Yesterday, and now Today

It's tough times.
We ain't stepping down.
Not sure where to step?
just avoid the shit if you can,
but keep your head up and smile on
and treat people like people.

When you can, offer a helping hand,
and know times have been tougher . . .
times have been way fuckin' tougher
and people did not always step up
but just waded through shit like it was normal.
Wading through shit is not normal.

Avoid the shit by stepping to the front
say hello offer your hand or shoulder to lean on.
Don't tread through shit if you can avoid it.
Help friends who feel threatened or pushed.
There's no rush, just do it now.
Reach out. There is our total world around us.

Early Days

I admit very little. I do admit some few homes and each, different. Many voices calling me toward home.
I am never homeless, nor ever, maybe, quite at home . . . I am most at home when I slow to stop and sup on local cuisine.
I eat, from post-war 1943 bananas in Klamath Falls, Oregon to crawfish from ditches in Archer County, Texas.
I scrap and scrape the perch from Archer City Lake to mingle with the backyard corn and scrawny tomatoes.
I was a child of some plenty, with no electricity nor flush; a puppy among mad dogs feeding their pups.
It seemed to be always them or us.

II.
I remember turnips, carrots, potatoes and even varieties of other fragile greens
with bullfrog or catfish, washed, scrubbed and chopped into something worth eating
and trading bites at the table to see who grabbed the more delicious bites
riding the school bus back from Antelope, Texas and Barbara Allen cutting strips of my hair while I pretended to sleep but dreamed, totally awake, of her fingers clipping my salted hair
I was not hungry, angry, ignored nor aware that many people spent their lives mostly afraid and without food
I was mostly poor but sitting on the top side of a world tilted on its side.

We may sit a while longer

We may sit, yet a little while,
together, beneath spring and all
or walk against the cold air,
smiling, culling similar stones.

Let love continue dormant then,
we can move and smile another day,
I, through blackened caves, you,
sweet you, from above some treeline.

Last Autumn again

In autumn darkness
a warmless wind edged
with exploratory fingers
of ice touches our leaves
to the quick; but the tree lives
(it is important to remember
that some of us live)
to leave again.

Grandfather, do you remember
how you said satan had his fingers
curled softly
around the crest of your heart?
how our hands fluttered
like lost butterflies
before settling cold and solid
among the fingers of our hands?

Dry, brittle with color as any autumn,
your leaves are now stacked
and burned with some ceremony;
Your shadow casts long among our trees
and we stand to tend the slowing flame
beside the tree without leaves.

Strains of Life

Proprietors of "the"
have little truck with me;
hawkers of "a" and "an"
furnish better measuring sand.

A bird sang in a tree,
far off. My name repeated
on a tongue of the wind.
I dosed in a drowsing wood;
who invented should?

A strain of needy seeds
swaying beneath me;
who knows such need
better than you, me
and our flowering weeds?

walk and saunter

I can walk; I can saunter.
I can go somewhere or wander.
At my age just moving is my goal,
additional benefits are pure gold.

Guaranteed Together Again

I am almost puzzled
finding circles
around my head
and so many freckles
where I once wore a beard.

The silly willies of my dog licking my face
and laughing as she licks at freckles
searching for where I once wore a beard.

It's the silliest thing I've heard
and the damn dog still licking my face.
It keeps us all together.

Rewrites are important in love poems

Her womanly anatomy is something more
than mere presence in this present world.
She is an epidermal graveyard of memory,
blemished with life and accidental sharpness,
by rubber bands, pencil lead, angry hands
and hands that share a roughness
of horseplay that gentled to foreplay.
Her spinal curvature is itself historical:
childish pranks and Jersey roller skates,
late night lamp reading through long waits
and longer curiosities.
Forgotten animosities sit mostly hidden in her eyes,
forgotten fear almost spills from her mouth,
even her ears were pierced to prove some adult status.

She lies reading, curled across my back
and over and under my legs.
She does not fully realize that I see secrets
beyond old lovers' thighs.
I see beyond, I see into her mother's want
and see the walls of the womb
from which she has come.
She is the jewel of my life,
the bit of string tied to my heart.

toll roads and goal roads

I can walk; I can saunter.
I can go somewhere or wander.
At my age just moving is my goal,
additional benefits are pure gold.

Walking down a Street

I am mostly unaware:
stumbling, tripping, getting up to walk some more.

You are mostly badge:
chasing, hitting, laughing with a band of uniformed friends.

We went to school together:
hanging out, banging about, eating lunch from home.

We may end on the same hearse:
stretched out, no heartbeats, unaware of who's walking where.

Bumped Into

I am as full of me as you are of you.
It may not be important; it is just what we do.

I was never bumped into in Prague nor in Paris.
Indeed, I have not been bumped into even in Eugene.
Mostly we were strangers who smiled without meeting;
we were not always judging some party or side of a street.
We moved, asked direction, and gossiped some meme;
we were bumped, ignored, glared at, or winked at as at home.
I am filled enough of you and you are filled enough of me
that we touch and decide to travel to Paris and Prague
but we never expected to make it all the way to Eugene.

Please keep the home fires burning

I know where I'm headed. I'm solid enough.
But I am not certain that you understand:
I am circling out beyond our universe,
perhaps an atom or two at a time
and will circle more worlds than now exist
to find some alternate points of rest.
I may not return in time for Easter.