Change Conscious

***
Can you call software primitive ? This blog-creation software is cumbersome, extremely basic, and (for a graphic designer) frustrating.

081217

THE PERSPECTIVE OF AGE

This flashed my mood
from tears to cheers:
I won’t be seventy
for ten whole years!


081216

THE LYING TRUTH

A cat has many poses:

- sitting still on a windowsill
- spread out on a floor
- curled up near a hearth
- lazing by a door

Most cat-like
of cat poses
is when a cat reposes.


081215

YOUR IMMINENCE

Doom, earned or unearned—
for long I’ve watched you come;
from darkening of horizon
to blotting out of sun.

I am not cowed, nor am I numb.
I stand and wait, no place to run.


081214

SELF AWARENESS

(for Eckhart)

My latest author
outlines the pathology of ego
versus the sacred redemption
of present-moment awareness:
ego self (with its compulsive thinking),
distracts us from consciousness,
which is our nature and purpose.

Ego self distracts me repeatedly
during my morning’s
purposeful nature walk,
embroiling my mind in worries
and recriminations.

I remind myself
to store my ego-thinking away.
Consciously and deliberately,
I turn my focus toward my breathing
and present-moment impressions:
the Arkansas winter landscape;
crows; buzzards; breezes;
a slender hardwood sapling
piercing upward through a cedar.

On my return home,
a weathered business card
found lying in a ditch

invites me to test the author’s
no-coincidences hypothesis

(everything is purposeful;

there are no accidents).

I pick up the card and read:
“Arkansas Self-Storage.”


081213

WAVED IN BY WIND

sea urchins
stranded
on a gravel beach

or, rather,
sweetgum balls
edging a gravel road

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

081212

THE PRACTICALITIES OF DEATH

“When I am old and near death,”
he says, eyeing their still-lingering cat,
“I hope someone will do more
than set me down on newspaper
to sleep and pee.”

“Whatever happens,” she replies,
“if it’s anyway possible,
I’ll be right there at your side;
you know that.”

What he knows is this:
“We’re gonna need more paper.”

***

Best Times, Worst Times

***

081211

MY CRY

help help help me,
help me—who?

how how how—
I have no clue

lost lost lost,
I cry to you


THE VERY BEST

The card we send
this Christmas season
may look familiar,
and there’s a reason.

Why search for cards
(or friends) more dear
than those we love,
already here?


HARD TIMES

delivering last year’s
leftover Christmas cards
at this year's visits

[Hard times snowballing at Christmas; there has to be another poem there somewhere. ]

***

Quantities

***

081210

RADIANCE

Our days of bliss
may count as few,
but how they bless—

for they outshine
(and shine on)
all the rest!


081209

AT DAWN

Over life, over love,
what need
have I
for else above
a glimpse of sky?


081208

PLAY PEN

If I had an endless pen,
what would/could/should I say—
or write or draw, or somesuch way
manage to convey?

Well—
after who knows how much play,
I’d give that thing away!


081207

PLUS OR MINUS

Two bodies,
four bodies,
six on the bed;
comfy as heaven.

Wait!
here comes seven,
bringing commotion
leaving just two—
(minus the cats,
just me and you).

***

Sights to See

***


081206a

DAYS OF CONFINEMENT

Days at computers.
Days inside cars.
Never enough of
sun, moon and stars.


081026b

ECONOMIC BAUBLE

Our oasis in the desert
was mirage, or akin.
Not the one we were looking at;
the one we were in.


081205

EAGLE, EYED

When those three crows,
(noisy, glossy, flying low)
crossed the lake trail where I go,
I raised my gaze enough to spy
a buzzard circling in the sky.

But for this, I’d not have known
what other bird had nearer flown;
gliding barely overhead
(white tail, white head)
with its massive wings outspread.


Ethan and I made a run down to the Ouachitas to U-Haul some things home. The scenery was so beautiful and the vehicle seats so hard, I yearned to be outdoors, exploring. As we traveled, we caught some NPR programming including Click and Clack, Lake Woebegone, and news items about the economic downturn. The eagle episode happened a few days ago; quite a shock.


***

"Pome" Pics

***

I've begun to actively invite people to my blog (hello) and my "pomes." That makes me want to begin improving layout and formatting.

Today, I turned a poem into a picture because I'd forgotten how to achieve indented lines in html. But I like the picture effect and will probably do more of this in the future.


081204

S.O.S.

HELP ME, PLEASE!
I’m being held a prisoner
by my willingness to be one;
aided and abetted by
conspirators who
HELP ME PLEASE!

***

Hello Again

***

The Dallas Self-Publishing Group (of which I am now a long-distance member) is about to have a meeting devoted to blogging. Their announcement of that topic reminded me how sorely neglected my blog has become.

Ethan and I are still struggling to regain balance after being caught in an RIF layoff by Texas A&M earlier this year. My daily poems phased out as we began to deal with refurbishing and trying to sell a home in Texas, while locating, renting and moving to a home in Arkansas.

With Ethan's strong encouragement, I have lately returned to the daily "pomes" which are my combination journal and therapy. From now on, I will start including more commentary.

081127

GOOD GOAD!

Ethan cracks the whip at me.
That’s how these pomes came to be.

For this journal entry, I will select a few pomes from the last couple of months. I consider everything posted here to be drafts. That indirectly means that I harbor dreams of someday publishing some of these.


081119

LIFE NOW

picking up newspapers
peed on
by the terminal cat

pausing
to read the comics


081116

JUST ASKING

Where is there
to go from here;
what do I not know?

Am done,
or just begun;
why is life so so?


081110

DOWNTURN UPSIDE

I failed at this, I lost at that;
but headlines are my vindicator.
Markets worldwide took a plunge.
Now I’m a leading indicator!


081106

ETERNITEASE

All the time there is, or was,
I gave to you because
because.


0081101

SAID TO MY HEART

Trust only this:
trust your bliss.
Only as it shows you, go.

Trust it fully; overflow.

In the torrents, trust it still.
Resign your fear.
Align your will.

When none other can or do,
I, through bliss, take care of you.


081031

SPOOKED

Turn off your house lights
and lock your doors.
Pretend you’re not at home.

Those roving trick-or-treaters
will pass you by.
Pirates, monsters, and ghosts
will rove elsewhere.
But honestly—
witch of you is most scary?
You Halloweenie!


081029

POME PROCESS

Some wail.
Some rail. Some merely flail.
Some pose a test,
or jibe, or jest.
Honestly, most fail.

But in gestation,
as a quest;
in the doing—
each is best.


081025

ROOMINATION

Six, seven years of writing poems,
and I never began one with the title before.

I was clearing weeds when Scout announced,
from the edge of the woods, capture of prey.

He dropped the chipmunk from his mouth
to let it run, so that he could enjoy capturing it
again, again and again.

I had no wherewithal, I thought, to intervene;
but when the death-play slowed,
I removed my t-shirt and approached.
Scout pounced. I pounced. We both missed,
the first time.

I unwrapped chippy on the kitchen table,
beneath an overturned wire basket;
I was as thrilled as he was scared.
Such magnificient miniature perfection:
tiny paws, shiny eyes. tail aquiver!

It was after the release,
when Ethan and I continued our drive
onto unexplored country roads,
that my hiatus from daily poems
came into awareness and into question.
This episode would likely go unremarked
and eventually unremembered.

Similarly,
my half-year of lapsed poem-making
had bequeathed no words of legacy
for the stressful, strenuous,
and security-stripped transition
my life had become.

Nonetheless, I decided; all was in accord.

Poetry's purpose and effect
is to expand the soul—
creating enough room
for its occasional absence.

Tomorrow, I hope to welcome some new NWAR networking friends to my blog. Hello to you specifically.

And to everyone else, "Hello again."

***