Early Traveling

I was not the cool kid

nor a stalking child

just a thumb in the air

without a flower in my hair . . .

O just to get out and about

from Odessa to the Pacific

watching skies of suggestion

my travels were my wit . . .

Bridges without too much water

some nestling birds for safety

there and back, windmills in mind

I counted out steps between waterings.

I always knew my name.

Days of Sorrow

The bone-aches of age

are a reminder

that some of us are in cage.

I walk

I talk

I even strut some

but never locked by space . . .

I can run

under stars that are kinder

than a simple stage

of endless rage.

The Circle in Gold

The Circle in Gold

I'm running and walking,

grinning without talking

let the snow pile up and melt

it's the sweetest weather to smell

among the Delta Ponds trails.

Meet me for a bit of trot and walk

smile a lot but no need to talk,

make certain to wear your felt.

Gato Malo Redux

The songs I sing from my mind

don't always  tingle with rhyme

but are songs I know

my heart shouting to the wind.

Please remember this

a kiss is just a kiss

but a sigh goes beyond tomorrow.

A kiss is often followed by sorrow

or rows and rows of a beautiful today.

Have you noticed the twist & turns?

D. Parket certainly took note . . .

The yapping of birds, just a bit hasty,

she balanced as almost nasty . . .

DP thought feathered friends

somewhere beyond a pale of sense,

their yapping and scolding stirred

stirred in a soup of arbutus seeking sun.

I do not Dance Alone

If you see me strutting with no one insight it is because I see friends gone in the night. We mostly meet out of doors along roads that do not always lead to anywhere just neutral spaces of peace and quiet with room to dump our love and care where it belongs, in the arms of everyone. The strut is just an awkward dance of love.

Gee Whiz

O by golly, by geeze, by gosh
I hope it all comes out in the wash
my trousers are a mess
the bed sheet innsulated with trash

No Sonnet This

I am not only a bubble in the sky . . .
and neither are you . . .
we are trouble on the wing,
a world where we may belong.

We are people grown old
and know the syllables of youth and love.
We hear secrets that none of us knew
before we learned to skip and sing,
We cannot move down river
preferring one side or the other
nor float the cool of the Willamette
lost in the rocks along the way . . .

You will know who I am
crashing and singing;
I am no outcast except by choice
I sit alone studying Joyce . . .
more like an alley cat
than an honest polygot . . .

I strive, I strive
I am still alive.

Hills in Berkeley

If you're going to be in Berkeley
please visit our old friends . . .
don't say that I sent you,
just check if she's okay.
She needs no message from me;
I am home where the Oregon rolls.

Promise me a taste of tomorrow
and I'll sing you a ballad of today.
Yes, yesterday is probably gone
but we sing the simplest of songs,
shouting out as much love as we know.
I am home where the Oregon rolls.

We will sing, dance, cry and play
The Little Red Hen was our friend.

I have Brothers and Sisters

I ain't fast enough typing to know what I meant yesterday. Eight-balls careen from every corner before my polka stick strikes a tonic chord. I am mostly a swirling idiot of motion with too much emotion attempting to learn tomorrow's trick. I have marched in step and I have paused after refreshment without learning shtick about the mumbling bumbling moment of brethren smiling and waving from passing flagged ships. The distance of their salutes and smiles was not surprising; sun to starboard and their salutes to port was prize enough.

From an old Conversation with an older Friend

A: Life is holding your guts in your hands. Dripping a little. Life is an undoing of yourself, a letting go with both hands. Otherwise, you exist. Nothing else. Like a rock exists. Perhaps someone will come along and go chip chip. Maybe you'll sparkle and become a ring setting, but beauty is not what life is about. Beauty is incidental, Living creates beauty - not the reverse.

B: You make it sound mad. Absurd. Maybe even almost life perverted.

A. Yes! Yes! Madness is part of life. And absurdity is part of the madness. Perversion? It's an artificial word. A moral word. But within its made-up context, okay, maybe. You decide.