Discovering Beauty in Everyday Life

An emotional snow doesn’t do any harm Especially at 90 degrees. With a wet underarm, when the weather is warm, With no ice on the eaves, no breeze in the trees, Let this photo snowstorm act as your unicorn, To re-write the day (in its usual way) To conform to a happier norm…

My past-tense life, full of dangling participles, A closet full of un-done novels, waiting for their final edit. Shoe laces frayed from long gone hide and seeks. Again, again, I see it all, stinging the air in front of my eyes; Cracking, shattering, splitting, fading, Finally the here and now again. I see it all. I do from time to time, I conjure up an arrow, cat gut pulling— Don’t let me go! I see my flabbergasted sinews dangling loose, Their life swooshing toward some unknown target. No bulls eye here for me! Should I have stayed with that simple dartboard after all? Well, now here I am, a feather for a friend, Sinking into a spring-green branch. What time is it anyway? ‘63 in Paris? Or Milan in ‘71? Why drag that blackened coal-shoot past Into this sparkling, solar-driven day? It’s time to let those finite multi-sided polygons Leap for their circles at last!

I know I missed Easter and Wester, and You, Thanksgiving and Chrismas, Columbus Day too, but my Spirit was with you; I had to make do! I even discovered a secret or two: The seasons keep rolling the hour glass sifts, regardless of whether or not I exist. If I don’t pay attention the matter at hand continues along just as though it were planned, Not by me, Never mind! I’ve got plenty to do, without thinking about how to discuss it with you! Not that I wouldn’t enjoy the exchange, If it weren’t so totally hard to arrange. I think I’ll go look for a wish and a star. I found one! My gosh! And it isn’t that far! What a beauty, oh my! Has it always been there? In my eyes, in my care, It’s just too much to bear. Easter in Central Park ~ 2015

A blank page has nothing, no nothing at all, but it makes itself over with letters and scrawl, nevertheless it remains quite pristine on the edges and margins and spaces between all those letters and such that don’t matter much so if I recall it at all then one word in twenty is plenty. Early (really early) Magnolia buds in Conservancy Garden I've sped read through more books than I can count, and I am really and truly great at it. I have become so proficient that I need only drive by a bookstore to read a book, much like ConEd reads meters. (You may not be aware of the special radio-frequency chips inserted in the spines of most best sellers.) So of course I think you should try it! Here's How: Open your eyes wide, and focus on your smart phone (how do you think that phone got so smart? Downloads!) Anyway, focus, focus. Concomitantly, Flick the pages past with a suitable finger; I prefer the two middle finger method. Now, work hard at remembering a few

I am hardened by the unrelenting cold Scorched by winter, moribund with icy calm Burrs scratch and itch, puncturing the edges Cold dirt. Talking drum calls out for me A drop, a flake, a pinch at a time By the tip of a root I become me again. Untermyer Fountain /Three Dancing Maidens by Walter Schott, French Conservancy Garden, Central Park.

Dry leaves rattle and bones click against the soft satin, shredded by time, A coffin day. I don’t know what to do when it comes down to it; Nothing seems to say itself, It just all seems out of proportion, There is no spring back in the touch, no sap of life, My fingers are aching with the sadness of it. And there’s the stupid sun, spreading itself over the morning. Look at that. A tree down for the winter, Gone, gone. Gone, gone, gone. They say the sap is just below the surface, Sticky with life, rich, and waiting. Colorado, Winter 2014

 Around the corner there is a library full of centuries of words hanging onto the shelves. Winter encyclopedias, dark maroon, almost leather, indexed and waiting, full of photographs. Color photos carefully selected, positioned just exactly on the page, heart and soul of a thing. Maps, Charts, Physics in a nutshell, Rome in a fraction of an inch. Me in my blue coat feeling like a leftover good-will bargain table, crumpled up and left for last. Watch your posture, young lady.  The lady says she likes the hat I choose from the second hand bin. Maybe it will have time for a second coming.  I do not select a book right off, it is a sacred act all right. Maybe just a small one, maybe I can taste little bit sunny spring  carrying a spirit  into my upper chest--After all, they say the sap is just below the surface, sticky with life, rich, waiting-- A book! bound with dewy decimals holding its place. The light is on now in this magic space. Oiled wood, piles of golden incandes

“Would you like the Eyeballs? They’re our special today Sticky or slimy or choose your own way” I thought the young waiter was kidding you see So I said I’d take breaded with crackers and brie (tee-hee-hee, tee-hee-hee, tee-hee-hee). When he served those round balls they were dark at one end and they looked so alive I began to pretend they were olives or something, and not what they seemed when off in the distance just then someone screamed! “They’re mine! They were mine! And now I can't see!" That's a terrible thing to tease someone like me! I’m a delicate person and sensitive, too, It’s clear you are steering away from what’s true, You’re veering away from the matter at hand! Hand? Oh my gosh what has happened to you? Is it gone? Are you sure? Is there nothing to do? And just then within reach was a terrible screech! “There’s a crunch in my lunch! It’s a long bendy thing... No it’s not just a thing, it’s a thing with a ring! Agha agh! Gag-agagh, j

What happens when the singing brook slows to an alto winter, When fall dips into the frozen places? How do I fill the space between those temporary satisfactions, Those amorous sauces, dripping from fragrant cedars? How do I keep old reeking thoughts from sneaking into the intervals? Do not think back to the bygone days of ho ho ho’s and turkeys, Do not go charging in between the status and the quid pro quos, Do not be trapped in that gnarled landscape, Bitten away from the valves of life, Take care! When life is sailing along in the straits, When the winds sing out through the rigging, When honey flows into the pantry loaves, When today’s new ghosts haunt up the holds, When the day is alive for the living, Abandon your cares to the wind and the fates, Abandon the helm to the life it creates, Take care! William Glackens, American, 1870-1938, wash and graphite on paper:Fleet of Transports just before the start, Tampa Bay, June 13 1898--Prints and Photographs

Keeping your distance, safely Resisting that magnetic hold the  unmistakable unrelenting  tug Fleeing in circles

Of course I didn’t see you coming, Or I would have dodged that silken bullet hollowing through my cemented door. I’d be huddled down inside my barrow, Tossing the apple away with the core.

I didn’t know about the mended life I did not expect the quiet I did not anticipate the candle life     Soft surrounding flame     Holding onto an orange-hot tip     Black wick I did not expect a rainbow life     Colors melting towards each other     Spring rain passing     New wet leaves Still I know that raging, jealous, microsecond fire     Brassy, logo-driven, neon     Staked to the charred past     Mind igniting Rescued again by the river of time Tossed back into the candle-dappled day I sink into the moment like a stone.

One day I chanced to see a blossom the way it was to a bee, and the way it was to a butterfly, who fluttered over by and by. A lady bug climbed a nearby sprout to see what all the fuss was about. Well, "beauty is as beauty does", and the reason it does is Just Because! Summer Solstice Cresone Flower--Photo byLarry C.

Hot, muggy; it’s LA in the dusty days Freeways everywhere Down to La Jolla or is It Balboa? White wood, planked piers, neat. A beachy salt water breeze at last Salt water smells overshadow the fish- Looking down through an unseen world under its blue-green cover. A Glass bottom life. Where was today during all those years? Where was now back then? 50's Reprise; Coney Island 2014

Gone are the days when I would lament About this, about that, about where the days went, These days, I know what to do with my time, I relax, I sit back, and I think up a rhyme! Rhyming Leaves Outside 138 E. 94th Street

One sky looking down with clouds missing, Spirit winds blowing in the empty spaces, No hiding behind, no holding back, no letting be. Listening for old sounds in the waters, barely hearing the here and now, Cutting away at the stains of memory. Mama Nyaah * https://www.eventbrite.com/e/24th-annual-tribute-to-the-ancestors-of-the-middle-passage-tickets-6484813251

Tree limb bending in the morning, Winter grasses stiff and waiting, cold, ice-flow afternoon. Or maybe it’s a new day dawning as they do, sucking chi up into the core of the bones. I was a cut out,  filled with stuffing, a matched up crazy quilted scarecrow living a see-through life. So, I grab a 10 pound pack and a forty dollar bike and head off towards the Adriatic. Hills of scrunched-up fruit trees in pink and white, so happy you can taste the almond blossoms. Stradas Provinciales tunneled with poplars. There's a cotton-candy Ferris Wheel the first night out, a calliope singing Verdi in the popcorn wings. And it wasn’t that long ago either.

Stalking the waters of life, I tromped across the sea grass. Stickers everywhere! Foot by foot, squishing indentations into the wet sea-weeded sand. My soul is hurting for a kindred spirit, I am seeking for a shimmer through my heart, I am seeking an annuity of memories, I am catching at life with a pole and a lure. How do I trust these flutter things? this glimpse without a substance, these unborn wishes riding in, pulsing, panting, pulling at the reins. And there it is! The surf at last, pounding, pushing into the grass-riddled dunes. From the Southern Pump Station Block House, Central Park Reservoir ps: MISSION FOR THE DAY: SEARCH UP AND DOWN FOR AN ICE-FLOW (Iced over puddles count!) DISCOVER WHETHER OR NOT IT IS SUPPORTING ANY WILDLIFE (flora or fauna) IF SO, PONDER THE MATTER FOR AWHILE IF NOT, WELL, ADD SOMETHING! (a leaf, a stem, a pebble, a small pet). Finally, REPORT BACK TO HEADQUARTERS.

Tiptoeing through my fiberglass life, fearing a dent at every corner, training wheels wobbling, tattered and torn, the day wears on to a tricycle close. Well, I didn't change on purpose you know, I would happily have remained the same, hoping for a happy, homespun solution!

I find you in my mind again, not unexpectedly, but nonetheless I flee the shock of it. Ambivalent. We meet again In that very same synaptic gap And you are entirely different.