Crepuscule With Nellie

Some lights & darks
I remember the first time I met Mimi
She didn't tell me then,
only years later,
that my face & form reminded her
of the only grandmother she had known,
this woman whose tintype
defies sharp focus


There is some connection here, although
I don't feel a physical resemblance.

Something about the eyes
morphs in the series
of lowlight shots I took

Something flows
from our lives
into other lives

We're never truly alone

This woman was Mimi's Grandpa's
younger second wife
after his first love died in childbirth
producing Mimi's wild mother

This one took care
took care
took care
took care

She took care

& left to me
some of her
tender
mystery

Periwinkle

I found this flower among other things
last Friday as I waited for a car repair
Then I read about the God Hunter
& realized such color
is related to despair


I have known certain people
whose pleasure is despair
(Despair is their pleasure
is what I meant)

They are often poets, I find,
whose eyes & ears are always hungry,
always reaching for the truth
always dreaming a New World

On the other side of Despair,
once you break through it,
is the flower of your thoughts
that returns in cycles.

Even a child can banish despair
with one rich chuckle

Even a bug can banish despair
wiggling its antenna

Even a flower only a few millimeters wide
can banish despair by holding still
for its close-up in a breeze

Do what you can find to do,
or as much as is possible to do,
which is to admit despair
which is to admit hope
which is to sing or dance
your highs & lows & middles

you are the god & the goddess

you are the Chosen One

Gears

For weeks now, I have been obsessed
with the color white
even though the acid green
of spring flows down from the sky
white, white, here, there, even the sun
behind clouds assumes a pall of white

Maybe I missed the snow
did not get my fill
of winter white

But I have learned that colors speak

They guide me to the things
that are needed

So this brilliant day spent
following mundane tasks

a new fuse drove the flower
of thoughts

to metal & to white

in my shirt brown as a wren

even as colors resound

gaudy pink beginning to shout

the blue, magnificent, subtle,
the white of clouds
every shade of gray
the spectrum

devolving

into pixels & bytes

of myself

Adrenalin

If I pay attention



only



to what is happening



NOW




All The World



appears



to be looking back



at what I perceive



to be



Me.



But it's only



my chemicals



seeing this



noticing that



& then interpreting



the Beautiful



the Happy



the Sad



all the categories



I'm looking for



are



out there



which is to say



in here



which is to say....

The Other Side

The morning I first saw the harbingers,

I had been worried about my blood pressure--

what things elevate it,

what things calm it down:

Swimming lazily forward

without a ripple

forward, turn, back,
forward, turn, back,

the air filling up & releasing,

my shoulders gliding along

all the while I think

One

One

One

One


But, oh,

how I love the ones that elevate.

They say

Come Alive!

The World is full of so many Special Opportunities

TODAY.

Welcome to the New World!



Like the dove said without saying

when it landed on the windowsill

holding a green twig,

its shadow flickering

in the watery light.