the future – HemmingPlay

October 6, 2020October 7, 2020

Home

I can’t go home, not yet.
Home is still moving,
When it stops, maybe I’ll rejoin it.

But this moment is real;
I can feel your lips,
and join you with
such easy passion.
I know the heat, the
weight, the wetness of you
In the dark,
or pressed against me
at a dock, oblivious
to jealous eyes,
saying a goodbye,
wordlessly telling
me what feels right.
Sensing it would not last.
My separateness
melts in the natural
grace of you.

Stay with me a while, dancer.
For these precious moments.
Let’s walk on the beach,
look in the sands for courage,
and connections,
and partings.
We’ll stroll to breakfast
just after dawn,
sit in the temporary
coolness, watching
the unworldly turquoise
of the sea
knowing the tide
always ebbs,
but, with luck, comes again.

December 29, 2016December 29, 2016

Darkness and Light

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What is “Dark Matter?”
No one’s ever been able to catch any
in a quart canning jar, as we did as kids
in the summer nights with lightening bugs.

As nearly as my math-less writer’s brain can tell,
it is the power of something unseen, deduced only
by observed gravitational effects on stars, on galaxies.

Something very big, but still a guess, in other words.
Subject to experimentation. Grants. Scholarly papers.

Astrophysicists say this is important, which may be true;
I also suspect sometimes they’ve been smoking weed up
there on the high, cold mountain outside the
telescope house, huddled around campfires,
telling math jokes and giggling, high as fuck.

Continue reading “Darkness and Light”

September 24, 2016October 4, 2016

Walnuts or Roses?

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Note: The nice people @Spill_words have republished this today.
http://spillwords.com/walnuts-or-roses/

When you’ve been together as long as we have—
the grown children are off making their own mistakes,
and careers have been dropped like bad habits—
the arguments tend to be about basic things.
We no longer tolerate easy answers.

Just the hard ones, such as those about walnuts and flowers.

One of you wants to plant the trees everywhere,
Knowing they’ll grow 100 feet high, and three across.
Their fruit is good, and their wood makes sublime furniture.
This all comes with foresight and patience.
Remembering a father saying one day, a few years before he died,
“Plant a walnut tree and generations will thank you.”

Continue reading “Walnuts or Roses?”

August 31, 2016June 4, 2017

This Old House

Front Door

This old house is made of wood and paint and memories, but
Lately, the sense that our time here will end has hovered on my shoulder,
A faint melancholy of knowing that one day I will walk out one last time,
Hand the keys to someone who won’t know any of it.

That spot in the dining room wall where a teenage
Tantrum left a divot in the plaster from a chair tossed in anger.
Where the same child discovered the internet, found a girl
In California and talked up a huge long-distance phone bill.

Where B&B guests gathered from around the world
To chat at the table over Bismarks and sausages and coffee on
Their brief swing through this old house, and our lives.

Continue reading “This Old House”

August 7, 2016

Branches and Roots

Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots.

~ Rumi

July 29, 2016August 2, 2016

No Visible Means of Support

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When we grow skeptical of the comfortable

And slip under the velvet ropes of fear

sliding out over darker waters,

But still afraid, that’s when we grow.

Three times three times three,

Nine times nine times nine,

These are the inexorable multipliers of change.

There is no way to connect the dots looking ahead.

We can only connect them by looking back

At our footsteps in the shifting sands.

Our timid selves, still digging their toes in the sand and calling to us,

Seem safe, but choosing safety only is always a kind of death.

But…. It looks so much better there on shore.

But those who stay on the shore will never know the thrill,

Out on the deep waters where there is no bottom,

Where we realize that we’re not sinking, even though

We cannot yet see a visible means of support.

July 27, 2016

The One You Feed

wolf

A Cherokee fable:
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between 2 “wolves” inside us all.

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

July 13, 2016July 13, 2016

Old Places

RoyalSt:Cornstalk House NOLA

#amwriting

I feel most comfortable in old, shabby places.
Kindred spirits, peeling paint, strategic sagging.
I wonder if they knew what was coming.
Neither do I.