Who among us thrives
when one philosophizes
while the other feigns deep listening
Thanks for the adjunct, I said
though to myself not aloud
We were sitting together on a bench
You opining
I half listening
We two half friends
balancing between true life and mediocrity
🎵Sing it.🎵
From where you now stand
Verdant fields appear friendly
You’re ready to leap
Some days I think
I’ve learned
I don’t call it mastery
I don’t call it
Quiet, though
takes effort
Practice perseverance
Resistance restraint
Breathing at precisely the moment
my mouth opens to utter some advice
Coughing works, too
though noiseless is my preferred mode
Hold steady to the Present
I want to say to sorrowful suffering worriers
It’s no platitude
I am a true believer
Ask me
Yet here I am on this rainy Sunday
digging through a box of cassette tapes
Stories without labels
Chapters with broken plot lines
Their players lost or names misremembered
Escaped from out of necessity
Dead
And this one of a whole radio show
I sit cross legged in my present moment
listen close to my heartbeat
deciding how its rhythm jives with evidence
another me existed
in another time with another voice
Crackling through radio waves
telling stories it seems I knew well
A voice of youth and confidence
Reverence for music
I am not yet sure I want to meet her
sip any of that Was medicine
or revisit messages sent through the tunes
she played for ears she imagined might
be listening for choice cuts from the radio
Stalled here in the present past unable to say
either hello old friend or please just go away
I was tapping out a rhythm with my cutlery and my glass
He was sitting on the shady side of the road
I slipped him into a plot where it seemed he belonged
He sat there looking at three hungry dogs searching
I wondered if he was working up to something good or bad
His boots did not look like they’d been walking in the field
I decided he must be waiting on a woman named Gabrielle
He had the gaze of a patient but expectant man
I craned my neck without revealing my serious curiosity
He took off his hat and with one palm smoothed down his dark hair
I started humming to a tune I was strumming in my head
His fingers started twitching like he might be running out of time
I looked up at the waiter who was looking down at me without a smile
and in that flicker of an instant that cowboy vaporized
I tried to finish the story while my fork turned a tasteless meal
He left me there on that sunlit veranda like it was a fair deal
Study the language
What is the first line
When did your understanding begin
How many questions have you asked
Why not
Who are you now
Who were you before
What is the one purpose to which you aspire
The sky delivers notes on a messenger bird
Check your pockets
You may imagine you need a translator
You need only be still
Be
What is the message
What does a sky know anyway
More than I
More than you
A dimensional traveller
A seer
A curator of acts
A promulgator of fate
A harbinger
A collage of beauty and debris
A curtain of velvet and chain
A theatre of death metal and symphony
A canvas for reverence and horror
A chameleon of change and stasis
A prophet of mysterium tremendum
Whose eyes witness this same sky
What message do you send
When you believe no one sees
But the eyes of your intention
What is your métier
Today is the matter
Tomorrow you may know better
Forever soars with tireless wings
Winter earth
Hints of Spring
Ice sings a ripple song
There’s a crack where ice meets the sun
A star open to the temporary
A hole to a cool underworld
I pause in this moment to ponder
My invitation to the party below
And yes, am I tempted
But so do I remember
Qualifications lacking
I am only half blind
Unstable when disconnected from earth
And cannot swim
What are the chances one sweet Sunday
you’re snowshoeing in sun just passing
a girl guide troupe with raised open palms
enchanting Whiskey Jacks to alight
Coastal Range holding their mystic line
Salish Sea shimmers like raindrop diamonds
And you’re hoping these picks hold steady
Save your neck from the icy risk at the rim
You stall as you feel its presence
Silent watcher eyes your stumble through
White stallion in camouflage in plain view
In the corner of the room, a desk
On the corner of the desk, a microwave
On top of the microwave, a coffee pot
There is a lamp
There is a chair
There is a drawer and I slide it open
There are specks of something, marks of age
There is no paper
There is no need now for it I suppose
People shout their words in their own minds
Tap their concerns by rapid thumb code
Release complaints into social media clouds
Fold their lists into threads of like thinkers
Yet a pencil in hand scratches a road map
A fine point pen follows a river of story
A fury may be transformed to understanding
Fire and rant invited to reason, new passage
Some hold steady the significance of tools
Language and words yearn for expression
Without keys our luggage becomes burden
Or too much a mystery to be discovered
Tunnels of discovery dark and foreboding
We invest in explosives ensuring no passage
Pencil Notes 