Thursday, June 27, 2013

The Prairie at Prairie Park in June



The other evening, I realized I had never looked at prairie over time the way I have the Kaw River or even Downtown Lawrence, for example. As the old established prairie at Prairie Park revealed, the impression that a well-balanced prairie is a grassy place clearly has a lot to do with 'when' you look as well as 'where.' On the other hand, I had never seen such a profusion of wild flowers as I did on the last Tuesday in June of this year.

I shouldn't be surprised that seeing and understanding any particular thing takes time and attention. Or that I am inclined to forget that basic truth in various instances. My regular walks have been invaluable in sharpening my awareness. But my ignorance about prairie systems remains. I do know a few things, but my primary advantage over people who routinely fail to notice almost everything is that when I saw that bit of prairie with my mindset, I was at least able to recognize my ignorance. Time and attention in this area would still be required to change my level of understanding of prairies.


I hope to make it to Prairie Park more often, but I like my current routine. Everyone chooses their own places that matter to them. Many people don't realize that the primary place they have chosen is in front of a screen (he said, as he typed those words). But I meant 'screen' as their primary window on the world. Second choice is their car window.

I see this as a serious underlying problem in modern culture. It's not just that people have a fundamental lack of awareness of nature, most barely understand the human-made environment around them - the ecology of infrastructure, for example.

I won't do more than state my hypothesis, but perhaps this lack of primary empirical perception in so many people is at the root of our culture's ready gullibility in political/social matters.

All that from less than an hour of walking through prairie.






Thursday, June 20, 2013

Farmer's Market


Spin the tangle into the thread of memory
like the woman in the rainbow bonnet
at Cottin’s Farmers Market
on the sixth day
of the sixth month.

And buy a shaken lemonade
from the dark skinned woman
who also sells bulging bags of pork skins.

And talk to the man under his hat
from Vinland Valley Nursery
about the weather
as you overlook his potted plants.

And I said,
it is good.

I didn’t create any of it,
the lemons,
the sugar
or the hands
who shook it all with the ice.

But on the sixth day,
I drank that woman’s lemonade,
and it was very good.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Yesterday's nail



The earth turns,
erasing yesterday.
Even if a mark was made,
new meaning must be attached.
We cannot breathe
into our minds
the pure air of dawn’s line.
We must put on the torn shirt,
scuff the boots,
perhaps bark a knuckle.
Timber felled.
Planed boards joined.
A fumbled nail falls though
the cracks.
This effort will hold off
sun and rain
for a turn,
but what is done
will be undone.
And more insidious,
yet for our benefit,
what we felt when we drove
home the first nail
must be renewed.
And yet we stretch the moments
we build,
and the earth turns again
and spills the light into darkness.
Yesterday emptied,
to be filled again.
A steel nail,
now a vapor.
When we close our eyes,
something is slipping away.
When we open them,
yesterday is gone.
and we heft a hammer,
anew.

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Today it was my birthday



I like to see girls in gray sweatshirts
and brightly colored nylon shorts,
in sneakers and dark socks,
their bare knees kicking in the air,
a pony tail or two bouncing,
the girls chattering and laughing
amongst themselves
as they walk and skip and dance
along the sidewalk.

I watched them as I walked up
from the side in South Park.
Then they were ahead of me on the sidewalk,
heading toward downtown.
And in spite of their youth,
actually because of it,
they were soon behind me.

Is it perverse at my age,
or is it our age that is perverse?
As I walked ahead,
I heard them singing
a very old song,
‘Even though I ain’t got money,
I’m so in love with you, honey,’
and I wished with all my heart
that I could have turned for a moment
and sung along with them
and not have them run away.

They don’t need to know,
and I won’t tell them:
this old man sung along with that song
long before they were born.
But I like to see girls in gray sweatshirts.