Walk/ analogue

I push open the door/ walk/ analogue

is interesting/ looked up and smiled

at me/ it’s like one continuous/ crack

in the sidewalk/ looked up and smiled

at me/ analogue is interesting/ supper

was on the table/ looked up and

smiled at me/ it’s like one continuous/

crack in the sidewalk/ I pushed open

the door/ who did you see?/ looked

up and smiled at me/ it’s like one

continuous/ crack in the sidewalk/

looked up and smiled at me/ analogue

is interesting/ but the/ walk////////

Cottontails and clouds

If you know how to look, you will still see shapes and forms in the clouds. When you were younger, you likely imagined they were bunnies or faces. I am still free to use my imagination at any time, but I am more likely to see bunnies hopping down here among the dew drenched clover on solid ground. To say that the shapes and forms we see in the ice crystals above us are merely random and abstract may well reflect a failure of our imagination. But the cloud never was actually a bunny.

What is it that we do not see with our minds – the empty expanses of green lawn or blue sky? What about the blackness in between the stars, those dots of bright light that we look for - a few stars that many people throughout time have imagined could be connected into a figure of Orion the hunter holding up the bunny that would sustain his less-than-imaginary life. I don’t think that the blackness is just a void, although most of what we do actually see when we look around us – upwards and downwards - are shapes and lines and points. Our imagination changes everything. Suddenly we see something in the middle of apparent emptiness.

Vapor floats above me, drifting towards where the Little Dipper is veiled behind brilliant blue repetitions of reflections of countless photons streaming through the morning air. In a moment, sun light stabbs through spaces in green leaves of trees into eyes that I had recently rubbed free of sleep. I think that I did in fact see two bunnies, their cotton tails the color of the cloud passing over my upturned head only two hours after dawn.

I imagined that the two bounding bunnies were together, but they were bunnies alive in my vision for only a very few seconds. And I did not stare long enough up at the cloud to see more than wisps of a cottontail.

Orion was napping.

Gulls fly

Link to video of gulls flying over the Kaw River with human commentary. ~ 1 min.

The gulls flew up under the rising sun, 

shining like a thousand candles 

reflecting from their bright wings 

the prayers of the willows weeping 

over the lapsing river, 

the waning moon, 

the wind ripples gleaming 

and the dawn’s early lightening.  

All together they cry, 

Mother, may I 

fly into the morning air? 

And Simon says, 

nothing to see here, 

move along, folks.

Toad Song

Link to 1 minute YouTube recording of 'Toad Song' Toads and human recorded outdoors, live, April 6, 2016 at The Garden Pond. It sprinkled a little. PG-13.

Toad song

The poor toads don’t listen to the news on NPR,

they’re out in the weather twenty-four hours a day.

Their only sports involve swimming

in the same small garden pond each and every day.

But you can hardly say that the dumb bastards

are utterly and irrevocably unhappy,

even though they can only carry just the one tune.

There’ll be ten thousand silently swimming tadpoles

come one sweet summer’s night in June.

Link to 2013 Walk to the river post 'Toad World'  Some old thoughts.

Older steps

A young woman almost fell,

but she did not almost fall for me.

Oh, it seems the last step on the stairway was missing,

or, perhaps, there should have been just one more.

So she just stumbled, really,

never her supple and slinking body arcing

over sideways and entangling with mine.

Oh, I would have caught her in my arms -

if only I could have.

And then, instead,

when I did ask her if she were alright,

she said ‘yes’ –

and then, ‘thank you’.

So that was something.

And then she walked off up to class

as if nothing had happened

and I drifted off down to the street.

Oh, it was just as well,

I said to myself.

I wouldn’t know what to do

with a modern young woman,

anyway. And besides,

I couldn’t afford her tuition.

House call

I turned on the light and woke up the cat

just long enough for it to stretch 

and settle its head over its front paws -

eyes soon closed again.

Whether her ears perked forward,

listening, I could not tell.

The window was dark.

The house quiet.

No sound coming from outside.

There was a ringing in my ears,

I answered it.

No one was on the other end.

Then the refrigerator kicked on.

Thank goodness!

For a moment I had thought 

that I might be all alone.

Well, there was the cat,

now curled up on a pile of clothes

in the purple chair.

And if I opened the study door,

I would likely hear Dawn

softly snoring

snug as a bug

in her blankets.

Then I heard a train,

faint, in the distance.

And now I’m thinking of you

looking over my shoulder.

Why don’t you hang around here with me a little longer 

if you have nothing better to do.

I welcome the company of your memory.

You told me once or twice that you played with words

in the night long ago.

Would you like a glass of water?

There’s a little leftover pie,

apple.

The doctor gave me some news today.

She said nothing of dying.

That’s good news, right?

If I turn off the light in front of me,

I can see out of my window some of the cane,

scalpel leaves, in silhouette 

against the street lighted trees on Mass Street.

You gave me a bagful of root and stem –

that cane - a dozen years ago  –

it must actually be more than that now.

I had to finally put down a metal barrier 

to try to keep the cane out of the tomatoes

last year.

I’m thinking a BLT would be good right about now,

but the season is long over.

What do you say to some pie?

Then I think I’ll see about curling

my nose into my tail.

Quiet.

Morning in a few more hours.

Stand close

If you had stood where I had stood,

on a mostly overcast afternoon in January,

you would have easily seen the gulls

circling, white wings over white turbine-churned water,

their calls sometimes piercing through

the whine of spinning generators.

And you could hardly have missed

seeing the water flowing round the bend

and then the next bend and the next.

I did not bother to count the bends

or the circling gulls.

An island of white limestone to the left,

a red brick power plant to the right -

why was my gaze drawn to the horizon?

At that distance the bare branches

lining the banks of the Kaw River

were fuzzy swatches of gray.

And then, as if a patch of gray underneath the gray

had caught on fire, the burning color of sunlight sped

from bare branches to the streaming water into my glancing eyes.

Seconds later, not a thing appeared different -

still circling, still bending,

still whining and churning,

And no charring, no dying embers.

Except that the tips of the white winged gulls looked singed with charcoal.

One step sooner or closer and I might have been consumed.