Pushed into tomorrow

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

~Robert Frost, from Reluctance

Storyteller

The night sky, shimmered
By a chorus of starlight
Arches, sentence-less

Laughing and stumbling
The comma of a half moon
Checks its momentum

The light, pausing at
The period of full moon
Ends and then begins

Optimism

Barn's burnt down--
    now
        I can see the moon.

~Masahide

“Done With Apple-Picking Now”

This quote is prominently and professionally carved into the base of a picnic table in China Camp State Park north of San Francisco.

A bit unusual.  The first thing that came to mind was that it was some kind of negative critique of Apple Computers. I was deeply saddened when I realized, instead, that it is a direct quote from one of my favorite poems from my favorite poet, Robert Frost.  How did I not recognize it right away?

Maybe I’ve been here too long.

“One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.”

Four Penguins

I can see four penguins
Perched on a corner edge of downtown rooftop,
High, high, high,
Scraping a solo patch of bright blue sky
In a ceiling of white and grey.
I wonder if they’re cold up there
And why they stand so still,
And I question if they feel fear
Of the height or the roar of the plane jetting by.

Odd to me that they don’t move
Or set their hearts to wander
Or talk about the things that penguins like to ponder.
Westward facing,
Maybe they are waiting for that solitary blue patch
To catch the sun,
Warm them and set them free to fly.

Another jet plane pushes by.
Still they stand, frozen,
Nesting in air and concrete,
Reminding me of what I’m reaching for,
Giving me the courage not to try.

Passionate ambivalence

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

~T.S. Eliot, from Ash Wednesday

One Craft

Amidst the liquid stillness deep below,
It calculates and dictates the detail,
To set the course precise by compass nail;
The rudder of the ship predicts the flow.

But sensing now the possible of fail,
A crack of wind, a rise of vagrant swell,
The falling air, the clang of ocean bell,
The rudder feels the speed and sees the sail

Arching wide to elevate the shell
And lift it to the chaos storm of sky,
Aching with a desperate need to fly,
To yank the steady rudder from its well.

The rudder shakes and trembles at the speed
As the sail exalts the miracle she’s freed.

Bent

The sidewalk bubbles in the August of New York.
Our conversation flares between the bricks and the dry trees.
Phrases barely left my mouth
Smolder before they can reach you.
The words harden and fall,
Strike the melting sidewalk like charred sticks of iron,
Clinging where they hit and sinking in,
Baked in concrete.

You would take the frayed strings of syllables,
The smoking sidewalk,
The sidelong summer haze,
Clench them into something inappropriate,
Like a scene in a child’s crystal globe,
Glass chipping from the arched roof
To fall like snow on the permanent words.

Why do you do that?
Why do you read ambiguous books
And study the darkness
As if you were going to be
Tested on it?

Salutation to the Dawn

Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence:
   The bliss of growth,
      The glory of action,
         The splendor of achievement,
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is just a vision,
But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day!
Such is the salutation to the dawn.

~Kalidasa

Perspective

Reflection

Each time I see the Upside-Down Man
Standing in the water,
I look at him and start to laugh,
Although I shouldn’t oughtter.
For maybe in another world
Another time
Another town,
Maybe HE is right side up
And I am upside down.

~Shel Silverstein