On ‘Daylight’ Time

April 17, 2024

On ‘Daylight’ Time

I type and one word catches another’s tail as the other passes quickly,
underway to Wordsend.
Wordsend stands as a high cliff above,
watching the place that is no place,
found in every place…staring blunt into that place where all is bound.
That end place is one which words may not describe.
It is a blackness,
yes,
but to have blackness implies there is white.
If there is a thing,
a black hole,
a nothing,
there must also be a something,
a white fullness?

The black hole as described and known suffers no white.
I am thinking now of the giant whirlpool a black hole creates as it captures all creation,
the black hole allowing not a thing to escape.
Once inside the black hole,
we find no solitary confinement.
Each and all are swallowed with a full complement of brothers/sisters.
It seems,
in my mind,
that inside the black hole there can only be a terrific lightness?
A white to the hole?
All the light that ever was – shone in and could not shine out.
Interesting.
Also:
Light is a wave,
it has length,
it has time.
Were I to vibrate so fast,
I could brighten.
I vibrate slow.
I am dull.

Time is a vibration,
since vibration alone can record,
witness time.
Time becomes its own observer and does not exist separate from.
It takes time for a thing (wave?) to move from back to forth.
If vibration could not escape the black hole,
then time cannot.
So- time and light whirl in to the black-beyond-black but only cease to exist out here,
in space,
where there is still time,
still light.
It is still light at nine o’clock…

Elizabeth and the Witness

Elizabeth and The Witness

A tentative, “Hello?”
she heard.
Elizabeth looked up slow
at first repeat of the same word.

Knitting to pattern and
eager for five minutes break,
she rose with the help of one hand,
while another massaged a back-ache.

Above her head, she could discern
that through the transom came a glow
of something interesting to learn,
about which, she just had to know,

so,

she eased the wooden door a crack
and whispered a hushed “Hello?” back.

Standing tall, hair in careful array,
a booklet-bearing man, tanned,
cleared his throat as if to say
something he’d carefully planned.
Elizabeth’s first thought became,
“Okay…What is his game?
Great goodness and past experience knows,
where this scene probably goes..”

She spoke first,
as distraction method well-rehearsed,
“That forehead mark…do you know it can be seen?”
and hoped he might be given start
that someone noticed an unclean
part.
Instead,
“Do you know Jesus?” he said.
Our Beth mumbled,
“Yeah…wasn’t he one of The Grateful Dead?”
but the youth never stumbled
and took her snide
tone in his stride.

As if she had, perhaps, not heard,
he repeated every word,
“Do
you
know
Jesus?”

She pondered what card best
now to play.
Would the fellow up and go away
if she slammed the door, or
stunted his query with a hostile YES!
full of fury?
Maybe a bit of blunt, ” ‘biblically’ or otherwise,”
would send him off in a shocked surprise.

But no,
dear Liz could not be rude.
She’d every fibre of herself imbued
of well-chosen words from Emily Post
and assumed the role of gracious host.
With feigned curiosity,
not the tired animosity
that her neighbours might have shown,
she stifled a frown,
saying,
“Oh, goodness me, young man…
what is there more -sigh-
to be known?”

March Twenty-Third

While I sat, considering,
a one thousand-footer traversed
two-thirds my far horizon.
It is empty, up bound for
ore,
and birds hang about
again.

Can anyone say
what is heaven,
where is God, who
or what makes a miracle?

From Lords and leaders,
hear we
expectations of the end,
some write their salutations,
bend
any willing ear
to hear the guillotine hit,
as mask and wig tumble
toward the pit
and disappear.

I am not afraid, today.
I am the sea-bird,
the goose,
the grass.
My wings lift, knowing
there is air and
gravity,
water, ships and
sand,
all this was before –
all this comes again.

Squirrel On a Fence Post

I am that so grey squirrel,
paused on a fence post.

Rough dogs are busy
with carrion
of sorts,
which gives me time for
a warm ray,
and twitching.

Spring is not yet here
but will arrive,
in time,
by whatever egregious means
it must,
so,
too,
with armageddon.

I withdraw my sharpened
claws a moment,
wounding only
this leftover and dried doughnut,
from a grease-shack’s kitchen waste,
found,
down the street.

This,
is what it means to be
free.

Enough to Deal With

We have enough to deal with
don’t we?
cruel rain and cloud and knife and
bullet,
priest and politician.
Somewhat the same is
true for wolf and bear,
always
hungry and thirsty and
walking somewhere.

Fine castles built,
long summer’s gathering,
a saviour ark,
these may give the driest tinder heart
just a moment’s
flint-struck
spark.
We have enough to deal with,
don’t we?

The Little Black Dress

The Little Black Dress

Just out of reach
in a shop window,
discreet,
one teasing design’s
perfection.

I am huge,
her heart says,
and incomplete,
without the basic black dress
I’m told a wardrobe needs.

The deeper she studies an innocent reflection, so greater becomes her restless irritation, until she, resigned, repeats:

“Is there no measure,
no sort of tape
to offer kind assessment
and a moment’s
escape?”

Then, as if exact on time,
a blessing breeze sets in,
tousles every skirt the
same
and touches soft
each chin.

What Chapter Are You Reading?

Deft fingers, light puffs of breeze
lift familiar pages
toward a sun’s benign interrogation
when readers,
for one moment,
abandon the book,
turn away to fill that cup
at another faucet
spout.

Forever, curious eyes
find the story,
someplace forward, perhaps
back, it is dependent
on luck or God.

Meanwhile,
excited light bombards
today, dusting our shroud
with a blue under which,
visible movements of leaf
and worm are lies,
teasing that time exists.

A stone has
no connection
to sand.
Tree does not
remember or imagine seed.

The clock reads today
for as many centuries
as complete
an instant.

Only one observer
sees any of this
and only when
he or she
returns to the book,
refreshed.

Trying to Keep Upright

It is slapstick comical,
this furious winter
slippy day.
Folks are looking back quick
to see if
someone else saw…
they are embarrassed,
as the single moment upright
teetered toward
a fall.

It doesn’t look good out there.

I’ll stay inside awhile,
where restless power is humming
and we’ve marmalade
on toast,
a little something warm
that isn’t blood.

“So lucky,”
they say and I am lucky, I guess,
my birthdate an obscure year,
that whispers of a
more remote but
similar mess.

It didn’t look good out there,
then,
either.

Parents, lovers and longtime friends,
are wiggling signposts,
proof of damaging wind.

When I have to go,
unwilling, must travel again,
I’ll slip and I’ll slide,
look backwards,
and grin.

That Force Which Through The Green Fuse

(January 18, 2024)

Outside,
puffed birds are acting
crazy today.
Perhaps
they have a temporary blindness
granted them
by whichever, whomever force
can offer kindness on the one hand

as antidote for icy truth
held in another.
Maybe the flappers
are simple, foolish, joyful?
stamping wings the way I would feet
to get warm?

I am glad the long grass
went to seed,
the berries to dry.
My ordinary procrastination at
bracing the yard for winter
worked.
From the rich perspective
of each hungry
beak,
I did good
by doing nothing.

Centred in a frosted
window view,
two future trees,
with youth’s, respectful grace,
accept accumulating loads
of sparse but steady
white flakes.

I believe, dear fellow
living things, seeking to know,
time is excruciating
slow.
One cannot tell
which is beginning,
which,
the end
and if all schemes are ill
or well
or cautious, on the mend.

The Smallish Artist

December 10 2023

Someday, I will truly understand where I belong, what I should and shouldn’t say in public and whose opinions and actions I should pay attention to. In the meantime, I just say what I like and hope I have good sense. I do care what the world thinks. Perhaps too much. I worry how I am perceived. I snoop on other’s affairs and compare their details to my own. Sadly, my Gladys Kravitz nature gets the better of me from time to time. Like now. Having been sick the last few days and unable to do my singing or concentrate on writing has me thinking the many negative thoughts again. I am convinced that I don’t measure up, I stick my head out the Facebook window and see others being beautiful, smart, young, rich, talented. Ha.

Why do I bother with singing and writing? Any improvement of skill is tortoise slow in coming and there isn’t all that much time left. My voice teacher was absolutely correct, I am too old. My English teacher was absolutely correct, I don’t understand most literature. I only know what appeals to me. I only know which books are really good – I haven’t learned the why. The really good books fly over my head and, in music, I often can’t tell which is the one chord, which the five. Learning that stuff takes time. If my urologist thinks it is more likely I die of old age than I develop as common a cancer as that of the prostate, then I guess there isn’t time to learn something complicated, like how to dig out meaning, how to put it in, how to sing, how to really play.

I will never be great. It is likely that I will never be even good. And, since I put off practicing and writing… I likely won’t ever be middling. Why bother to do it?

I can’t think of a reason, other than my own personal enjoyment, to continue with futile artistic pursuits. When the personal enjoyment is overwhelmed by the amount of effort I have to put forward (to fend off negative comments, negative people and the physical inconveniences) that will be time to toss in my tea towel. I sorta wish that I could magically just do what others are so much better able to but, alas. Sigh. There are lots of reasons why I cannot deliver the kind of music or literature I wish I could. Chief among them is that I never have put in enough practice time or sought out enough education. I know this truth to be self-evident. There are lots of reasons why I didn’t get an education or practice enough, lots of very good reasons. Things are not so simple as Dr. Phil suggests. Ask Tillie Olson, she told us in her book, ‘Silences’. She was a bit more bitter than I dare to be, but to each…(as they say). One big trouble with time and endeavour is that no matter who says otherwise, it IS often, actually, too late. The same folks who say, “it is never too late,” also say, “you can do anything you put your mind to!”. Nah, those statements are not really true. That is the way it goes, sometimes you miss the train. No tears, I did what I did and it was the best I could at the time. When I am thinking right (as a friend used to say) I do what I can and I don’t worry how it appears to others.

I suppose I should pick up the book and finish it as best I am able, leaving the hopeless swirl of rewriting and critiquing for nobody to do, after I am gone. I need not be embarrassed. No legitimate publisher has to see the book and only a few people have to tell me it’s good when I know it isn’t. Ha. For me, it is fun to just type and edit a bit, without regard for which clause is which, what an infinitive is (for the splitting of). In truth, as it regards writing, I am so totally free to do as I like that it stupefies me. I can look at a critic (one of the many) with a blank stare. You know the one, the one that says, “nyah, nyah.”

My cold is getting better. It is the first head cold I have had in a few years. I did get Covid a couple suns ago but I have been sort of isolated beyond that and enjoying good physical health. (Umm, as good as this 73 year old can enjoy.) I ventured outside today for the first time in four days. I hope I can sleep tonight, that would be lovely. The fourteen hour Sunday into Monday sleep of a week ago was the last real sleep I had.