Discovering Beauty in Everyday Life

I have an idea Would you like to play? No special rules, it’s a game called today We’ll meet at the farm by the cottonwood tree Bring a basket along; it’s all right with me There are raspberries up in the canyon they say We can take the old path though it’s out of the way I’ll hide and you seek, I’ll give you a clue If you find the old mill I’ll be waiting for you. We can’t wait too long for the time to be right Tomorrow is already stalking tonight.   Waiting Bird hiding in a camouflage of patterns

 I went over to the other side to take a look  You know it was the same old quiet evening  Over and over structure, repetition, an urban stamped out subdivision.  I want that house, give me that petal, and let’s have a look at that grass blade-No! Not that one, for heaven’s sake, I mean that one over there. Yes, that is the one. Oh, to be selected.  So what if Milky Ways are one in twenty?  Who cares about the droplets and the grains?  Just once to be the one and only The one with homespun and yellow corn and himself there in love. Its Christmas now and streaky windows pick up stringy lights and smeared colors in the oily puddles and the waffled manhole covers     Jane's tree with Susie

White bird of peace poses against the pavement in Northern Central Park

I love an open road White line vanishing Riding down the ribbon   Life on the run Spinning under the floorboards   Billowing over the windshields Waking up the shadows Chasing down the sun   Heading West, near 96th Street

I have papers and books and requests to peruse, I’m busy and frantic with hullabaloos, There’s a life to be lived, there’s my list of to-dos! So what? I’ll scratch out a few for a moment with you. I’ll bury the list for a hot rendezvous, I’ll banish a slew for a dally or two, Don't you think it’s the best thing to do?

Redtail, evening, with rat for dinner. 79th Street East

There once was a person named Mandy Who discovered a liking for Brandy Well, Mandy met Sandy and happy as can be They nipped and they sipped it like candy! But Brandy liked Sandy better than Mandy And Mandy liked Brandy better than Sandy. What once was delicious changed over to vicious And now there’s no Mandy or Sandy.

Let’s burrow down among the grasses, Down below the frost line. I know a place where water drips into a hidden lake, Quiet as a plate, Edged with ragged strata, sliced by time. We’ll leave a scent to stain the way. No reason to get lost among the echoes. We’ll travel back among the hollowed reeds, And leave a trail of capillaries full of singing. Romeo and  Juliet, Delecorte Theatre October 2010

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

When did it go away, that blue of summer. A circle drive with white paint and bubblegum, Grass green with red brown leaves, velvet sided. My childhood lover out back playing. Basketball! Yes, on a lot of dried and cracking mud Dusty with bouncing. Do you feel it now sometimes? Of course I don't, we can’t read minds, I don’t allow it! No, but once upon a time, a focus crystal turned our intersecting worlds to liquid color, A blue-green dress with daisies, The crinkle of an unwrapped piece of time. A fortune in a cookie, A dribble and a showoff shot, Barefoot summers, aware beyond perceiving. Across 5th Avenue from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

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

Closer, Closer, Forward March! Onward, Upward Ho! Well maybe yes and maybe not and maybe I don’t know. The biologist is expert at dissolving life in salines, Yet instead of frogs and fishes we end up with Petri dishes Full of caviar and tuna roe and tattered tadpole tailings! Well that’s what I see anyhow, while looking down at the slide. I know for sure they’re finding a cure but I miss the pond outside. I miss the chance to pull away and take a broader view, The chance to move away from the kill and circle a time or two. I miss the fuzz on the edge of things, the smear and the smudge and the blur. A little unsure, a little unclear, a little demure a little less fear, A sky covered meadow we wandered that year, a picnic lunch in Windermere, A chance to be who we were. Great Lawn from the East, August 2010

I've hijacked a few rides in my day along the highways and truck stops, through the fields of winter wheat and sugar beets. I've hooked into the next idea to soothe a restless mind, slogging through the netherworld of iso-pragmeroticism. A new galaxy is just the trick I thought, and hitched my wagon to a star. Oh, what fresh galactic air! There is no substitute, but the time did come, as it so often does. I had a hard time by the tail then, for a year or so, but when the climate changed,  I climbed aboard a magic carpet heading East. Oh, what exhilarating, spicy clangy saffron nights among the weavy symbolism. And still I cannot resist a fetching invitation to a far off land, for look what I have found among the ticket stubs and scrapbook fodder. India:  Ramana Athreya Confirms a New  Bird Species   Liocichla Bugunorum 2006 (Reuters)

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!

Go back to the grassy shimmered place with a peach colored mist and flattened bubble gum.  Go back to  nights alight with honeysuckles, Go back to awaken with a robin's nest and two blue eggs in the poplar trees. Go back to the grasshopper path with stickers  and bare feet and horny toads and mud.  Go back into a summer evening, with a cricket  and an arching cigarette, flicked by a silent smoker on a porch.  Come back with green and gold and clear red under underpinnings.  Come back with a small ball of open sky to play with.

There's a fragment of exposure, with light too bright to see beyond the surface. Give me a starfish to hold my hand, and take me back into the sea. Or, a sweet bird on a fence might know the way.

Go back to the grassy fizzy place with a peach colored mist and flattened bubble gum. Go back to nights alight with honeysuckles, where ball games spin. Go back to awaken with a robin's nest and two blue eggs in the poplar trees. Go back to the grasshopper path with stickers and bare feet and horny toads and mud. Go back into a summer evening, with a cricket and an arching cigarette, flicked by a silent smoker on a porch. Come back with green and gold and clear red underpinnings. Come back with a small ball of open sky to play with. Come back to touch a finger tip. After all, why not?

Have you gone crazy lately?  Feeling the burning sun at dusk?  Inside you?  Did  you forget?  Knowing what they mean by it at last? Crushing?  Doubled over? Why now?  What happened? Go away! Oh no, not yet! Please wait a little while.

I feel the ache of summer. The calendar would disagree, but I know the warning signs.  A cool day with leaves four inches wide, green side up, stem-red, semi-glossy.  Two sparrows in a chasey touch and go, three geese splashing in the Harlem Meer vying for that taste of early honey. Oh I see the saddened, bitten days.  I know how to hesitate, and what's the use? But must we miss the smell of summer linden? Is that the price of closing well? Or are those squares and pieces gnawed and splintering regardless?  Look!  Over there!  That carefree early summer rain is smoothing out the endgame.