How things remind
Just when I let my guard down.
Just when the joy of sharing seemed within sight.
Just when I thought I exhaled.
Just when I tried to get everything right.
Just when I gave a musical stranger a handout.
Just when I felt life was aligned.
Just when I thought I knew.
Just when all that I had planned I finished.
Just when I got punched in the gut.
Reminders come up hard and fast like the
car not seen on the freeway that comes
up out of nowhere to spin you around
and the seconds as you spin at sixty miles
per hour bringing up the nickelodeon images
of people you love and you realize that
Just when you think you can rest you cannot.
Nothing else
When in the mornings bathed in fog
we hear the horn blow, dream distant
horizon begging us to adventure:
come and go.
Ishmael, oh Ishmael, the sea waves
gently brush along the barnacled masts
buried in the harbor keeping
ships safe at bay.
“Nothing else is holding us here,” she
said. And right she is. Who now
needs us as they had before?
No one I can now recall.
Ishmael, oh Ishmael, why did we wait
long to hear the siren of your call?
Yet, we tarry no more. Bags ready.
A farewell song plays on.
Iberian coasts, Don Quixote dusty
plains, cathedrals, and mosques,
colors of all kinds, greet our
fog-lifted eyes this morn.
Ishmael, oh Ishmael, the seas have
parted. Who we were is now a
small part of who we are. Taking
to sea: new soul, new heart.
Just Love
An elongated, broad, and wide bridge of fluttering thoughts
mashed together, with fork tine marks, childlike in their
playful crisscross.
I saw the spectrum of green-yellow-blue that is the mindful
street sign that always welcomes me into my favorite dreams
and then ochre (deep
and earthy) sets a ground swell of emanating ancestral
figures who listen and ask just to see like Lincoln
in the Bardo. They simply
want to remember a taste of the being that used
to be and the whale sounds start to bellow out of
my expanding chest
and I breathe deep and hollow like a breath oar
that is stroking through the respiratory sea that
keeps me alive and
I slumber, yawn, and cry because it is too beautiful
and questions are tossed aside as the ancestors
counsel, “They don’t matter.”
The waves of cold wash around me. I see the large
bouncing balloons shaped like people I’ve known
who have floated away
light and no longer grounded by the weight of their
lives and they take with them their worries and scatter
them across the darken
night star-populated sky. This worry went to Venus.
This worry went to Mars. This worry will find a large space
on Jupiter. And the ancestors
hum in a chorus “So little matters.” And then they chant
Just love. Just love. Just Love. Just Love. Just Love. Just love.
Just Love. Just Love. Just Love.
When the road gets weary
When the road gets weary, my friend
Stop and fill the cistern again.
Fill it with the fuel of the future or
The remains of the past.
Weary is a load laden with things
We wished for and thought we
Deserved when in fact we lost
Sight of what is worth.
A road on which you stumble,
Almost tumble is begging for
A pack to be unloaded and
Navigation redreamed.
Weary is a temporary state
For most, but for some it is
An existential graveyard and
For those we pray.
You, my friend, have only
Fallen weary and are lost with
Out a song for a short while
And now must change.
For a weary soul is not a
Way to be alive. For a weary
Mind is never kind and works
To drive you mad.
Weary though you be, fight on.
Weary though you be, move on.
Weary though you be, live on.
Be weary no more.
You can hear my words but only
Your eyes can lead you away from
Your sad state. See what you
Have not seen before.
Who was it in rhythm and dance
Said if a man cannot dance do not
Give him a sword? A weary man
Needs a sword for sure.
You must battle demons of your
Own design and since you birthed
Them only you can see to their
Rightful demise.
Demons are needed to create
Fright and pain, but when prayers
Are answered then they must be
Made to move on.
The twinkle in your eye tells me
That you can see. Grab it! Savor
It! The memory of it there! Ah,
Happy or content may you be!
Opening Day
The sun is out. Not a threat of
a rain-out in sight. You were
worried yesterday ‘cause the
clouds could not stop crying,
crying all day long like even
they missed the sun.
Today, it looks like what
Opening Day is supposed to
look. Blue sky up until the
white vapor starts. And a jet
is leaving its trailing white
plume tagging to its tail
as it sails along.
The itch is crawling up to
to your mitt hand and you
squeeze the glove that’s
been with you since you
were young and believed
you could be an all-star
but you were just all
right. That’s all.
Your pals will be there and
the lights will be on and a
guy they say is the best
ever will be on the mound
better than a young Babe
Ruth, they say. But he is
Japanese. Well, well.
It’s Opening Day! Politics
be damned! A kid again
without a worry. And not
caring who wins or loses.
You will be where you belong.
Can’t wait to hear the call:
Time to Play Ball!