Category: #2

The soul
Of the Water Cycle
Is in the eternal leveling of
Everything.

Operating in deep time,
Beyond the span of human empires,
A single drop of water spends
3,230 years in the ocean,
Then rises on the winds, floating free
For months, years, until it runs
Into the rain catcher claws of the mountain.
And inch by inch, mile by mile,
Hour by month by years by centuries….
It falls, always seeking
The ocean again,
Pulling the mountain down
With it.

The sound of a train’s horn somewhere in the valley at night

Creamy thighs flashing under a summer dress, cool and molten at the same time

The smell of coffee when the sun is just over the mountain

A robin hatched by the kitchen door, back in the yard, hunting, says ‘hello’

The look of an old door, the view out a window, an old house that shelters me

Fireflies in June that send me back to a more innocent time

Old places, ancient sorrows, hot winds across a desert far away

The way a tree moves under the hand of an invisible thing

The way the sun sometimes comes up like thunder,

The cacophony of voices– lonely, lusting, lost– thinking they’re the only ones

A dream, impossible, conjures up a past life, of running in the jungle to simplicity

Good times, lifelong loves, the joy of hearts connecting,

Seeing the ordinary for the first time, realizing it is extraordinary…..

All….

Breadcrumbs cast out on a moving stream, shining for a moment, floating on…

For everything that’s lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.

— W. B. Yeats (@DailyYeats)
February 8, 2016

Friend: “Any plans for today?”

Me: “Only one. To wake up tomorrow and not have the police after me.”

Friend: Silence.

What else could we think—
Life-soaked helplesslovers— but
Endless days of youth.

“One day things will change. One day men will change. But first, Alexander, the gods much change.”

Ordinary things be time machines,
Containing important futures.
Surprising links to before-times.

A cardboard box that held a cheap microwave,
This morning.
Taking scissors to slice along the seam of the bottom,
Pulling to break the hold the staples had,

Breaking it down…

I was 16 again, back in the storeroom
Of the S&H Green Stamps store in my hometown,
Along Main Street. There were trees along all the streets.
My first real job.
I unloaded semi-loads of stuff, boxes of stuff,
Stuff frugal people would order from catalogues,
Or walk into the store to buy with their
Carefully saved booklets of stamps.

Choosing, pushing the booklets forward like money,
Walking out with a toaster or a toolkit or a set of sheets.

So, I unloaded trucks, unpacked these things and
Put them on warehouse shelves
On the days when the trucks made deliveries
In the alley behind the store. I learned what the backsides of ordinary things looked like.

My boss taught me where things went,
(And you have a dirty mind. It was nothing like that—
Although it would have been nice to be guided
Into manhood by an older woman who cared.)
She told me what it meant to work, be there on time,
Tolerated my teenage awkwardness, trained me bit by bit,
Was firm when I failed, gentle when I tried, smiled when I needed encouragement,
Showed me how a business ran.

Talked to me about important things when things were slow,
Let me know that adults had problems, too,
Told me stories about lessons she’d learned, about
Marriage, about living. I still remember one thing,
That helped me later on. I knew it was important then, and
Held onto it somehow.

“No matter who you marry, and how much in love you are,
There will be days when you look at that person and wonder
‘what in the world did I see in them?’
The important thing is what you do next,” she said. And
Chuckled with a hint of sadness.

She did that from time to time, and laughed, at herself, at life.
Shaking her head, and getting back to work.
That’s where I learned life was in the living, moving through it.

In cardboard boxes and shelving and in the company
Of older, kinder, competent people.
I wish I could remember her name.
She was not as old as my mother, with brown hair and kind but shrewd eyes,
She taught me how to do a job, made me better, scoffed at my bullshit,
Was real and practical and beautiful.

So when the trucks came on Wednesdays,
I unloaded them, trucked boxes inside, unpacked and stocked the shelves,
But the last thing on those hard days was to take a knife,
Slice them apart and change them into flat things,
Ready to be removed, their function served.
No longer holding someone’s precious

New microwave, or tool kit or sheets made of Egyptian cotton,
Ordinary again. But so much more.

Through faint hiss of waves,
Mystery sits on the dawn
Far siren voice fades.

Ride we the curled, cresting salt;

Cling to the back of a wing-ed horse;

Drift we through warm waters

Rotten with flowers,

Float we, on a phantom, on Hope

On Grace.

©Hemmingplay 2015

You won’t live remembering starvation and
Fear of the End. Of. Everything.
You won’t know how blood spread across the world.
Twice, and spawned the thought that maybe
Too many of us just didn’t want to live any more;

I fear you may remember other things.

And you won’t remember when the world
Stared for decades at the glowing nuclear flames of Hell
Transfixed. Seduced. Blinded.
But not humbled, even after all that.

But hoping, know it’s a feeble lie, that
You won’t know that.
You won’t know the unending cruelty
Of one to one, many to many, none to one.
That last when a shell of a human is forsaken, and utterly alone.

No. Thankfully.
Not yet.
Not yet, by God.
But you may know other things that I will never see.
Blood-red morning skies filled with dust,
Diving tours to the old Key West Shoals, safari to deepest, darkest Virginia.
Ride the dunes of the Great Nebraska Desert.

Your newness makes me realize I may be the last to know
What a spring morning in the Alleghenies smelled like this morning,
How daffodil yellow hits the heart, after a long time of snow that actually ended.

Thankfully. At least for now. I want to stop the clock
For you, before you know.
To preserve some tiny spark of this
Divine innocence, this spark of the Divine.
And squeeze it into you, down to your core

So you can carry it with you always.
Until you find it and set it free again,
Always new.

Just like you.

*Whew. Sometimes this stuff just sort of bangs on the door. I’m a stenographer at best at times like that. I dunno. A friend just had a new granddaughter, I read about the Pope getting in trouble for telling the truth to people who don’t want to hear it. Again. And some hidden hatch in my damaged brain opened and combined the two into this. I regurgitate, you decide.

Oh… And a glass of wine.