Good question

What do these colors mean?

I am walking along the sidewalk as I always do. Massachusetts Street. Downtown Lawrence, Kansas. The sun is lowering in the southwest. It’s a wintering sun. The red brick wall of the Journal-World is nearly the color of glowing embers, but not quite. The wall is the color of that particular red brick reflecting the fire of the angled sun.

Yet it seems that it is more than that. How can that be? The bricks are the color of clay from the earth, hardened in fire. The sun’s ray’s are reddened by the extra length they have traveled through the atmosphere. And still there’s a glowing of a color not seen at other times.

But I have no complaint about the color of that wall in the high afternoon in the middle of the hottest summer day. Or its color on a gray day with rain washing down its sides. The color of that red brick wall varies and I change as well, almost imperceptibly. So is that what the colors mean?

And yet I seem to prefer that reflecting fire color. Perhaps more because I have seen that wall in other light, in other seasons and so I can notice how it appears in this moment. But why should I care?

I walk along these storefronts nearly every day. I see the sidewalks empty and full of people. The earth moves and the sun appears to move, from east to west, higher in the sky and lower with the seasons. Clouds or not. All these things appear in front of my eyes. Why should the colors matter?

And all the days and hours and minutes that I walk past that wall and the others, if coincidence occurs, a shadow line appears - the line from the edge of the storefronts on the western side of the street divides the wall across the way into the glowing upper portion from the darker lower one. 

And all these other colors as well, up and down the street, are interesting in their own way.

This is all a commonplace. Often I barely fail to notice all these colors in their profusion, the sky also appearing above in its shades of blue and gray and white and sometime blazes of fiery colors spread out like a flame. Or is it the other way around? And yet sometimes I see some of these many colors in their patterns and textures and in a certain light, and sometimes it seems to matter very much to me.

Evolutionary biology explains a great deal for me, but this is not what my ancestors saw walking along the savannah. What manner of species have we humans become that the colors I see walking along Mass Street mean something to me sometimes?

I’m looking for an answer but not one you might give me. I’m searching for an answer I might find for myself. It’s sometimes something to do as I walk along. This is after all only my small, occasional question, not even a preoccupation. But as the sun appears to go down behind the curve of this earth, I’m beginning to suspect I may not find all of the answers to what all of the colors mean.

I do like to see that one fire-reflecting-from-red-brick color, and several other colors as well. It has been something to see.

Only more leaves

If the night is dark,

the clouds obscuring the moon and the stars,

the streetlights distant at either end of the block,

and leaves have fallen,

and rain has fallen,

and more leaves have fallen,

you will feel and hear the difference.

Unless, of course,

you never felt anything

when fall came before,

the leaves crisp and crackling,

kicking up like fallen leaves,

not quite finished with their game,

or rattling unseen down the street

before the wind can corner them,

or crunching underfoot

perhaps like boxes of bran flakes with no milk.

It matters not,

the leaves are on their way to compost,

and one day merely making more leaves.

I leaned in

I leaned over the sink

and was struck

full in the face,

really, it was more

a glancing blow,

no really,

a warm caress,

so unexpected

that I nearly ducked

my head,

well, I dodged,

and then I leaned in.

It was only the winter sun,

looking in,

only to touch my face,

only to remind me

of its concern.

I left the dishes

and ran off with the sun.

Really, we walked together,

silent, warm against the cold,

remembering old times.

Engaged

The river hurries down the channel,

weekend rain

made urgent.

The sea will be waiting

all the same.

But today she shall not dally,

full she spreads the fabric of her gown,

and she hastens,

not once looking back.

Her train of sticks,

drifting in curls

along the edges

will come along in time.

The river hurries down the channel

to meet the sea in New Orleans

where they will surely be wed

under a new moon.

Dreary Day

Who would have thought?

I overlooked what you were saying to me.

I walked as I often do,

pausing to look, to capture colors and shapes.

And then, much later, I overhear

what the passing wind 

in the colored leaves

is repeating to no one,

and although I am walking alone,

you are near.

And after a long mile,

the river was as gray as it ever could be,

the reflected sky dull and dreary.

I stopped at the Gaslight for a cold beer

and for warmth.

And this is what I wrote:

Robert Frost wrote that some say the world 

will end in fire

some say in ice,

But who would have thought it would end like this? 

Dreary skies, brilliant colors,

remnants only and letting go. 

I remembered you every step of the way,

soggy leaves underfoot and reflected tail lights.

Nothing to look forward to

but trackless white.

Might we still make angels together,

bury our faces in ice and pray for fire?

Might love tilt toward a lengthening day 

again?

I sipped again and paused to listen

to faces as they spoke,

such colors and shapes I could not hope

to capture,

brilliant remnants of other lives.

And this is what I wrote:

Robert Frost wrote that some say the world 

will end in fire

some say in ice,

But who would have thought it would end like this?

Each step closer to the last,

the sky dreary, pavement wet,

brilliant color, here and there,

but the remnants only of life

and falling fast.

I thought of you,

how could I not,

but it was drizzle spitting on my cheeks.

Wrapped deep in cloud,

the sun never looked, 

never thought to return.

Why should it?

I had squandered my youth,

my middle age, and now I am old.

It’s not so very bitter,

but now I look forward

to trackless white.

But if you would come with me,

make angels together,

bury our faces in ice

and pray for fire,

perhaps our love would rise

again.

I zippered up and recrossed the bridge,

dusk slowly settling in.

A meter maid whose face I knew

reminded me that I would get wet.

Drizzle, light,

but not too far to home,

the night nearly arrived.

I toweled my head

and went into the kitchen to cut

an onion for the frying pan.

But it’s all so obvious, words and pictures,

hardly worth mentioning.

But there were moments

of joy in the dying 

and lingering moments,

and my wife and I had our supper

and I had my heart and soul.

And the Thai braised chicken needed

a little more chili pepper.

All photos but the last taken one dreary day in November. The writing, mostly of a piece. Words and pictures are really separate strands but they are from the same walk.
Click on a photo for a larger-sized slide show.

Mr. Harley or Mr. Davidson, I presume

Astride the engine,

he rounded the corner,

the putt-putt just enough

to keep it turning over.

Squinting into the sun,

a cigarette gripped in tight smile

and a rag tied round his scalp,

he held out his hand

in a half-wave,

recognizing his audience

as he passed by.

Pedestrian, I,

the jangle of keys

against thigh,

loose pocket,

every step just far enough forward

to keep from falling over.

Squinting into the sun,

my graying head uncovered,

I returned a half-smile.

Strangers but for this,

we are two of a kind.

He rides on wheels,

I on the soles of my shoes.

Too old to be boys,

too young to stay still.

But when we go,

we will go easy.

A bit about the bookend poems

The truth is, I make stuff up. Well, not really. Much of what I write about is real enough. I mean, I see people and places – moments happen near enough to my attention that the stuff of life is hard for me to miss if I am watching at all. But when I try to get some of all of that stuff down, well that’s when something else happens – a little selecting and shaping.

So here’s a bit about the bookends. I’ll assume this interests you, although the likelihood is that many of you would be more interested in a piano falling from a great height. But what do I know? I haven’t said what I want to say yet. Read on if you want to.

I wrote the first poem mostly because I was sitting on a bench making notes about something or other. It was a beautiful day as beautiful days go. The sun was in my line of sight. Buildings were their shapes and colors. People walked past on the sidewalk. And then a friend came out of the door in front of me. It had not occurred to me that that might happen, although I knew she worked up at the top of those stairs. But it was relatively early in the afternoon. And so on. And then, as it says in the poem, a couple of days later I made a poem out of some of my recollections.

Then, the evening after mostly finishing the first poem, I was walking downtown. Again the weather was a certain kind of perfection – a very mild mid-October. Two friends were having dinner outside on the patio of what is now Merchants. I got invited around for dessert and we were having a perfectly fine evening talking and laughing, when the realization that tomorrow would come crossed into our awareness. The young woman with the rosemary scented hair mentioned in the poem walked by. Somebody pointed out the crescent moon that was about to set behind the very buildings which only I had realized had been the very setting for the moment that occurred earlier in the week that had become important enough to me so that I had written something about it.

So now I hope some clarity comes of all this – assuming you have also read the two poems which have emerged into the universe with my help from within the space of a quarter block and  within the time of about three or four days. Why not say that they are bookend poems?

But here’s the question. How much of this meaning did I create and how much did I simply reveal? And here’s the big one: is there any meaning that emerges from these poems for any readers – for people who were not in those times and places? How does that work?

I recently finished a book by a writer named David George Haskell called ‘The Unseen Forest.’ He described his experiences and the thoughts that came out of his practice of going to the same spot in an old growth forest in Tennessee over the course of a year. He succeeding in putting what mattered to him into words and thereby he managed to transmit some of his meaning to me. Many, many writers have done that for me. Might I have done the same?

Woops, there comes my bus. Must leave these questions to dangle.

The bookend poems

are the two previous  posts,

if you missed the fb introductions.