In Terms Of Guidance

Epistemology vs. history in terms of guidance. This vs. that, again. The hawk flies overhead, studying the farm, moving on when I wave the shovel. Malice is not present, which is good. You see what I am getting at?

When I say problem I should perhaps say paradox. Just how are we to discern the measureless whole? One grows tired of God, the way "tree" is a poor substitute for "maple," "birch," etc. She read the instructions very carefully and followed them precisely. Miles can seem to grow, depending on how one feels about the journey.

A mechanical substitute for travel. The imposition of that one syllable on literally everything has caused a lot of conflict over time. One teaches, one does. The mountain is there and when we hike it it is here. Remembered poems validate one aspect of the self, a treasured one.

Thus, welcome to my winter! He played backgammon alone for hours on end, his lips working as he studied the math, concluding at the end - later as I put him to bed - that it is "too random to be really interesting." Self-imposed ends are a way of ensuring order is what I cannot quite say. This sentence is not the last but the next one will be. Maybe.

Sparks And Smoke Follow

In the front yard a slender curl of fox scat, explaining the dog's anxiety the night before. This and not that. The neighbor's truck on which a new batch of decals suggests nothing is ever learned. Are we older? Is the ocean ever bottomless?

A seamless sky in which narrative drifts. Why do you insist on using paraphrase to your advantage? A blueberry pie wants nothing. More skid marks. Also, a better story won't do what you want, at least not always.

Coming down the hill, I saw again how anger springs from fear and fear is always intimate with my dogs. My strength is somebody else's weakness. The real question is how to commodify something without actually appearing to commodify it. I walk and sparks and smoke follow in my wake. Seams of light that suggest boundaries etc.

We welcome any sign of order, often calling it beauty. Thought is what it says it's not doing and thus leaves us dull. The Christian metaphor is decrepit but I insist on mummification. The shovel is an effective if mechanical tool. If I write, will you listen?

All We Ever Do

Precisely what sound does a chicken make at midday after laying an egg? The kids return from hours away with stories of a fox, possibly rabid. We pass - that is all we do ever. And sing a little, as swans are reputed to do in similar circumstances.

Thus one writes thus. It is a day of letters, also nagging flea bites. Your promise is my routine. It is good to get beyond symbols though worth asking why one needs them in the first place (which is perhaps how one does actually "get" beyond them).

What I am saying is this. That? In my dream a certain project was undone - nobody seemed to care - but I was sure the world would end on my account. Naps are nice, as is coffee, and repetition will sometimes breed spontaneity.

He forgave me, or so he said, and then gave me his cell phone. Freckles, sun spots, cancer. France or bust! As always, what I am really wanting to say has to do with trains.

Oh Jesus won't you please come home? What was stolen from the cemetery does not remain at the cemetery. Two hours and all we did was listen to folk songs from the 1950s. You once said it could be worse and even now I wonder why it seems to be thus.

A Spiritual Not A Mechanical Problem

We look at baby pictures while the kids sleep. Rain storms always seem to contain pronouncements. The sunflowers this year are spindly and dull. Yet another linguist who can't shut up.

I am driving to a funeral later. Bulbs in the earth multiply. The hill beneath our feet steepens.  Please don't open with once upon a time.

Gretel is always is misunderstood, that's why. A brief history of the arrow. The sentence works best when textual expectations are kept to a minimum. Yet another novel stuttering.

Horses made her laugh. The delete key is stuck which is a spiritual not a mechanical problem. We can only watch the mind and its dance so much so long. Your tutu is my grim reaper.

Wry slim leaper? A series of photographs eight years old that make one want to cry or else fall weeping. Yet we continue, or we seem to. And I am always home, always looking away.

That Old Common Distraction

Thunder rolling outside the east-facing window. Clover rustling where last week - or was it longer - baby robins first took flight. What a world in which to find oneself. Dreams of wax and perilous heights signify another ellipsis. I am what are you. He wrote later I wish I could take a picture of that thunder. Take one more drive through southern Vermont? There is no it and it's a problem. We ate apples on the broken bench, watching traffic navigate an open sewer hole, not talking. Like wading through suet, he said of the last time he voted before he died. We are all in motion anyway. Does it come down to relationship? I confess that getting worked up about the essential conservatism of nouns more or less escapes me. On the other hand, horses, Jesus and certain collections of letters. Oh that? The hum - growl perhaps - of lawn mowers and the occasional car on Route 112. Doing things, going places - that old common distraction. We are forever outside a lunar perambulation. Nobody wants to disappoint. Your focus on biology is going to be the death of you! Another cup of tea and then I really will be done and gone.

Helpfully Birds Tweet

Is it possible that we are not going anywhere? Can one ever get anywhere? A photograph would perhaps resolve the problem. Or a book cover, assuming it is a problem and not - as Bohm suggests - a paradox. We are always in motion, outside of time.

Hummingbirds move in lines, like helicopters, pausing near the Zinnias not to be admired though it happens. In my dream, fields of marijuana, and something I can't write about. You are near, like broken glass. A penny found is not as good as a hit though it feels that way to the poor who are, regardless of our good intentions, the losing team. We are motion and time arrests perception, apparently helpfully.

Birds tweet, profligate novelists blurb. When it is cold trains can be heard before 5 a.m. on the far side of the distant hills. The past appears to grow, it appears to be real. We pushed the frame to a standing position. Everyone applauds.

As the poem skids - or hesitates - or seems to. We are always busy in October and sometimes it snows. Shadows high up in the maple tree observed while sipping beer left over from the party and I am happy. You go back to the start and try to make sense. The distant hills are not outside the ambit of Emily Dickinson's eye.

The Passive Alarm

Rhyme invokes the body differently. As when one leaves their seat in order to avoid disturbing nesting robins. Blackberries? I fell asleep on the word charm. Out on the Narragansett.

Days of summer in which one reflects on changes. My book is your studied moment. Most meditation is premeditated. We dream of outdoor activity, falling asleep while the moon rises. Baseballs left out in puddles.

Mist on the lake? A deer steps gracefully through beams of sunlight pillaring the forest. Studies reveal certain facts about cellar doors. I mean the swelling egos of damn Moors. Score!

He means it is hard to hold in memory what does not readily reduce to song. It has to do with effort in a way. Romantic outreach! The passive alarm, sounded at dawn. One is different amidst what never changes.

I Requires A Narrative

I was central. Puttering in the garage one comes upon a shovel from World War II. Time is a donut!

One sweats as they write it. Crab apples falling early. The neighbors yelling at each other after midnight, too.

Perhaps the heat? Awareness edges out ahead of thought and one realizes the space in which thought is. Yes, we can still get there together.

Clarity is not the opposite of obfuscation. Somewhere, the hill remains. In the distance, mourning doves.

The same story about bears, told and retold for no apparent reason. I requires a narrative. I am sleeping on the floor again.

One rarely sets out to be prodigal but it's not the worst goal. Can you hear me? I don't appreciate being referred to as anybody's beloved.

And yet, one keeps on keeping on. The leaves on the squash plant wither while thunderheads hem a couple counties over.

A Question Of Safety

I had hoped to learn you didn't suffer. Small white mushrooms underfoot. A square of light in which yet-folded dandelions stood out like clubs. Like? And later still a small pyramid of ash that burning had smelled of sage.

We push out from the shore. Thirty years pass and still one navigates a familiar line. Meditation is almost always premeditated. Remember the way albums left out in sunlight would warp and become unplayable or - perhaps worse - unfamiliar when played? It is a question of safety, absolutely.

One begins again. One writes about "one or two steps only," as if it were a question of commitment. The light cleared slowly in the forest to reveal a pile of bear scat loaded - stitched almost - with blueberry seed. It's an old fear and it seems to return and so we have to "deal with it." You know?

Lessons would have helped. As would lyrics or at least a repetition of the complex melody. The mushrooms seemed perfect or so I thought before the day's first cup of coffee. Word of you never ceases though it does slow. I want to cry but - it is an old story, isn't it - I can't.