In the midst of a day full of other objectives
of thoughts and distractions that keep the mind active
a quiet, small strain of something old recollected
slips by in the background, almost neglected.

At first it confuses, familiar but not
quite familiar enough to place into it’s spot.
Warm like the brush of an old worn fabric,
its presence is kind and makes you feel whole,

Like the rhythm of time gone past has a soul
that recognizes the place you have come
is one you were meant to be all along
and this little reveal in the form of a song

is to let you know you can keep walking on.

I read not to reach the end
But to keep beside me a well-worn friend
To offer as I walk along
Different views than I had thought
To picture in the world around me:
Notes from dusty minds.

Feel without reason.
Without being
By any definition.

Sadness like weather.

Don’t hide;
The clouds wouldn’t.

The air is heavier today;
It doesn’t need explaining.

Raindrops fall
When it is rainy season.

Don’t wonder why.
Another “why?” would follow.

Observe
This season

As part of what you are.

Feel because feeling
Is your only hint

To a presence
That lends nothing.

“the Rockies may tumble
Gibraltar may crumble”...

All our ideas will fade.

You are feeling these senses
In a vast silent pretense—

A mistake of tumbling matter.

Where energy passes
As soon through the stars

As through the passions below,

And all looks on
At all opposed
As it passes from this world.

I love watching the seasons here,
The sycamores in fall,
The sakura in spring,
The colors that mark the passing of everything.

When I first came to wander here,
I stole a leaf for my own
As big as my hands in green and brown
And patterned all in home.

I pinned it to my door
For one long lonely year
And drew upon my wall
The sunset I had left.

Before I found my way back under
Those boughs of paisley gold,
I’d sail half a world away
And work and wait and grow.

By several hundred days and nights,
Flowers bloomed and missed,
But in full season’s time I would
Return to meet alone.

And these fine days we spent together,
In warmth, or rain, or snow,
Breathing in our 1%
As the sun’s rays dusky glowed...

Now again the seasons turn,
We cannot hope to stay
Where once the light of purpose
Has faded clear away.

Though it offers little comfort
And we cannot see the port,
We set our eyes to sea
And prepare to take our leave.

I dearly love the seasons here,
I will remember them from afar
And call to girls beneath fallen petals
who never dreamed they would part.

A modern-day Emily:
Recluse,
Eternal stranger.

Walk many streets
But
Recognized nowhere.

Preference for shadow,
Freedom
To dis-exist;

What’s not
Seen
Is rarely missed.

But the
Overlooked
Have sharpest claws

To grasp the
Secrets
Thought insignificant by all.

Where are we now?
Take a look out the window
And tell me what you see.

Are there rivers and streams,
Hills and houses
Built by people with dreams?

Do you want to try
Finding that place
After our feet have touched the ground?

Do you think if we walked
For 2,000 days
We’d understand what we’d found?

This confusion of people
All pushing and thinking
And trying to find something true;

If we spoke to them all
Do you think we’d learn
Or just become more blue?

Oh, where are we now,
Where have we come to,
I wish you could tell me that.

Is it anyplace better than
The one that we left
Or haven’t we been here before?

I could swear I’ve heard
These words in days past,
For power and progress and proof,

Discard compassion
and elect reason only,
It will lead to prosperity’s truth.

But for all these years,
Humanity’s fears,
We’ve never managed the simplest:

To put aside focus
on excellence and pride
And choose to live contented,

To create our work
Not for prizes that rust
But for the value of creation intrinsic.

To recognize
the light in our eyes
is not in truth the brightest,

And even if it really were,
It would be nothing
Without someone to sight it.

We’re stronger by far
if we join hands
Than the most brilliant who would divide us.

Where are we now?
Are we moving at all?
Are we always caught between sides?

Between those who want speed
And those who want fairness
And those who ignore out of pride.

Is it possible
To make them care—
To tug their hearts into motion?

Or is the theme
Of equality’s dream
Another stone in the ocean?

We’ll gaze back at it
Through history’s waters
Now and then as all other ideas

And wonder how
such thoughts began and
how they journeyed on.

Unless, of course,
you choose to stand
And change the scales by one.

The weight of history
Is odd in that way,
Sometimes a grain of sand

Is lost amidst
a breathing desert
And never tumbles free.

But, other times,
One grain displaced
Can tip the whole company,

Or fall into
such a place
That it rubs great engines raw,

Creating heat
With one small presence
That breaks convention’s law.

Note well,
It’s not by exception
This grain achieves its cause,

Just by placing
One valuable common
Into action instead of pause.

Where are we now?
Have we gotten any closer
To finding where we stand?

Give the window a scrub
With the edge of your hand
And see if it comes clear,

See if you can spot
A path for us
In all the ages down there.

If not, I guess
We’ll have to keep
Relying on our feet,

Placing one
before the other
Without much certainty.

Opening our eyes
To each new day
To try to recorrect

The thoughts
We thought yesterday,
Which now we redirect,

Holding tight
to what seems true
And seeking better values,

The way to live,
The way to feel,
A reason to give respect to others,

And simply how
To endure a day,
before we rest forever.

Call me the wind,
Call me the breeze,
Call me the river
That winds through the trees,

For that is how
I’ve lived my life,
Going where time
Seemed to say was right

With no promise made
To foreign tradition
That rose from voices
With which I had no connection,

But trailing after
Ribbons abroad
That seemed tied
To some more perfect thought

And left their tails
Streaming after
As across the wandering
Minds they roamed

Leading the whispering
Listeners home.

Middle of the night

And the sky is white,

Just as the land below.

The sound is absorbed

By the deep-crushing stuff

As the chill sinks in to your bones.

Round the edges the world

Seems a dark charcoal shade,

A contrast to the pale above.

The places you knew so intimately

Are changed into feelings anew,

But it’s only in fragment, piece, and part

You can notice the lacework of difference.

The chill of the heavens for once has descended,

The stars scattered in blanketing shards.

There’s a soft-seeming curve and rise

To the surface that wraps over all you see,

And to fall in silence beneath it

Is to disappear, lost to resolve and memory.

You have to watch out for that first night, when the walls are bare and you sit on the floor with your takeout, feeling a little cold and very far away. You had better bring some relics, to distract your focus until you can add some color to the room and begin to put in some pieces that look like life. A few images propped along walls... something soft to twist your hands in. It almost makes me understand religion. We’ve always needed something to cling to, to prop up our belief when we feel smallest. Belief that we’ll be ok, whatever that means, until we get comfortable enough to forget the question. Don’t ever forget to pack your relics; then the room would feel truly empty.

I’ve heard it said reading is like traveling,
But I disagree.
Traveling lightens and enlivens
With immediacy,
While reading, when you lift your head,
Returns you only hollowly
To a life as yet undeveloped,
Pale in contrast.

Pray for the day
you prefer your own life
to the stories that were
everything to you.

And when life is over,
we fall to seed
until the day we can live again.
‘But, when?’ cried the petal, ‘When?
And how can we set aside
the fear until then?’

I am made of time
and thought and hunger.
If I could douse the third,
The first two would grow stronger.

Tell me now, or ask yourself:
Are you in this life because you chose to be?
Or is this just where you fell?

Did you come to this town
with a reason you couldn’t ignore
Or was it where someone else’s cause dropped you before?

When you think of tomorrow,
Is it what’s already been set?
Or did you measure your life and decide what’s direct,

What’s tied to the heart of what you want to be.
If you don’t ask today - not what others expect
But what you in your hours value -

You’ll never touch anything
Beyond plastic security:
Never realize the rough-hewn world

Is lying at your feet.
But only for a moment,
Breath doesn’t last

Fall back on passive thinking, (and)
The timing’s gone past.
And life, that chance to be, is dust you can’t grasp.
.
It’s not an ideal; it’s today, and it’s gone.
What’re you going to do about it?
What *matters*??

Don’t—!
Don’t speak a word
Outside the rounds
We usually fall through

Don’t let yourself
Realize
The hours have grown few—

Put your steps
In time with mine,
Let’s wonder at the stars

And talk of life and love and risk
And things that are not ours

And overlook that day by day
Time has taken the hours away

For as they left, they left behind
A space that friendship filled

Memories that folded themselves
From the paper we tread upon

And wrote in tiny, scrawled hand script
Letters only we can read

That rise from the pages of our maps
When we wander back that way

And give the places two-fold depth
When we retrace our steps

A new world before our eyes—
An old one in our living breath

For the things we did together
Creased the maps we carried on

And directed the tumble of our lives
As we stumbled forward on

Turning us round certain corners
By instinct innumerably built

From things we did and said
When we were young and still

Hand in hand beneath the trees,
Beneath those chilly stars

Thinking only of the songs we loved
And the dreams they’d begun.

It’s this same old nonsense
I want to remember as our last—
No talk of change and parting
And commemorating things gone past

For that would steal away the chance
To have five minutes more
Of us together in this falling world
Just as we were before.

So blink away the facts of time,
Ignore its heavy power,
Steal back from it the moments few
To be we and us and ours.

They belong to you and me,
And time cannot have them.

There is an ache that resonates
In the breast that has known life—
The will to be where you are not,
The echo of pulse partly forgot...

Still, there is a danger identified
In dreaming long and vivid
Then going out on eager feet
To meet the content presented

As though the realization,
The taste that dashes hope,
Might yet replace that ideal form
With texture less than found before

And leave you not with triumph
But disappointment hollow and sore.
That danger I suppose is real,
The risk of hope bestowed,

But other outcomes too may follow
When feet are placed on stone
To chase after an idea held,
To move from pallid pace

To some more desperate footfall
That comes before the storm
That washes away from dreams
The colors unfaithfully worn

And leaves behind only what was true,
The honest shape beneath
Defined by more than your own will,
By others’ matching pressure

That lets you know your place is real
By matching even resistance
That moves you both ever ahead
Even as it redefines you.

And, if the dream you chose to hold
In carefully sheltering palms
Was placed upon some worthy sight,
Then overcome the danger

And find that what is left behind
When clouds have fled and faded,
Sweeping away the dream itself
And leaving you again untethered,

While once again immaterial,
Has only taken its name and traded,
No longer far ahead but undiscoverable within:
It belongs to you and those you knew

In matching, even weight
Becoming now a memory that you may lift and take
As you seek to find your next direction,
A stone for experience sake.

The other day, I found myself thinking of it from the perspective that, maybe, it came too easy the first time. And, the moment I thought it, I could see it spread before me—the shape of this time to come, as a path back, to where I’ve been before but forgot how to love. To a place I needed to re-learn to be able to see again. To bring new life to it by virtue of the very path itself, that would make me a different person in a different place just by taking the long way round. I still love that place. I still love those people. I am still on my way toward the heart of them.

The way I miss my apartment is like a restlessness in my bones.

When I think of it, I feel that I’ve given away something I would never have been able to get on my own—something allowed me only by the help, the trouble of others. In that way, it was more precious than I had a right to lose.

The way I miss reaching up to grab hold of the bus and swing myself into place on the tall front seat in one sure movement is enough to carry my feet forward toward whatever street I see, though there will be nothing there to meet me.

That time, in effortless motion, headed toward some sure place with the reason already decided was when I felt confident enough to think of things beyond myself. To take the energy of life that moved around me without need for my involvement and use it to stray down more creative intuition. Until I would be interrupted by a destination that would become part of the lyric.

The way I miss the absolution of being drowned in that soft pearl light, with cool blue pouring over to set us all at rest as his voice fades away...is like when you dream and forget how to breathe.

You wake confused and a little afraid, not trusting if you’ve really found yourself in safety again or are still waiting for memory to reveal the most awful part, the lost reason you gave up breath.

Even if I forget the way, I will walk until my shoes wear through to find the road that leads back to you.