Posts for June 23, 2026 (page 5)

I’ve grown up knowing how to minimize
Time, energy, resources,
To look at a problem and spend a little extra time thinking it through,
Then enacting a plan meant to conserve,
From visualizing how to pack a car,
To calculating costs before the register,
Preparation braces my bones against what life throws my way.

Needing little kept us grounded,
I understood growing our own food
Was always worth the taste of fresh salsa and jam,
That buying from farmers paid back in community,
That a long walk outside was the perfect time to connect
With myself, my people, and my world.

Yet the new world seems to think something is wrong
If you don’t constantly need,
Like you’re alien for ignoring ads,
Or arrogant for avoiding luxury.
That new world doesn’t understand true need:
I can find anything I’m missing on those long walks,
And everything else grows in my bones.

My true self is waking.
She speaks to me in mysterious dreams.

        I dream I speak to her.
        She is told to step into the tornado.

I am torn, I am winded. I am afraid to sleep.
A hawk carries me in its strong talons.

        Carried into deliverance, sharp and pointed— 
        divine, like Jonah’s whale.

Well, what can I say about the divine?
This god-shaped hole called myself.

        God’s calling; will I heed the call?
        Will I answer to what I’m meant to do?

Will I become who I’m meant to be?
My true self is waking.

It’s not been the best of days. 
I’m tired and worn
all over the place.
Had to work, forgot my lunch
what a mistake.
Somehow my friends came through serving 
some snacks, the day’s saved.
Low energy, heavy eyelids
not in the best place.
Mom’s carrot cake
blew the bad vibes away.
Thirty-two years making it okay
she’s set an incredible pace.
My wife and my kids
showing me love unrestrained.
Though the first half was tough
it ended better than okay. 

The teddy bear sat there,
     on a shelf, for years in a closet.
     Its fur, tattered, flattened where
     her hands used to hold it. One eye
     slightly higher than the other. The
     green ribbon gone, drifting along
     the wind. An outgrown bond.

To one day, it no longer belonged
     to a shelf, but in a box, then
     the back seat of their car
     finding a way to the nursing home.

To watch the frail hands of a resident
     who turned it over once in her hands,
     to be blessed by a memory, pressing
     the worn ear between her fingers
     as if checking whether something
     still lived there. An aching heart.

Wanting to tell the resident
     it was old, survived the love
     of a little girl’s bedroom, and
     years of not being needed. To be
     shelved among the dust bunnies.

Instead, the resident holds it
     against her chest,
     where age and childhood came
     closer together than imagined.

The lonely resident has
     already lived through so much.

The bear, after all,
     did not care whose arms held it.

The more that I yearn,
the more about me I learn.
I’m learning so much.

“Follow,

Saturday Horse Sales, 1985

On Saturdays when I was young,

We’d all go into town,

To bid at the horse sale,

You could buy ‘em by the pound.

Thirty-one cents a pound to start ‘em,

It may sound cruel now,

But in those long gone days,

We’d buy ‘em like a cow.

Of course we made some difference,

Based on appearance and gait,

How well they could be ridden,

And if the owner talked half straight.

Look out boys here comes a filly,

They say she ain’t yet be tried,

We’ll start her at five hunnerd, boys!

Let your conscience be your guide! 

A pair of mules that came in together,

Though I doubt that’s how they worked.

One shows to be nigh twenty years old,

But it don’t look like she’s hurt.

The nigh one is little bit game,

I don’t reckon I’d touch his feet,

They say he’ll rack to beat the band,

He’ll roll on down the street.

I’ve seen several good fat ponies,

And you know where they’ll go,

I hear the ships waiting off shore,

For two hundred head or more. 

There’s a one eyed jack a brayin’,

And he’s cribbin’ on the beams,

His legs are bowed and spavined,

But the needed parts work it seems.

That roman nosed ol’ sorrel horse,

With two white feet in back,

He’ll likely be the last to sell,

And then they’ll start the tack. 

Pap’s wore out McClellan,

His pap brought home with him from France,

I’d let it go for twenty-five,

If I get half a chance.

I like that Billy Cook sitting there,

With all the frills and trim,

The seller wants three hundred,

But I’ll offer two to him.

I’ve seen a lot of harness tonight,

Some with cracked and busted hames,

That set there is fit for loggin’,

And has good hooks and chains.

There’s a pile of wore out collars,

Single trees and such,

I like that set with the silver spots,

But it’s likely too hot to touch.

And before we know it, the sale’s over,

Bring the trailer round,

Come mornin’ in the light of day,

We’ll ponder the deals we’ve found.

If you think you mighta got taken,

And your nerve starts feeling week,

Don’t fret too long nor worry to much,

You can bring her back next week. 

Peter Paul Rubens, The Garden of Love, 1630-1632

 Quotes in italics from the letters and correspondence of Peter Paul Rubens
* included in such scholarly sources as:
The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens. Translated and edited by Ruth Saunders Magurn, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1955

“How gladly we accept this gift of sensuous pleasure! and how gratefully!” 
Sybaritic circles dance round and round
How greedily they drink the plot

“I feared that notorious quality of the aristocracy, their self-conceit, especially so in someone of the opposite sex…”
Quailing the elegant vogue
now confined to delight

“…If God wanted these vermin to eat, surely he would provide them with substance.”
Glitterati grace the garden scene
Feasting on the flowers

“My talent is such that no undertaking, however vast in size… has ever surpassed my courage.” 
Hauteur of a strange decadence
A wound accrued to scar the world

“Painting a young maiden is similar to cavorting with great abandon. It is the finest refreshment.”
From then on, he lived there
In the garden of Narcissus
Infatuated with retreat

Peter Paul Rubens, The Garden of Love, 1630-1632

 Quotes in italics from the letters and correspondence of Peter Paul Rubens
* included in such scholarly sources as:
The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens. Translated and edited by Ruth Saunders Magurn, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1955

“How gladly we accept this gift of sensuous pleasure! and how gratefully!” 
Sybaritic circles dance round and round
How greedily they drink the plot

“I feared that notorious quality of the aristocracy, their self-conceit, especially so in someone of the opposite sex…”
Quailing the elegant vogue
now confined to delight

“…If God wanted these vermin to eat, surely he would provide them with substance.”
Glitterati grace the garden scene
Feasting on the flowers

“My talent is such that no undertaking, however vast in size… has ever surpassed my courage.” 
Hauteur of a strange decadence
A wound accrued to scar the world

“Painting a young maiden is similar to cavorting with great abandon. It is the finest refreshment.”
From then on, he lived there
In the garden of Narcissus
Infatuated with retreat

Do you ever feel
like it’s not worth talking
about the things that bother us
anymore?

Like you’re being responded to
before you’re being listened to?

Like everyone always falls
on the same set of answers
even when they know
only 2% of your story?

The lonely know the sentiments well:
-You’ll find someone someday.
-It’ll happen when you least expect.
-Just go over there and talk to her.
-Just be yourself.

Or maybe you have a different thing,
like anxiety or a phobia:
-Just squash the bug.
-Just flick the switch.
-Just do it.

Platitudes
uttered by those who
might be genuine in their intentions
except they’re coming to you
from the borders
of the giant jigsaw puzzle of life
where one flat, unwarped side
makes it easier
to find companionship.
To fit in.

But they can’t seem to comprehend
the people who don’t quite fit
into cute, square boxes.

If I *just* had to do a thing
that thing would *just* be done.
The fact that it’s not means
there’s a little more to the thing.
A wound that needs to be filled with care.
A story or trauma
that requires extra space.

I’m tired of people speaking to me
as if I was all smooth edges.
Every damn day I wish I was a border piece.
Instead, I’m floating out in the middle
with a lot of other lost souls
being shouted at from the sidelines.

Not that anything they shout is inherently wrong–
people figure their things out all the time,
but not everybody.
I cannot tell you why it works
for some and not others,
the cosmic lottery of chance.

Let’s stop talking in absolutes.
What is infrequent is not impossible
and what is frequent is never guaranteed.

But when it does work out,
because I choose to believe it one day will,
I can’t wait for him to be like
See! I told you it’ll happen when you least expect!
so I can look him in the eye and say
No.

Eventual success
does not make it
so they were right because,
as well-meant as the sentiments may be,
hearing them for the better part of a decade
strips them of their meaning.

Don’t tell me it gets better,
go out there and make it better
for someone,
in whatever way that looks like,

even if helping a person
with their things
is as simple as allowing them

to feel
seen
and heard.

Visible
and
listened to.

Connected
if still

apart.