A Not Quite Winter Poem

This is a 15 minute poem, an idea from this intriguing blog.

A Cold Walk at the Lake

The Air is dry and no white condensation

billows out of our mouths as we talk

Hunched in our layers

trudging at first

then as we find the warm place

in our stride

we able to almost ignore

the numbness of our extremities

At the end of the circle

around the darkening water

two owls speak

gentle penetrating questions

as the shadows fill up

the empty spaces in what is

left of the day.

Sunday Walk at Dusk

I walk back from the asphalt of the school playground

where I picked up a piece of wood

in the shape of a tree thought

blown from above in the wind

of  two nights ago.

I walk along the sidewalk home thinking

someone might mistake this branch for a gun

in the headlight glare.

so I carry it loosely swinging by two fingers

pointing the delicate web of lichen into the headlight

to reflect pale green above the gray silver bark.

maybe they see me and think

about the darkness that I am not.

maybe they only see me vaguely with no comprehension

simply a blank silhouette against the dark shadow trees

and the sky holding the last of the day’s blue around the edges of

oncoming clouds.

Maybe they see me and think.

 

 

 

I don’t do enough walking at night. It is strange how it makes me feel younger, a little adventurous, but not in danger.  My mind opens up in different ways when I walk in the dark. I become much less a visual creature and stretch out more with my thoughts, trusting my feet to fall right.

Before my walk I was feeling a bit harassed by thoughts of things I wanted to get done before my weekend comes to a close. Now I feel calmly ready to get what I can done. And I will let tomorrow take care of itself.

Another Year, Another Journal, and a Dream Poem

The year contained in this journal has been like last of a long struggle. I have finally reached surface from the dark, chill of abyssal depths. I am still adjusting to the light and air, but things are coming into focus. I have a new job that allows me to be an effective educator which reduces my stress and lets me be more positive and balanced in my creative moments. I am, as usual and forever, battling my negative moods, but I have relieved at least one source of distraction. As I start a new journal I feel it will be filled with less with stress, and more with wonder and possibilities.

From an observation of my work as a teacher of dreamtime children.

“Field Concerns for Medical Gladiolas.”

Her voice followed

the  butterflies of her hands

dancing  up the curve of her

experience

and away into the future

“That’s what my teacher called it.”

The distant butterflies transformed

bright leaves drifting back

loosely settling

in her lap.

Summer Teaching and a Great Book

Summer Teaching

I have started full time at my summer job of keeping my little friends busy and safe. All I have to do is pay attention and go with their flow, and all is well. No paper work just being there for children and providing what they need. They have decided that Dr. Suess is great and have me reading the story of the pale green pants with no one inside them every day. We also have a great box project going, where each has their own special box and I provide materials for them to decorate it. There is one that has his moments, but I am definitely reaching him already after just one week so I feel pretty solid. So many calm moments of children just being and doing what is natural to them — learning about their world. Why do teachers think we have to interfere so much in children’s lives? Curriculum, I don’t need no stinking curriculum. I just need to pay attention and have a few ideas and some interesting materials. The children do the rest.

Short and Vague Review: 2666 by Roberto Bolano

I just finished a facinating novel by Roberto Bolano translated from Spanish, called “2666.” It is about so much that I could not tell you what it is about. It is written in the form of 5 novelas with vague connections to each other, some stronger than others. In the end I got the feeling that somewhere out in the future it all makes more sense, or maybe not. It is not very important. Like any good novel, for me, it was living a life in another skin, or experiencing the world from a slightly shifted dimension. I come back a little changed with a fuller understanding of life as a human being. Also I feel a little disoriented, like I only got some of what he was saying and maybe some of what he said by accident. I think the really good writers are not able to know all the levels contained in their work. There are shadows and reflections that are cast that they are not able to see. There are so many combinations of characters and symbols that interact with the reader that they cannot know what chimeras will hatch. I always come out of novels like this as if I have gone to a foreign country and my mind has not yet assimilated all of the strangeness and time of a different land. That is how I know it was a well written piece. It shifts my perspective and I see more of the human experience. The scope of what I have read has to linger because I am unable to process the whole experience on a conscious level. I am sure that bits of this novel will resurface in poems and dreams for a long while to come.

This Weeks Poem

Open Me

Tension, wire, bloody ram

Maybe this is not the way

I feel, but the way I am.

I can’t use these

Keys

Today

Reach out

What to say?

How to lay?

In a cool bath

on a hot day.

I open you

desperately,

in a shiver of ache.

You open with only a little bite.

You have no need to open me.

I have no way to open me!

Open me!

Please.