Posts for 2020 (page 137)

The last thing we’ll pack is the bed, leaned
against the U-Haul wall like a safety precaution
for our other boxes. We’ll pace and pass around
it all day, busily postponing one final addition
to the load before latching the door and leaving.
The mattress will watch us ignore it desperately.
Silly kids, still. Foolish even as adults. We delay
our comfort, our peace, our pleasure, our place.
One last night of use in this room, squarely
situated amongst all our nothing, the soft waiting
of our newness.

I’ve never been a fan of cigarettes.
But watching the smoke of some non filtered cancer stick dance in the near darkness while you lay there half asleep reminds me that sometimes the sacrifices we make are repaid. 

ARE YOU THERE?
Are you there?
When I am not
Are you still there?
When I am not
And do you look for me as you once did?

I am lost without you
You know.
You know me by name
By the hairs on my head
By the steps I trod.
Are you there?

If I hold out my hand
In the dark of night
I can almost feel you
I can almost see the light
You are there, I know it
Maybe nothing is defined
At least nothing I can touch.
But I know it…
Indeed….yes indeed…you are there

Cigarette daydreams

Playing softly

The colors fading

In the sky

The low rumble of cars

Passing by

Feet on the dashboard

Feathers catching the wind

On the dream catcher hangin

From the rear view mirror…

And would she be draped in yellow?
What shades of grass would be beneath each footstep?
Would she ever feel lonely?
In the cold, would she be thankful for a shorter walk?
Would she ever, even for an instant,
wonder what would happen if she changed her mind?

Mamaw and Papaw loved that tree.
It was on the property when they moved there after selling their business and retiring.
They didn’t want to spend their golden years in some Miami Beach condo.
Instead, they bought what used to be a small horse farm in central Kentucky.

There was this maple tree beside the house.
The first year, it looked like it was dying.
The landscaper they had hired said it needed to come down.
They told him to do whatever he could to save it,
And it survived.

Mamaw and Papaw left the farm to me.
I moved onto the property to start my new life.
One night, I sensed that the spirit of my Muse was descending on the tree,
Surrounding it, then engulfing it.
It was the Heavenly Muse who had inspired me to write songs.
She had followed me to my new home, so I sang to her.

None of what I just shared actually happened, at least not in this world.
I never called my grandparents “Mamaw and Papaw,”
And they never bought a horse farm.
But what if I told you that I believe I have an alter ego,
In an alternate universe,
That has a Kentucky,
Where Muses follow songwriters and inhabit trees,
And the writers sing to the trees?

Praying Mantis on a leaf
to whom do you pray?
I pray to the Lord above
the Truth, the Life, the Way.

Golden rays
beam
through
the leaves
of my favorite tree
and
I wish
I had the
motivation
to go
outside.
Sunrises
and
sunsets
are my 
favorite
beginnings
and
endings,
I rarely
look 
forward
to
the story
in 
between.

Freed an owl from a silvery net today, a small kindness to one life from another. If it doesn’t recognize how its future was suddenly altered, what will it remember to pass to its chicks?

A thousand years from now, who will remember Korea, the Gunboat War, Denmark-Norway? The names might survive in archives, but the true memorial to a conflict is in the memories of those who struggled, lost and alone, for each gain, who were actually scarred by each loss.  

I would sing you memories of women I shouldn’t have loved or hungered for, but the words would be meaningless from the start. There are names and faces even I no longer recognize, and I was there.  

in the red sun death
that hangs in the dark 
horizon
there’s a personal
annihilation of consciousness
waiting for every single
one of us

and that terminal drive
isn’t going to be long enough
to finish what we have started

I promise

that when we get to the heart
of the universe where the titanic
death and birth of stars
warp the fabric of reality
if there’s a way to come back
to this little place in the dark
I’ll come back
and we will do this 
again
and
again
and 
again
because we’ve got too much
started to quit so soon