You can wait

 

You can wait all morning

for someone to come.

They never promised,

only hinted,

but you frittered away

a hour or two.

Then you put a note

on the front door

that said, ‘in back.’

The paint can came out

and was opened,

brush dipped and spreading

white on white.

Nearing noon

and you’re pounding

the lid tight,

but too soon yet for lunch.

Nothing better to do.

You look with a careful eye

at the peeling front railing.

Or at the zinnias over the side,

splattered so much red, orange, and pink.

Soon will come the end of the summer,

and maybe they will come by for some cut flowers.

And so maybe tomorrow you will

tackle the dusty edges of the floors,

a corner or two.

Walk to the river

Text:

I walk to the river nearly every day. From my house, past Central Middle School, down an alley and through South Park. Then there’s about four blocks of downtown Mass Street. If I simply walk this route, it takes about half an hour to reach the Kaw River bridge. Then I cross, pausing for a moment, over and near the river, and then I head back home the way I came.

But there is more to it than that. I try to walk with my eyes open. I listen. I think about what I am experiencing and what it means. Not always. Often it’s simply one foot in front of the other and who knows where my mind has gone off to. And sometimes something more happens within the intersection of where my actual body is walking in space and time and also where my mind is. Sometimes within the space of a half step – more happens in that moment of meeting than during the other roughly 3 miles of my normal walk.

I walk roughly the same path but of course the light and the weather changes. Plants go through their cycles. People are not so much a blur as they are something like an approaching flash of headlights in my eyes. And then they’re gone. But not all of them. Some images remain. And some people settle into a place in my mind over time.

Consider the other elements too. I start to place some of them the way have tucked the blue glass tiles on the Ranjbar building or the Roosevelt Fountain in South Park into cubbyholes in my head. And some of the things that I have often walked past - failing to hardly notice them a hundred times or more - suddenly they almost magically appear.

It’s only a relatively short walk. There are pauses, detours. It’s an easy walk, easily distracting.

What is it that I hope will happen? It is usually enough to get some exercise, some fresh air, to see and hear the world. I feel the place. I feel the people. I feel myself, alive, marking one foot in front of the other.

And sometimes it’s as if all of time and space glance through me, although surely it’s only small portions of each, but still more - considerably more - than I might have anticipated. Rarely does this moment extend very long for very far, but sometimes it lingers.

Over the days and months it’s as if I have walked through immaterial mists. Memories, some might say. I have some few simple words which I try to write down based upon my walking. Language is a way to try to keep in a pocket of our consciousness portions of what we have lived - what has mattered to us.

Here’s a poem – I sometimes prefer to call them word sketches – that says once again part of what I have just said here.

Some time when I walk

            across the Kaw River Bridge

The sky is reflected in the river.

Some time it is only the sky

            reflected in the river.

Words and poetry do not fail me

They are simply not enough

They neither start

            what I have to say

Nor do they finish.

They are a snag

            to hold on to

                        for a moment

                                    for my mind to catch

                                                a breath

            as the river draws

                        my body ever down

                                    stream.

The clarity of night

You can listen to a reading of 'The clarity of night,'
or read the text.

'All of the above' is an option.

Text:

For a moment everything came clear. I was full and emptied all at once. It might have been love. It might have been joy. It might have been a pang like a blade of star light. But there isn’t one word. There is this instead.

I step down wooden steps in the night time. The wood has been worn up through the gray paint from frequent passing. My feet soon feel the gaps between the bricks on the patio. Weeds grow up green through red rectangles.

But the bricks are not the color of the red tulips, fading, unseen in the dark next to the garage that I scraped and painted white last summer. It was nearly fall then. And green is not simply the color of one leaf.

More of all of this is in my recollection than what I can feel in my mind through the soles of my feet. My eyes have turned upwards to the stars.

The air is heavy with moisture, droplets too minute for my eyes to measure. The Dipper has tumbled over so far overhead that only my skin can feel what has been poured out. The air is clear and moist. Most stars are over water and under foot.

And with only a few more steps, I will be knee deep in peonies. The ground was frozen earth only last week, but the time only makes sense if you could hold it like a tulip.

Now in the night, the blossoms, remembered white, petals thin and fleshy, not like tissue or silk, but tonight they are more like fat, leaf-wrapped blueberries. I can only feel in my memory last year’s uncrushed blooms against my knees.

And then in my mind, walking across the intersection on the other side of Mass street, it might have been at Eighth, a young woman steps lively. We had never met. We never will.

She might have been with someone. She might have just stepped off of the curb onto the pavement. She was hardly even then more than a girl in bright sunlight.

And all that I can recall is that her dark socks - they might have been navy - came up and over her knees. And then that her thin legs were pale bare.

In the morning everything will be different.

A brown bunny will nibble at the green clover. A fuzzy yellow bumble bee will alight on a damp peony bud. The bricks would be cool to the touch – if I touched them. And the sky might be blue with some white.

And I will wonder where everything went and I will long for just one more moment like the moment I remembered so long ago - only last night in the dark when everything came clear - for just a moment.

Admission of inconsequence

Every now then I think

that I should write about something

of more moment –

of passion or drama or tragedy.

But I can’t seem to see more than I see.

The color of red plums,

the taste of cold milk,

a light breeze on my forearm.

Oh, things do get bigger than this for me.

When I think of you, for example.

It takes but a heartbeat

and for me the earth moves,

but that hyperbole really won’t much do.

At most there might be a tremor in my eye, a tear.

I supposed that I have some difficulty

with telling the whole truth,

although my intent is usually in the right direction.

And drama and tragedy still lurk,

though others will describe things in their way.

I don’t believe that my passion is so small.

I only tend to speak of smaller things

and from my close perspective these things are all –

sometimes more – than I can take in.

So I will continue to look at what moves me.

I take to heart the old advice:

write about what you know.

Talk - Don't talk

Sometimes the universe seems to be speaking to you.

Sometimes it’s just the wind.

The leaves on the trees are only green,

catching air and slipping back and forth

against the sky blue sky.

My shoes are too short.

My toes are too long.

My eyes are heavy from lack of sleep.

A barista made me an omelet

with bacon and tomatoes and raw onion.

There was cheese, of course.

Words and questions and banter

filled the air at Aimee’s.

My butt grew tired,

I could hardly recall

if anything meaningful had been spoken.

But with a smile from a young woman,

I pulled the door.

The sun was hot.

The breeze was fresh.

Sometimes the universe has nothing to say,

but a look will carry you home.

Brilliant dream reflections

 

The astonishing image in my dream was something like when the angle is just right and the sunlight reflects off the ripples in the pond up into the shaded eaves of my house.

That dazzling dream image has never been seen anywhere outside my sleeping mind and it has now faded away - never, for all time, to be seen again.

For all of that, what I have on occasion glimpsed underneath my eaves will be seldom seen, even through my own awakened eyes.

Books make the man

These books are like old family photographs. They represent my heritage. 
The origin and development of my thoughts and beliefs are shelved here. 

These are less my ancestors,

but more like recent snapshots of people that I know.

And these are more like my current friends and acquaintances
waiting for me by my reading chair.

You can’t always tell a book by its cover, 

but the covers of my books will tell you a lot about who I am.

Click here for a Link to an essay on the books that have mattered to me. First posted on the 'Egg creme' blog site in December 2013. 

At some point I should make a poetry addendum - I'd start with T. S. Eliot - especially 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.' Here's a Youtube link - a little rough - of me reading an essay and the 'Prufrock' poem - about 18 minutes altogether.