Good Day

Hey,
I hope you’re having a good day.
What is a good day?
A good day is the first steps you take
In a new pair of sneakers
(and extra good if you have new socks!)
A good day is making someone laugh out loud
Who has been locked up in a prison of pain.
A good day is seeing a kid
Make baby steps of success.
A good day is feeling the warm sun on your cheek
On a cold January day.
A good day is catching a golden leaf
That a maple tree has dropped to you.

A good day is
Finding your keys
A warm cookie
A wink and a nod.

A good day my friend
Is waiting for you.

The Unregulated Territories

A cat passes by here
On some sort of regular patrol,
Black with white boots,
She seems to prowl in the unregulated territories.

And I wish to ask her
“What do you know?”
For I think that she could answer
Though she chooses to keep to herself.
Run silent run deep?
Reticence is her pedagogy…
That may be the better way to go.

Other creatures have answers,
The wisdom of wings
Furbearers foresight
but they seemed skeptical
And reluctant to share them.

Humans have stories
That explain our stories,
But our bullshit masks many
Of our creature canon
 -we once knew better-
And might still know now
If we listened.

Ask a cat what it knows of the sparrow
And what the sparrow knows of the cat;
Truths are to be found in the unregulated territories.

My Next Step

I have stumbled along
Taken many a misstep
(And in falling down
 sometimes
I have been placed perfectly)
And found my way
Miraculously, to this very day
-Gifted by kindness
Gifted by forgiveness,
And generous secrecy
And the mere passage of time,
Such a generous keeper
 and merciful mentor-
That I might nearly know
Where to put my next step.

Beach Shells

I could take you to a beach nearby..
There is a two mile walk along a pulsing estuary
In order to earn your visit.
It is no great sacrifice.

Where the beach begins
There is a rocky outcrop;
It anchors the sand and dunes at one end.
At the far end,
Keeping its tenuous grip on a small mound of land
A tombolo, worthy of a barefoot walk.

The beach smiles up some nights
Mirroring the crescent moon.

At the start of the beach
To the right of the outcrop
Is a great swath of slipper shells.
And though the beach lies alluringly ahead
This mound of mollusks
Now empty husks
Rattles in the waves,
Calling even the casual passer;
A boy with a bucket, a girl with a dog
To stop for a moment (or an hour)
And lose themselves in this spectacle.

Playing the role of the boy
I pick up a shell,
Smooth and cool
Like a hard boiled egg split lengthwise
Well-formed and intact.
One of many.
Is this what millions looks like?

And as if this shell could converse
I say out loud,
“You made this case,
And this case made you.”

From beach to pocket to nearby window sill,
This shell, my friend, still speaks to me,
And shares itself so generously.

Give It a Reasonable Chance

Back in my yurting days
I had a garden
That was riddled with fresh cilantro
Jumping out of the ground
Along with bountiful bananas
Hand over fist
And avocados that flew off the trees
Like cannon balls.

Give it a reasonable chance

And life will provide such riches

Depending of course

On what you plant

And what you choose to harvest.

There are no guarantees of course

Although in Hawaii
You can generally depend on
Rain and sunshine.
Those come free.

Running away from my former life
Was filled with potential,
Although I struggled to make the trip
With just one carry on.

American Airlines
Does not charge for emotional baggage,
Still, there can be a steep
Price to pay.

In letting go,
Breaking free of the falsehoods, flaws and foibles
That I held in my self-made vise grips
Pointed me in the direction of aloha.

Thin

This
Is the story of
A report from
My remote assignment
And in it
Maybe you will find
A thin blue line
(Yes, it’s blue)
That connects
Some secret circuitry
From synapse to synapse
Step by step
Breath by breath.

I have found a stream
And it is trafficked
Full of wonders
Random and rampant
A parade of recollections
Loosely strung images
Particles passing
Like circus elephants
Strung trunk to tail.

And at any moment
I can reach out and grasp
Any one of them
Holding them to marvel
Allowing them to be the next
Starting point
Or
Letting them loose
With a smile
And a wave
Good bye.

Letting go is as good
As holding tight.

What We Do Not Know

Perched here on the edge

Of my human existence,

While looking out my window

And holding my pen to pad,

I struggle to understand

What is happening

And yet find hopeful diversion

In the simultaneous experiences 

That reality offers.

My friend Jeremy and I

Ponder in fear and frustration 

Why the world,

Which seems to be offering us all
The delicious oyster of life,

Has populated itself with those of us
Who seem to gloat in greed
Who love to lead us by our nose rings
To another life
One of pain and sorrow.

I mean who are these guys
And what about tomorrow?

Meanwhile, things that I might understand
But that I only partially comprehend
Display themselves
Quite obviously.

As I look up and out
I see ten thousand blackbirds
River-ing by my window
Pulsing over the treetops
Doing today what they likely have done
And done well
Since the last ice age:
Millennia of migrations
Blackbird confidentials
That benefit them
On their journeys
While underscoring
And leaving me dumbfounded on mine.

Still I look up in praise of their greatness
And wonder about what we do not know.