a long sweeping crescent beach.  The sandy beach eventually trailed off to the north turning into a rocky headland that featured a lighthouse which overlooked a broad sweep of ocean. 

From Petra’s perspective, he was very old, maybe as old as the house itself.  She recalled a family get-together the previous year celebrating his eightieth birthday.  What a glow those candles made. 

And although he was old, he still stood tall, only slightly bent with age.  His hair was white, thinning but not gone.  His eyes were blue and clear. The skin on his hands and face was spotted and creased and he smelled, not unpleasantly, like a baseball mitt.  Perhaps it was the leather bound journal he often carried, and could sometimes be found writing in it. 

“I use it to keep track of my work,” he once explained, when she asked about it.

He showed her a couple of pages; one with writing and a couple with drawings of circles and symbols and numbers. 

“I’ve been working on a project for many years…some think it foolish, but…” he added as he slowly close the cover.

He reminded her of pictures of Santa Claus.  Santa being the only other old man she was familiar with.  And indeed he was good natured and pleasant, though not overly so.  He smiled at her with a Santa-like twinkle, and asked her occasionally about her rock collecting. 

She showed him a rounded stone she had collected and told him that she was looking for a perfect one.

He laughed a kind laugh and explained that he would like to see one himself, before…

He then opened his journal and sketched her stone.  He took out a thin ruler and measured across it in several place.  Next he did some arithmetic, it seemed.

“Pretty close,” he said to her, “but not perfect.”

“People have been trying to find or make something perfectly round for a long time.”

“It interests me too, greatly.”

“I’d like to see a perfectly round stone someday...”

 

Days flew by as they can, if one is fortunate enough to spend time at the seashore.  Grey skies and fog, hot sun, wind and wild waves push the hands of the clock and pages of the calendar, until all that was left was a few precious hours, a few last moments, one last swim, one final cool morning walk on the beach, the memories of which would need to last until the next fortunate summer came around once again.  There always seemed to be another summer.

Petra set out along the upper beach and walked to the south.  As the sun labored in its attempt to burn off the morning fog, she could just make out the stream that cut through the sand as it rushed down from the marsh above the dunes.  She would go that far and then need to head back.  She had promised her mother that today she would cull her rock collection. Ughh.  As a compromise, Uncle Newman had suggested that she build a rock cairn on the beach across from his house.  He said that it would surely mark the way for her to return someday.

 

She worked her way down the beach until she reached the wood and wire fence that sectioned off this portion from the rest.  When she first encountered it back in early June, she was offended.  It was a barrier that intentionally and arbitrarily broke her freedom.  When she saw the sign explaining that it was a protected area, set aside for Piping Plover nests, she relented.  Later, she met Marguerite, a volunteer who helped beach goers understand the plover’s needs and explained in a gentle, firm manner why the beach was closed to human activity.  She made people feel that by not walking in the nesting grounds they were doing something important. 

Petra had sat with Marguerite often under her broad umbrella and talked about the birds and their natural history.  She enjoyed using the binoculars to view the almost invisible nests, the “scrapes” hidden in sand mixed in among the oval egg-shaped stones.  She thought that this ingenuity certainly deserved a chance.  And the chicks in their first few weeks before they fledged were so endearing.  And while it broke her heart to see an empty nest, victim of predation by raccoons, it also gave her joy to see them trying out their newly feathered wings and taking their first hopping attempts at flight.  A few short weeks later, all the nests were empty.  And now, Marguerite was gone and the nesting ground looked much like the rest of the beach.

 

Petra pushed her way through the wire and wood snow fence where it met the large rock rip-rap at the top of the beach.  She walked cautiously into the nesting grounds, but saw little evidence of birds.  No plovers swooping down in defense, no parent birds limping away down the beach feigning injury.  She had hoped to see the scraped out nests or maybe a fragment of an egg shell, but a strong storm with driving wind and rain earlier in the week had erased all traces of the nests.  Now the high beach looked much like the rest of the upper shoreline; sand, rock, wrack and a few big logs that had drifted ashore to rest after some unknown voyage from a distant location. 

 

It was on one of these logs that she settled her back.  She had learned from Marguerite that if you sat still, you saw things: everyday occurrences that most often go unnoticed. 

 

Almost immediately she saw the plovers. She feared that she had violated their privacy and the sanctity of the nesting ground. As she sat motionlessly she watched them run along the shoreline and then finally disappear into a small blowout between the dunes.  They were moving, not specifically focused on the nesting ground, but working their way in a zigzag manner down the beach, until at last they were lost in the mist.  And when they did not return, Petra assume to her relief that they were just passing through; foraging and fattening up for the soon to come migration south.  She let out a deep sigh.

She stood and shook off the sand and her guilt.

 

Curious about the blowout in the dunes, she walked up and explored it.  As she passed through she noticed that the wind had deposited several plastic bags.  Almost instinctively she picked up the first two she saw and stuffed them into the back pocket of her shorts.  One more, wrapped around a blade of beach grass caught her eye.  As she tugged it free, she noticed the stone, half buried in the sand.  It was a beige-gray color, with specks of black mica, and a band of white quartz.  The stone had a pleasant heft as she lifted it from the sand-drift, and almost immediately she noticed that it fit comfortably in the palm of her hand.  When she closed her fingers around it, they wrapped it like a sheath.  Casually she tossed it up and caught it in her other hand.  The surface was polished smooth.  It was nicely rounded and more flat than egg shaped.  It might make a good skipping stone. But for now, it found a temporary home in her short’s pocket.

 

As she walked up the driveway from the beach, the black car parked there gave Petra a start.  She did not recognize it nor did she recognize the tall man with the black bag who was now exiting the side door of the house.  He nodded to her solemnly as they passed on the walkway. 

This is wrong she thought, as she swung the screen door.

Entering the kitchen her eyes almost immediately met with her mother’s.  They were reddened and swollen.

“Your Uncle Newman has had a stroke Petra, he’s very sick.  The ambulance is on the way to take him to the hospital.”

Petra’s eyes turned from her mother toward her Uncle’s room just down the short hallway from the kitchen.  The door was ajar and she could see her father standing at the foot of the bed. 

And in a heartbeat, she was standing next to him.

“Daddy…”

“You can talk to him for a moment.  He can hear you, but he seems to be paralyzed, at least on his right side…”

Petra stepped to the bedside.  She was frightened to see his lifeless right arm and his mouth oddly twisted open.  Her fear subsided in the next moments when he turned his head ever so slightly and blinked a soft smile.  Petra returned the smile cautiously while struggling for something to say.  Then, almost unconsciously, she reached into her pocket and fingered the stone from the beach. 

“I found a nice round stone today,” she said, gently placing it on the covers pulled smoothly across his chest.

Then with some effort, he lifted his left arm and slowly, gently, drew his thumb and forefinger across the diameter of the stone.  He moaned a low resonant tone, almost a hum and then closed his eyes.  Petra though he might have fallen asleep, or…

A long moment later, he opened them, and laboring more, looked across the bedroom to his desk.  She followed his gaze and noticed his leather journal and saw a paper folder once, placed next to it.

What did he want her to do?

Just then, her mother entered the room.

“The ambulance is here.”

“Petra, you need to…,” her mother called, gesturing for her to come.  She met her on the braided rug half way across the room.  She took her mother’s cool hand as she looked back once more toward her Uncle.  Together they walked out and sat on the glider on the front porch. It creaked mournfully as it moved to and fro. 

 

The sky had opened later that day and soaked the earth with a gentle rain that continued into that evening.  After poking mindlessly at her diner, she climbed that back stairs.  The well-worn tread-way moaned a familiar sound but the wood beneath her feet seemed uneven, and she grabbed the handrail to steady herself.  The plinking of the rain in the gutters above and its drumming on the porch roof below led her to an exhausted sleep.

 

The heart and the mind have a way of blurring moments, running them together so that the sharp edges of emotion do not jab too hard into the softer places where care and love reside.  We protect ourselves from the pain of loss by seeing it more mercifully through this haze.  It is a form of self-preservation.  In due time the haze clears.  It clears when we are ready.

And so it was for Petra when her Uncle Newman died the following day.  She remembered people weeping and even the sound of occasional laughter.  She remembered hugs from family and seeing many people who she did not know.  She remembered food and flowers, solemn and kind words, ceremony, and black clothes and hearses.  She remembered packing her things, clothes and books and rocks.  She remembered echoed sounds, vague surroundings, and the taste of tears.

And then somehow she was suddenly back home and back in school, as if the weeks had passed ignoring the clock and calendar.   She found herself with friends and classmates who chattered and laughed. They did not notice the fog of loss Petra was in and she did not bother to explain. 

Why would they want to know, and how could they understand?

 

Her mother had asked her on several occasions to unpack her summer bag, which was still pushed under the side of her bed. 

She did not want to open it.

 

And then on one early fall day, a sunlit Saturday morning cool and calm, Petra wandered purposelessly into the back yard and climbed into the tire swing hanging from a stout branch on a large oak.  Sitting in the tire, she twisted the rope and then picked up her feet and let the rope unwind.   It spun her quickly around, slowed, then rewound and unwound again.  Listlessly she wished that this would just go on forever, but at last the rope and tire and Petra all came to a stop, facing the street in front of her house.  Forcing her eyes to focus, noticed Mr. Braughigan the postman walking up the sidewalk.  He was gesturing her way with a tan colored envelop.

“You’ve got some mail,” he called, as walked across the side yard toward her.

“Here ya go…special delivery.” He handed her the envelop over the side yard fence.

Petra slid her thumb under the sealed flap.  Inside she found two papers.  The first one was a note:

Dear Petra,

I was cleaning at the beach house and I found this note addressed to you.  I though you would want it.  It is from your Uncle Newman.

Much love,  Aunt Sarah

The second one was also a note.  It seemed to have been ripped from a notebook…from a journal.

Dear Petra,

I don’t know if I will ever discover the right math need to create a perfect circle.  Perfection it seems, is a difficult goal to achieve…

But I recently learned from a good friend that looking for perfection is just as important.

Thank you for showing me the beach stones you collected.  They are beauties ever one in their near perfection.

Keep looking and seeking and enjoying.

Love,

Uncle Newman

Below at the bottom of the page was a drawing of a nearly perfect beach stone.   Rendered in ink, it looked like the ones that she had collected and had shown him last summer.

She drew her thumb and forefinger gently over the stone drawn on the page and after a moment, she slid the notes back into the envelop and walked towards the house.

 It was time to unpack her bag, she decided.  She needed to see the rounded stones buried in the bottom.

 She needed to put them up on her windowsill. 

 

 

 

 

Letters

I like email
But I love an old fashioned letter
A letter has
Stationery,
Of a color and design you may have chosen thoughtfully,
Whimsically, seasonally, topically
Or maybe just a sheet of lined paper ripped
From a forlorn notebook
Or an airmail sheet that folds into an envelope
And perfumed perhaps
With a hint of your fragrance
Speaking louder than words
Stirring fantasy and fondness
And a drop of your DNA as you tongued the seal and stamp
And affixed the saucy red print of lipstick to remove all doubt
Or maybe a waxen imprint
That holds your words so tight.
A letter has penmanship
With all the lines and loops that Mr. Palmer’s method taught
But evolved through time and use into your own distinct style
I could tell the letter was from you before it
Was even opened
Using a letter opener that my aunt gave me
Upon high school graduation.
And what pen to choose?  When pens mattered
And ink was drawn from wells or bottles and smudged and blotted
And perhaps the choice of color spoke beyond the written word
Red ink, blue or black teased or taunted the eye.
And then there was the box that stored the precious messages
Tied in ribbons or wrapped in rubber bands
That called for a reread to scan again for hopeful news
Or word that fluttered the heart.
Few perhaps will find a box of emails stored in dusty attics
Telling tales of love and adventures and sorrows
Reminding us of those who came before
Reminding us when the postman rang.

 

 

Tall Grasses

“I am happy to make your acquaintance,”
I confess to the white and black cat
-Who was purring in my lap an hour earlier
-Who was king of all he surveyed
-Doing as he pleased on the lanai
-Posing and posturing
-Making the big brown dog shake.

But now, you crouch and cower and shy
Strung taut like a guitar string
-Out near the corn patch
-Where your claw is only one of many
-Where no one or nothing shrinks willingly
-But instead fights or flees
-Here on wild neutral grounds
I’m not sure you even recognize me
As we both search our way through
The tall grasses of fear and trepidation.

October is

October is a month for cheating fate.
Each year I pull ‘round the corner of summer
Running on empty
And somehow it tops off my tank.
Once again.
It works every year, so far…
Thanks mom and dad for my birth on these days
Although I’m not sure that’s what you had in mind
In the back seat of the Plymouth that New Year’s eve
When I was conceived.
Or when you bought me a little two-wheeler
With those outrigger training wheels on back
(That never really did anything)
I was launched down a bumpy, rocky driveway
(Aren’t we all?)
And have the scars on my aged knees
To prove, as tickets punched that
I took that journey.
~
Men sometimes play baseball late into October
By great lakes,
Those heroes…
If (and when) the wind blows from the cold creeping north
Snow may just fly along with the balls in the outfields
Still summer green
Even the umpires know this is cheating.
~
In maple lined backyards
Slumping piles of leaves are secretly moldering
Even before the rake is in the shed,
Only the worms are coolly pleased,
And the pumpkin on the stoop
Is destined to burst into that curious
Probable puddle of slime,
Embarrassed by its unfortunate smell.
We often cut short its time
By allowing children to gouge eyes and devil’s grins
Which spews its belly of goop and seeds.
~
It’s the rank ripeness of slumping gardens
And childhood adventures,
With only the tease of memory and time,
That fuel us into these darkening days.

 

 

 

 

It Is a Time

I swear they are playing
A small flock of small brown birds
Flits from bending stem to bending stem
Grasses bowing slightly
Springing down when they land
And then up as they soon depart.
And if beaks could break a smile
The true story might be told.
It is a time of richness
A time of many seeds and
In this moment of joy
They eat fully
And fly freely.

 

 

Plodding

I can still run when I want to
If I want to
Although nearing age 66
I mostly plod
Moving slower
Incrementally, entropically
With a bit less enthusiasm for sprinting
Into oblivion
Or even rising to new challenges
Or the same old ones
(The mere challenge of rising becoming
More and more apparent)
That horizon seems to be moving in my direction
At its steady pace…

Maybe I need to check my dipstick
See what level my vital fluids are at
Perhaps I’m down a quart of testosterone?
I’m still in the race
At least in my mind
I can access that young man
Who did life so subtly
Effortlessly
Painlessly.
I can still run, when I want
But there is a cost now
A different one, and maybe higher.
And do I really want to go that fast
Tempting the wheels to fly off?
Or is it better, wiser
Just to plod?

Taking

You can’t blame them
That they are such bearers of bad news
(At least by our selfish assessment)
Vectoring disease while trying
By the powers of nature to do
Exactly what we all try to do;
Live and survive
Propagate and pass along
Our essence.
Born beautiful in their seeming simplicity
They take what they need
And inadvertently pass along others,
Those unclean,
They take too
Our lifeblood becomes theirs and
We are compromised
For their moment of life.
We are stung so that they may grow...
We all take
But just some of us know
The apparent outcome.

The Crane

We learn to make the crane
Step by step
We fold the blank paper
Which has no meaning save
For its potential
We fold, and shape and give it
Our energy
Our love
And fold and fold and fold again
And there it is at last
As it always had been
The crane which I learned to make
And its peace
Which I am learning to make as well.

 

Good Night

The moon is full and shining brightly in the west,
Making friends with the indifferent mountain peaks
Illuminating the fields high with grass,
And nodding ferns
Their shadows dancing towards the nearby forest,
Still dark and quiet. 
 
The Big Dipper,
Orion,
And Cassiopeia
Are hanging in the north and east,
Blinking stoically,
Watching over us.  

A distant dog barks without much conviction.  
Roosters are crowing their farewells to the night
And calling the dawn. 
It is a new day.
Good morning.

 

 

My Fit

There is a puzzle
Of which I am a part
Jigsaw like
And pieces as they are so created
Either fit just so
Congruent, compatible, matching
Or not at all
Edges rough, unyielding, un-abiding
And child-like I have tried sometimes
To make my fit
To force the edges to obey my will, my way
Even though I do also know the parts and portions
Sometimes morph organically, magically
Given time
And what once did not match or suit
Now work with ease
Edges complimenting edges seamlessly
Growing so in ways unforced
In ways that seem to play out perfectly
Naturally
Peacefully.

So Still, So Quiet

It is very quiet,
Not a ripple of sound
Save the rain in the pines and oaks.
It drains unheard but not silently
Into the nearby lake
As tongues of water lap
Gently onto the shore.
The world is on the move…

Is there such a thing as silence?
If the dead had ears
They might just hear                                                                            
The scratching of the cilia
Of the passing worms.

Could it ever be so still
That the living could hear
The thunderous chorus
Of seven billion heartbeats?
Could it ever be so quiet?

The Gift

The challenge
When untying a knot
Is to know that pulling harder
Is often the problem
Not the solution.
 
This day like all others
Unveils its gifts,
Perhaps the greatest among them
Is the gift of simplicity,
The knot unraveled,
The letting go.

The Morning Lens

There is a certain lens
That focuses each day
Upon rising
Upon learning from the nighttime of whispered dreams
And the probable pedagogy of yesterday.
Some days I stumble and it fails to focus
And yet others break with the offer
Of potential.
You and I are such potential
Striding into our time
Ready to be
Ready to find and create
To evaluated and consider and share.

Grey, The Galactic Mandala

Even grey has shades.

Gray shades stirring…stirring

Churning sands of granite and feldspar

Run between the fingers

Coarse and crystalline

They make their own mischief

These dancing hippies

Elemental, fundamental

Sugared and floured

Washed and then scoured

They beacon and beseech.

 

They are naked on this birthday

They circle and drum

Weaving like roots and limbs

Forming and reforming

The galactic mandala.