Posts for June 16, 2023

As I watched you

Lead the way

Across the yard

Past the barn

And the open pasture

To show my girls

The bountiful growth

And hidden treasures

That lay your garden

The sun was setting

Between the hills

You pointed to the snap peas

Plucking one from the vine

For each of us

“A garden snack”

That’s what you called it

Chuckling as you sneakily took a bite

I realized I never got to thank you

For loving me in through the hard spots

When my own mother couldn’t

Here you are again

Loving me and advising me

Through another hard spot

Unbeknownst to you

You’re the kindest woman I’ve ever known

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I never got to tell you

Until now.

we used to gather

around fires

when things were bad

and because we were men

or boys growing into me

we didn’t talk about

what hurt us

anything but what hurt us

sometimes

I wish

I could set a fire

for all of them to see

they could come

out of the dark

at their own time

share one last talk

so I could break the rules

tell them I love them

Lungsick / in the hospital I felt so close / to grace– craving / nicotine. / Lexington looked so full / of trees and I was in this / medical hotel–finally getting / help. Four times a day / I gave my big body / to the nurses / even though I admit / I was ashamed. / I had to do it / to get better. Out / the window / the September sky / was so blue. I could see myself / rejoin the world.

beautiful things

son, don’t worry about me.
i still find pleasure
in beautiful things:
my glittery shoes
and christmas socks
blanketed in falling leaves
from gratz park ginkgo trees.

Back in the seventies,
in what some might call 
ancient history, 
some of us went to college 
and learned basic mathematics 
like how 28 grams equals an ounce,
and sixteen ounces equals a pound, 
and how geography can spell profits 
if you live close to the source 
and have a dependable way
to travel cross country.

Midway is a magical town
It’s the perfect place to walk around

Hand in hand walking on the streets of downtown
It’s where Midway To Love can be found

If  lucky,  you could get a treat
A red and silver locomotive
Streaking down the center of the street

The conductor waves as your eyes meet
You return his wave from the street

The horn blows
And away the train goes

The red caboose fades out of sight 

The rain is where I sit,
painting pictures in watercolor
lightning bolts.

Lord Mordred himself descends into the Labyrinth

Sprawled
beneath drifting
clouds, I shutter my lids
and simply breathe.  I levitate,
off the floor, weightless.  My fingers
begin to feel fuzzy as the ambiguous border
between Earth and outer space. My toes float
into the void, and my body succumbs to blissful 
darkness until I am only my breath, pulsating like sun’s
steady heartbeat.  I relish the simplicity of breath, my troubles
and to-dos heliocentric to my chest’s rise and fall.  Oblivion pierced
by a single light.  Serenity.  Sensation seeps into my limbs as I list
back to Earth’s atmosphere, to tumult and toil, my existence
once again bracketed by sky and solid ground,
but gravity is forgiving now, and if I leap
high enough, I can
almost stroke
sunrise.

14: The Banner Saga (Stoic Studio)

go figure, we are numbers, the starveling woodland

in its twig-legged hope

that an arrow could

solve anything.

oh, how i wish an arrow could solve

us from deadweight to death-wielding, how a bow arm could

make us worth the last peal of the earth peeled out of the fields,

yet the earth must die in pieces, jagged as her obsidian glass.

god, can we just lie down in an Eyvind Earle giclée

and pretend it’s not on the verge of melting?