Transient

My photos filled six albums
Pages of red rocks and granite
cliffs, waves and spindrift stopped mid-air

When I tired of landscapes
barren of context
I found photos of people

Look at this photo of John,
his wife, and seven children
Thirty-five years ago John knew
how to walk on his hands
with his feet straight up in the air
He once stuffed his mouth
with five pieces of Double Bubble gum,
flew paper airplanes from the rooftop,
and quoted baseball statistics


Now he home schools his children, and
lives in the mountains near a creek
He knows the names of plants
and the way creeks sound at night
His children memorize Bible verses
and recite the books of the Bible

John, did you keep your
Reggie Jackson baseball card?

Digitalizing

Faded sepia photos
reclaimed, but not sharpened
or given more contrast
or illuminated with filters,
showing their age

Mending

Knitting together
dropped stitches
Creating a shawl
of missing stories
to wrap around
my shoulders

Conversation I

I read the egg carton box
as if it portends the future
Cage free, that's good, I think
Fed a vegetarian diet, no meal worms
or scraps of meat, I'm told yogurts a favorite
No artificial additives, no GMO

Standing a few feet away is a woman
absorbed in reading egg cartons
We read in unison until I say
These come from an Amish farm

It's a long way to send eggs she says
What's wrong with our local farms?
At least the eggs don't come from China
The jumbo eggs are no bigger than
large and the small are the size of peach pits
Do you like the plastic boxes? Another
thing that will outlast me. I'm
breaking down. I think it's all that GMO.

I bought the jumbo eggs.
She bought extra large.

I'll Follow

I
found
myself thinking
of women who
step outside of the known
and walk beyond the thistles

Something is Wrong

This evening I heard that a number of new condos in Boston sell for millions of dollars. If you want a penthouse condo with a 360 degree view the price escalates quickly.

One penthouse, available for $37 million, includes an outdoor area over 2500 square feet.

According to one of the developers living in his building is an experience. If, he said, you want someone to walk your dog, desire a martini at 3:00am, need a maid... it's all available.

How many families live in substandard housing in Boston? How many people have either inadequate housing or no housing in Boston?

How many of us would define experience differently?

Re-Writing

I
wrote
about old
35mm color slides
Seventeen carousels of lava balls,
herds of bison hanging out in a meadow,
Old Faithful gushing on time,
and without warning
my computer
swallowed
my
words

Themes

suppose what you write about changes and you realize that for years you wrote about it from all angles and now you need to reinterpret, look with another pair of lenses, move carefully, parse sentences, and now find new words to move in different directions

Forgetting and Forgiving

To forget may mean that you're not paying attention and forget what you promised, arrive late because you didn't remember, or someone may forget parts of their life, and even forget people you once knew.

Yet forget may also mean that you don't go back and go over and over the past, but move on to the present and beyond. You start over-- clean slate.

Heated Words

Over the past week I've listened to people indulge in one-upmanship when describing the humidity and heat.

It's blistering hot enough to melt those rubber flip-flops right off your feet

Naw, sultry and sensual like Tobacco Road

It's like I been toasted and roasted
Skewered on a rotisserie until charred

Constitutionally Unfit

How does anyone accumulate all this stuff? In one box a collection of mediums for collage-- matt, satan, gloss as well as six different types of paste-- after all a thin piece of newsprint demands a different glue than a leaf or cardboard or a metal medal. Then my collection of watercolor pencils and thin and thinner and razor thin ink pens.

Who knows when I'll need to write an epistle on a postage stamp piece of onion skin.

Step by Step

Stop
Stop this train
Make a U turn
Am I ready?
If life is one long
pilgrimage
who says you can't
stay put
and read about pilgrims

Looking Ahead

What happens when you change your perspective, look out a different window, chop vegetables on the left of the sink instead of the right, walk down the stairs holding on to a bannister on the right side when you've acclimated to the other side, turn different faucets, notice stains in the rug you didn't create, hear alien creaks?

What happens to your outlook on life, your philosophical girding, the person you expect to encounter when you leave your front door?

What happens to the slant of the sun on your desk, your desk in a different quadrant, how you parse your world?

In an alien space will your words be consumed by strange thoughts, will the axis find its way, or will life be teetering on the string of a spinning gyroscope?

Open House

Just look around
don't touch
I like it this way
you'll get your chance
to manipulate
to turn things upside down
For now this is my space
and I like it just this way

Heat Pangs

Hot and humid and getting hotter
until the asphalt melts
and sous-chefs fry eggs on the sidewalk
Open hydrants flood streets
and synchronized swimmers practice
A mirage appears across the roadway
and a lemonade stand appears
with retro prices and
a handlettered sign

Moving On

I'm ridding myself of relics,
baggage that holds me to this place
with its familiar patina, but
I slow down when I encounter
hidden places,narrow openings where
fragments from these rooms tell
long stories and I stop to listen

Finding the Crack in Time

Leaving this place of repetitions,
of echoes,of granite outcroppings
and strata of stone, of sea birds
and sand bars, I know I'll be back
to measure my breath to my steps
and to sit on the rocks and wander
beyond arbitrary horizons

On Faith

When the mist descends and edges soften
islands blend into the background,
a dinghy fades as it floats into the backdrop
while a sailboat's mast vanishes
into a space where we can't follow

No Ending

let me linger here
counting barnacles, listening
to a seagull's chatter,
staring at a lobster boat checking traps
there's time enough to tend to the ordinary
for now let me linger here

Maine

I am drawn to the rocks, to the surf,
to the placid silence
and to the blue-green water depths.

Today I stuffed my rucksack
with these waters,
and with barnacles
cemented to rocKs

Today I collected rockweed
to line my pockets

I need these reminders

Hull's Cove Sculpture Garden

It takes imagination to see a rusted spigot and envision it as a part of an assemblage

It takes an eye to use a broken plate as the centerpiece of a found table setting

When the Model T car stopped moving and sat in a yard until rodents rummaged the interior
When the weather ate away the interior and rust took over the exterior
When the artist looked he saw how the lines pleased his eye

Changes

Did I study patterns on trees, fungi map like shapes, water rushing to keep up with a surface breeze, a tree split in half by lightning, or the sound of my boots on the path when I passed people on hiking trails before people began passing me on those same trails and their steps behind me alerted me to move over so they can move ahead until they vanish while I continue walking on the same path?

The Artist Painting the Rocks

He stands on a flat rock to ground himself
to the landscape of granite and sea
White foam sprays a pyramid of stone slabs
With a few strokes he freezes the action
to an exhaled breath
The viewer recalls the ways of waves,
the inhale and exhale

Upon Arriving in Maine

marsh grass sashays with salt water

luring me to look for open waters

leaning toward the horizon 

Peregrinations in a Small Space

           the room journey allows
            the self to pass by objects
            in an orderly sequence whose
            decided goal is to reveal
            an unknown world...
                  Traveling in Place by Bernd Stiegler & Peter Filkins

pebbles marked by travel
and washed in the Pacific Ocean
slide through my fingers,
waves flatten the sand before retreating
while sneaker waves approach
unannounced mimicking
the way events slip into a day

Change Your Response

Somewhere I read the line unharness from the past
Unstrap the shoulder straps that leave marks
The past can't be eradicated or brushed away
Just remove the reins pulling you along