Ambient
My body and mind are empty
Encompassing only this breath
If you cradle my bleached bones
to the shell pink curve of your ear
I will fill you with the echo of waves
No one can see in the dark.
There are flashlights and fire, but sometimes the shadows blind my bare eyes.
Light can do the same thing if there’s too much of it.
Now I walk down my block, and the problem isn’t really that I can’t see.
When I look up, I see sky, ever blue.
There isn’t a single cloud in it today.
Every star gazer hopes for a clear sky,
But out of the countless stars that are out there, I can only see one right now.
I can see the sidewalk in front of me.
In the distance, there are heatwaves coming off it, which make it look blurred.
I guess the problem is I can only see so far in each direction.
When I think about it, I realize that that’s why I’m walking,
Because with each step I take, I can see a little more.
I took a trip to a desert once.
It took all day to get there, but there were heat waves coming off the sand,
Just like the heat waves that I see now.
I remember taking a walk there too, and leaving a trail of footprints behind me,
That from up high must have looked like a dotted line.
I know from experience that if I walk far enough, the sky seems different somehow,
Everywhere I go it’s a slightly different shade of blue,
And everywhere I go, even in the middle of the day there are hundreds of stars far above me.
Hundreds of glowing dots that beckon to me,
Even as I stand on the ground, in the little circle of world that I can see right now.
They beckon to me, not because I know they’re there,
But because they know that my world is always getting bigger.
The problem isn’t that I can’t see, but that I have no map.
I walk a lot though, and those steps are my dotted line.
Those steps are my flashlight.
summer Monday and I’m well equipped
joy is in the freezer
a pint of cocoa brown
chocolate was today’s choice
trying, trying to practice living in the now
meaning the present, not getting ahead
so today will equal ice cream
not sure about tomorrow
Pictures spread on social media this morning
of a bear on a bank of the Green River
in Yosemite (pronounced YO smite).
Shouldn’t take long for someone to shoot it
because they can
but blame fear
for their kids’ safety,
kids like those on the school playground,
who, symbolically protected by chain link,
I walked by this afternoon
on my way to the public library,
kids whose chatter lulled
when I appeared
and whose eyes glanced
to my hands–
a split-second, unconscious
risk assessment–
before returning to play.
I was carrying
books.
Pictures flickering
and triggering in our head
dreams of love and dread
The stories are told
bound with symphonies and song
taking us along
Where love finds a way
even breathes underwater
though life’s the barter
Wars wage eternal
with young men sent ahead first
quenching power’s thirst
Conducting passions
a music maker cuts deep
fighter jets fly steep
Multiverse time leaps
mapping key lateral lanes
asserting love reigns!
A singing King returns
women talking new angles
tangling triangles
History gets told
how it was or like it could
in old Hollywood!
I’ve never felt like much of anything
until I’ve been without it, like a dog
pawing an unwanted bone and growling
at those who come to close. I worry
about what this says about me, this nostalgia.
Worry about the dust that crawls itself up the wall.
The dust that pillows upon the side table,
grays the corners–the cobweb molding
bunts the eaves in celebratory stripes.
If I were to wipe it all bare and sit alone,
if I were to spend time here
with my unadorned space.
Yellow tendrils
flayed across a frying pan,
sizzling,
scrambled,
scalding oil
sunk into pale yolk,
blond,
canary-cast,
color and care
stolen from birds
and my brain —
but cream or turquoise,
collections of cracked shells
cannot cancel miracles
nor new life.
