Discovering Beauty in Everyday Life

Startled Worn away in the winter Still hanging onto last year’s evidence while new growth pushes out   Is there another chance? well,  I do have my ways.

Like a fly we are caught by the merest chance In the cunning webs of circumstance. There isn't time for a second look, To see the puzzled pictures in the riddle book, To sniff out the hand that baited the hook. What if there is a snagy thread Pulled loose by a windblown seed? Don’t wait for a message, just go ahead, Just pull, it’s a seed not a weed! Forget all the angles and “wait a secs “, Forget regressing your y over x! It isn’t mathematics that’s calling for you It’s life, it’s exciting, let's try something new! Just pull it! --  Help! I'm flying away!  Hang on, don't let go! It's just for today. v

With something churning in the marrow of her breast, The maiden crept along the cobbles. No hunted looks from creaking doorways; just another covered canyon city full of polygons in grey and black. "Don’t trip now; damn these heels!" she said, stepping carefully among the daydreams. Ranch near Canyonlands, Utah, Easter Saturday  (Photo by Larry Calloway of Crestone)

These .two Happy Dogs rekindle their joyous friendship, while their owner- puppeteers pretend to manage the situation

At certain times in a particular light, would-be solid substances begin to dance.   They are creating shadow ripples in the space-time continuum.

Woman walking away from the sun near Ridgeview Way * Crestone Colorado, Lara C. * "...In later Theravada texts as well as in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, the Middle Way refers to the concept, enunciated in the Canon, of direct knowledge that transcends seemingly antithetical claims about existence." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_way

It’s just a shadow after all, but I had the sun, I knew the moon, I owned a grey wall full of maps, A hankering to travel.  I had a star one time, but I cannot recall the color. Today crashed into me again, with sweet wind and a sun-swept sidewalk, stinging my hands like ice, Sucking me out through a black day-hole, Shifting into ecstasy.

Amid the Milky Ways A stem of sunrises

Berries, Berries, Berries, but not a single Bear! No Birds! No Bees! What's going on here? Central Park Near the 79th Street Transverse, September

I was sun-soaked and laughing. When the tide ripped over the broken road Twisting me off at the roots. Numb and quiet, holding my own, I survey the damaged places. Time heals, they say, that’s what they say.   Forget that fake and tawdry glimmer, Half made up; just passing through! Time will tell, that’s what they say.  Leave space for the unexpected.

First obtain a list of patients in residence at the Hospital for Special Surgery.  Select a name with a similar ethnicity to your own to minimize questions by badge-wearing personnel, especially those with stethoscopes. Walk with purpose to the appropriate room with a cover story at hand.  Nod nicely to the patient and head for the widow. Successful Visitor obtains chair near the Window.  Patient was asleep and therefore non-interfering   Visitor nods to Patient on way to the Window,  pretending to be a close relative and Hospital Volunteer Sailboat passing Hospital for Special Surgery on East River (taken by individual named Rita, who claimed to be an old-high-school-friend). Typical Patient View

All the Way from China (replay) I have an old toy that came from China,  Animals cut from colored cloth and cotton batting Threaded with embroidery. A bird, a frog, a dragon and a dog,  One after the other on a string. It wasn’t spring then but I was there for certain. I was there when the pomegranates sold from baskets set on blankets, When wooden carts were pulled by hand,  When bicycles packed the hard roads, When people rolled and wrapped the harvest. It was fall of course, not spring.  I was there, though, for certain.

See the softly colored circling leaves?  They're a telltale sign of a hollow. See how the trunk twists to move the hollow closer to the lovers on the path? There's a thought behind the turning. See the gnarly, shaggy trunk of bark, broken from the slow pirouetting eons? Yes, that's the final, crucial sign.  Mysterious is a Magic Tree, with caverned trunk and maple leaves and a hollow full of sorcery. Behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art, November

Look! There’s a painted leaf. Look! A gilded limb among the green ones. Fall, fall, the beauty of it all is so distracting! I ought to lean along the old fence of pale memories, But I am so excited! I ought to dwell among the flakes of old lost chances, But I just saw a woodpecker! I’m supposed to contemplate the decomposing ends of things, But I just remembered skipping! Oh dear, I’m at a loss of how to dread the days. My mind keeps slipping on a polished daydream, Straight to the crisply apple-buttered gourds; The red, ripe berries, Fresh tomatoes, corn and pumpkins, Pies and apples, tarty stuffing, That conscientious fall blue sky. Oh happy shining hair and denim, Oh fiery cheeks and a new wool scarf, Oh take me life, I am your sequin. Today, I can't remember how to grieve.

What if nothing ever happens, will there still be time for wishes? Will every hand I hold be fleeting? Is it too late to grab the strings that brocade life into a silken cloak? If I could find the words, would I put my wish into a sentence, Or would I try to pull the ink back out of the page in fear of never? What if instead I pull the edges in around that glossy wish And turn it into damped down hammered gold? It’s a wish for heaven’s sake, Why not? I miss the simple act of presence. The Golden Apples of Central Park

There’s an old glove I had that summer When the weeds were eating up the flower beds. We had a broken patio, and a fence with spirea.  I looked up from my work that day, and there Mom was, dressed in polka dots and yellow. A broken thing by then, our life. But one time there she was, S tanding in yellow polka dots, Happy as a dandelion. Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, August 2010

Our magic tree has had a wonderful summer showering blessings over beings great and small, seen and unseen, who dare pass  through it's shadowy aura. Magic Tree on Reservoir Path near East 95th Street

It’s a dangerous game, nostalgia. A distant house and a time long passed away to misty recollection, I take no trips to that far country, planned at least. Yet as I walked along my happy here and now, An unkempt patch of lofty sunlit flowers snatched my mind. And as I stood martyred to the place, a quiet aura caught me up. I thought to hear that distant sidewalk, Listening, working apart the ropey threads of sound, A purring shifting car on Hanson Street, crunching gravel as it comes along, into our unpaved drive, The August locust pulsing, pulse, pulsing, Bobby's dog panting, barking once or twice, The mellow squeak of the screen door slamming softly, The stopping sounds of the four-door Nash Sedan, Slide and swish, “Who is it, Honey?" "It’s Aunt Marcie.” The slowly developed smell of bleach and dust and drying sheets, Sun, sweet peas, hot sidewalks, It’s a bumble bee that comes to take me back, riding on the prime meridian of home. Conservancy Sout

Is there another thing better than a winding path with a friend and a bench and a lamp waiting?

It's what I wanted, A capacity to crave for life, To feel raw and potent earth inside, Intestines smoldering with empathetic longing But then perhaps it's just a mood, An echo after all, falling on a meadow with the grain past the green, Dry now and full of stickers. Oh don’t dwell! You’ve weathered worse. Keep a move on, the light is changing, move along now. It’s time to find a nearby twig to tie a tether to. Now wait a minute.  Let's not add 'hasty' to this craven bog. I'd like a little gaiety, a smolder here a petal there A reckless wanton  episode. Who says we can't, and whose to stop us? Look what I found among the ripened brambles!