"Not even one"

Or, December 31st

Not really all that invited

Or, December 30th

That which is coming to ripen

laughs,

throwing

forward like a shadow

its own decay. Okay.

We knew that.

Knew, too, that the heart's body

gets so invested

in the rhythms it's invented,

the rest is lost.

What is lost?
Certainly

this
one
here.

Which, having only

its particular incompleteness

to offer,

offered it entirely.

Lost.

Though toward its backward future

one

can keep

throwing

the guess-shadow.

Angling the mirror

so all its purposeful

wayward

twist-fingered hands

are toward

this

here,

reaching.

Circumstance time

Or, December 29th

I take your words into great account…

… is a phrase that didn't make it as a title for yesterday but now, in the first hours of December 29th, comes to my aid.  I didn't like the photo for December 28th, and that's the first time I've felt that way since I started this project.  That didn't sit well, so I went and looked at some other recent photos.  I post this one because it echoes so strongly an image from a dream I had a couple of nights ago. I sensed that the dream was significant.  You could even say I take its words into great account. 

All my logic

Or, You get it back

Or, December 28th

A slip away

Or, They see less of you

Or, December 27th

Go on and on

Or, December 26th

Let's say yes

Or, Unsafe raft

Or, December 25th

Lost down

Or, The instructions aren't there

Or, December 24th

What is the name that I am?

Or, Octuple-ly hot

Or, December 23rd

Just the ringing

Or, I make it a hobby

Or, December 22nd

Someone to fight

Or, You do the things that she doesn't understand

Or, December 21st

fine/normal/basic

Or, Practice by pinching

Or, December 20th

If you do it fiercely enough

Or, The way you might have a nightmare

Or, December 19th

winter

is for waiting

though the shadow fingers are

already curving to stroke this same

spot on the map of summer

already plotting their

collision with some

spring fruit's

kiss

Fiction of a fixed

Or, People who are me

Or, December 18th

Believe it or not, I'm coming

Or, Turn down the radio

Or, You just gotta be satisfied

Or, December 17th

What you won't say

Or, What she continues to say too long
Or, Two sides of the same coin
Or, December 16th

3 am

Through the kitchen window,
a maple tree shines.
Lit up this way, by one street light
and a close moon,
its yellow heart goes all the way
indecorous
out to its elbow-tips,
its bronzey throat.

Sometimes be here, too

Or, December 15th

Everything I have to say

Or, One good end

Or, December 14th

So

I'm getting a sense of high urgency

Or, I just can't relax with that

Or, December 13th

is it raining?  is it?

yes or no.

the tenderest difference

between goodbye and hello.

Wildly crazy maneuvers at critically slow speeds

Or, It's all about eating

Or, In the forest somewhere

Or, December 12th

when you want to tell me something,

write it on a map.

write it on the blue space

that means the ocean.

if the map is very big, and full

of dangerous details,

trust that I'll find it anyway.  draw

me a boat.

Not all concentrate on one

Or, Is he smiling?
Or, December 11th

Sleep

It's not always possible, but here's what helps.
Clean sheets with a pattern of minute blue flowers.
The shutters open, preferrably on a screaming moon.
(This is important because she'll want to climb inside your

eyelids, and you'll want to fight her,
and you'll get to practice losing).
A pile of books on the night table.

Here is what you do.
Carefully finger the corners of the books, as full of
curiosity as if the finger belonged to someone else.
Page through the books as if they were full of bad
drawings by someone you love—show with your pace
and grace and steady breathing that you appreciate them
beyond judgment. Lie on your side then and survey
the pile of books from a little distance. Admire the corner
of the room, the way it is just itself. The bed is exactly this
far off the ground. Accept fully that you could die in the night.
Think how people who love you wouldn't like you talking
like this—smile because it's your own thought, silent and true.

The letting go will seem to you like many things at once.
A cutting of strings, a slowing of a complicated melody until—
not nothing. Not exactly. Something is always coming up
from the ground, making a steady sound like water settling
into soil but in reverse, flowing up into the shape of grass stems,
filtering up and asserting themselves in the bright darkness.

Do not attempt to defeat this safety feature

Or, December 10th

Koshland Park

A man came to the park to cut his fingernails.  Or

found himself with a clipper in his pocket and five

minutes in the sun, no one around currently making

trouble for anyone else.  Here is each bench paired

with a trash can. A small meadow where people laugh

out loud at the miracle that their dogs keep coming back.

All the dog mouths smiling because of rope, stick or ball.

The man is taking his time, working away at the extra

with bright clicks.

Methods for going about it

Or, Hint of pear

Or, December 9th

Your friend stops by

bringing

lemon curd thumbprint cakes,

a one-year child

with a snuffling nose-laugh

and the off-hand comment

that reminds you

what you love

in your life.

You have to leave the room.

When you come back

your friend has taken a picture:

the dog eyes warily

the baby's lotus of a hand.

When your life rearranges itself this easily,

it is like lifting and shaking out such a thin veil

that no one even feels the air move.

Your friend loves

her one-year girl,

all the ways she has

already ripped her life open,

all the ways they can't do without

each other.

The thing you love doesn't exist

unless you look at it.  You are allowed

to blink an unforgivable number of times.

When you turn, it turns sweetly, as if from sleep.

When you look, it regards you,

just standing there joyfully abject

you regard each other looking in

secret again. 

Goodnight, noble clerk

Or, December 8th

Leashing the dogs,

I remember how we are tied to our karma

and vow with all beings to relinquish completely

the trap of not enjoying my life.

No need for us to pretend

Or, She's a grown child

Or, December 7th

eating a baked tomato,

my teeth run out of time to regret

the warm evaporation

that leaves them no artefact

of argument

Ten-Minute Smile

This afternoon I was driving home; the clock read 4:49.  I had a thought:  would it kill me to smile for ten minutes without stopping?  Then of course I had to.  I like to think I can survive anything for ten minutes.  And, would you believe it, there were one or two things on my mind, the kind of things I'm convinced are best managed with a decidedly dour face.  Which gave the exercise a delicious tinge of risk and perversity.

Some background on smiling.  The last time I visited my brother in New York, I had a headache for almost the entire four days.  I laughed too much.  Apparently, I can't take much laughing at all without getting a headache.  Same with smiling, when the smiling is genuine.  I get something that feels like a sinus headache plus TMJ, and it lasts for hours.

So I started smiling and didn't stop until 4:59.  Time and again, I became worried that I looked like a fang-y, deranged beast, so I'd check in the rearview mirror, find that I looked pretty natural, and laugh.  The laughing hurt, but it helped.  At 4:59 I did think, "what the heck, I'll go 'til a nice even 5:00," but my face refused.  I felt like I used to feel upon crossing the finish line after a marathon:  like maybe I did some damage I'll never recover from.  Oh, but I'm fine.  Shaky and sore (I did some pretty awkward stretches and popped a Sportenine or two) but fine.

I joke about my problems with it (undertrained facial muscles?  Psycho-physical malcoördination rearing its head in the face of happiness?) but this smiling stuff is serious.

"If we really know how to live, what better way to start the day than with a smile?  Our smile affirms our awareness and determination to live in peace and joy.  The source of a true smile is an awakened mind." 

—Thich Nhat Hahn, Peace is Every Step

What are YOU craving right now?

Or, Have a good leitmotif

Or, December 5th

"There are few intensely esthetic experiences that are wholly gleeful.  They are certainly not to be characterized as amusing, and as they bear down upon us they involve a suffering that is none the less consistent with, indeed a part of, the complete perception that is enjoyed."

—John Dewey, Art as Experience

Longing to no longer

Or, Look out through your eyes

Or, December 5th

cape rush

the small cape rush is a plant from south africa.  its whole life, it never stops making a sound like a mouse peeling the skin off a peanut.  a short furious rustling.  the skin heaved free in one mahogany piece.  is what is not happening.  it's just the rush.  sit close enough and you'll find you're sad, already fond of the mouse.  she had such an astute face.  

We were almost not fit to be tied

Or, Humble-ized every day

Or, December 4th

What wind?

But the stone earlobes

Of the dining room Buddha

Are blowing

So Many Conditions

Or, Smile, you're almost there

Or, December 3rd

is does it

the poet avers

in his quiet book

I trust him with the I

that's beaches when the tide goes travelling,

that doesn't live to see the end of the word

Help me with these little sounds

Or, December 2nd

Cellist resting

Sometimes she rests so long she rises

and the light is gone from the window,

the leaves have let go of the tree's hand.

A decline in effort correlates to a decline

in profit, in production, in sweetness of song—

she suspects, though who at this exact moment

is listening?  Brain has made up its mind

to be the quiet half of the conversation,

lacking humor, lazy on the uptake,

late to the table, but her hands just keep doing

what she even half wills them to,

the way it takes love a long time to find

another way.  But even her hands will lie flat if she keeps an eye.

Either the floor or the back of her head is singing.

Absolutely gone

Or, It's from our mind so it definitely will stick with us

Or, December 1st

he went out one morning & the mountain was no longer there

just dissolved & from the pines a shattering updraft of crows crying

get used to disappointment though the sky still wasn't used to it

arms stuck holding the purple exhale where the peak had been

by night the pines had calligraphed into flailing blips

the moon itself into the most bitter tooth having no frame

of reference nowhere to root no surface to reflect from

& the human's body shuddered like something he was going to shed

any instant simple as coughing sufferable as laying the day's things

on the table and walking out to see has anything changed

Lest one forget

the most delicate of all

The launch of this blog, which I intend as a place for my little daily poems and photographs to land and live and have their being, coincides with Thanksgiving weekend 2008, which is also the weekend that we say goodbye to Polly the Frog. The Frog's passing is a delicate subject, so it fits.

Polly lived for about 24 years (the exact year she arrived in the mail as a pollywog in a little plastic bag has been forgotten) in a fishbowl on the dresser in the dining room in my parents' house. It was also, of course, my house for much of that time. Now, suddenly, the dresser is empty of Frog. The moment I found her lying at the bottom of her bowl with one eye looking really funny, and not having moved for a full day, I thought This is the end of my childhood. Which is a funny thought to have when you're 29.

My friend P.'s mother C. liked to compare the Frog to the priest at her church. The priest would spread his arms out to the sides in a gesture of blessing. Polly's arms were always out to the side. She was a very simple being, with a tiny nervous system inside her off-gold skin. We hoped her nervous system was too small to be upset that her life was lived out entirely in a plain bowl with no diversion. Sunlight came through the windows during the day. My father fed her faithfully every evening and changed her water when it got green. To do so he had to catch her in a net. She'd thrash inside it during the few seconds between leaving the bowl and entering the temporary smaller bowl. You could see her little ribs, and while she fought she seemed to have little pecs and collarbones. Her hind feet were webbed with a material that would sometimes flutter when she lay still. She had a singing voice that sounded like a river of microscopic pebbles.

I would be very pleased to live a delicate life.  Being delicate seems like the best thing. You aren't very well protected against being hurt or disappointed. You do your best to look at what is around you and manage illusion. I'll quote Suzuki-roshi, since he had a special place in his heart for frogs:

"When we first hear that everything is a tentative existence, most of us are disappointed; but this disappointment comes from a wrong view of man and nature. It is because our way of observing things is deeply rooted in our self-centered ideas that we are disappointed…"

Which brings me to my shame about the way I thought of the Frog. I always worried that I was going to find her dead. Eventually, I did. But for years I didn't look at her without thinking about her passing. She seemed to us all to have lived so much longer than a Grow-a-Frog was supposed to. I wanted to prepare myself, to cushion the blow, to make there be no blow. Once or twice a year I'd acknowledge what I was doing. And I'd make myself stand there for a second and just see Frog.

A friend of mine once proposed that love is just being gentle and giving your full attention. As far as I know, the Frog lived a less complicated life than humans do. But, bless her, she was gentle (she was gentleness) and gave her full attention.