Discovering Beauty in Everyday Life

Rusty with life I flee the stainless streets, escaping to the border places, neon blinks through half a sign. Dark wood angles jut and flounder on their way to make up a house. Galvanized garbage can broken on the sidewalk, lid almost covering the mess inside. Loose wires hang over broken grass, holding on in the front-yard dust. Green planks cross-hatch behind the steps, covering the belly of the porch. Inside the floor is still swept clean; There's a curtain instead of a door. Hangman stalks the inside house, waiting for a turn of events. Across the Harlem Meer

These days I skim along the surface floating and swimming in the upper inches no snorkel and of course no weights and tanks. No clever bottom views for me, no sneaky stinging jellyfish no broken veins and vessels just below the surface of the matter. Floating along beneath the heady balmy moist warm sun I hear splashing out beyond the breakers. Do not drill down through soft torn pieces. Don't you touch that swollen, stick-like thing, tucked in the muddy bottom feeding maw; I said don’t stir it up! Silty billowy mud-swarms up like acrid dirty arson smoke, Spewing fires at the ragged edge of town, Freight train blowing, parallaxing paraphrasing paralyzing Hush! Soft waves lapping like they said they did. Skimming Along Lexington Avenue

I have a friend who lives in Forksville. Not one fork every now and then, but a fork deluge! A tempest full of forks! Eveywhere you turn, another Fork! Where is the road among all those forks? Fork here, fork there everywhere a fork, fork. Wait! Why not take two forks at a time? . Who would know if one fork simply superimposed? Why make these tough decisions? Take Both Forks! It’s so simple really. Calm sets in without a storm, Action pushes out reflection, Leading at last to satisfaction. Of a sort. Don’t you wonder now and then Where all those might have beens have been While you were waning melancholic Waxing upon the hyperbolic? There’s something in choosing anyway In keeping morose vacillations at bay There something in having a positive pull Of seeing the glass as perpetually full. Of sticking in optimism mode, Of trudging along that happy road . Why wait for another spin of the cards, Another day of fond discards, Another roll of the Ferris whee...

Anger sets the mind on fire, Dragging hot coals along the breast bone, searching for kindling, searching for a light to spark the white hot fuse. stabbing, searing, driving rage with icy calm, shooting bitter shrapnel, tempering the smitten soul, slicing through the broken worn out spirit, pulling the roots apart, exposing again a breaking heart, still striving reaching, craving for a sun, craving soil that isn’t caked with dead dry muddy quicksand, spiraling spinning, spitting, banging thumpity thumpity thump, thump, thump, thump There is no rhythm to it anymore! No inside shell, no place to go to ground. Nothing but an inside war torn up with foxholes, injured and shredded like a grated thing. How can a few remaining decades mend our very substance? Can I re-enter life again, with such a damaged heart? Oh gentle hope, I see you creeping in among the shadows!

Edgy and exhausted, broken, held together like safety glass, walking around covered with clothes, inside shivering in the dull sun. Heart careening from chakra to chakra looking for a place to mend. How is the sky still a happy blue, with all those clouds scratching? Dry green leaves scraping over each other, pretending its still summer. Grated afternoons garnishing that shrunken hot dog, withered down to a shriveled string. How did it look so plump under that awful sauerkraut? Colorado Late Summer Squiva Trained Picnic Model

I crave those times I refused to notice, when I lived behind the separator, catching reflections in the transparent screen: red snowsuits glancing by in January, spring-green boots. August—limp, dry, sticky with sap. Camping in the lodgepole pines, quiet needle carpets crunching, hiking, breathing, always such a long way to go. Why am I always, always last? I am weighted down with last year’s dinners. I see a paint drip frozen dry on the yellow wall. Why notice it now, when the time to fix is over? Staring out the dusty window, Rain throwing spatters down my face. From Light to Dark on Madison Avenue

I crave that weary, empty cave Those unremitting ribbons of geology Those booming echoes drip by drip Sneaking down the cranial walls Etching with acid despair. I crawl into the water, weighted by the world Slipping into the muddy bottom Staring down the midnight eels. Vitality drawn thin as a crack. Do not inhale, don’t do it! Do not drown in watery inches! Wait for one more morning sun Shafting through the silting creek beds, Dappled with leaves and colored stones. Green with Garden Hose

There once was a leaf named Horatio Who was looking around for a way to show How grand he would be in a color photo. Leaf loved his gorgeous physique and technique, Leaf was certain his hue was unique, what mystique! Leaf was strong not dependent not weak, but a sheik! All alone On his own He had grown. Take a photo of Me, said he, not the tree! What good is a tree to a Me?

It happened in a newborn moment sparkling with imbroglios of fortune catching you with snaggles, burying their burning tendrils in your palm. Where is the symphony, the opera and the rat-tat-tat? Would you settle for that field of growing grain? Stalks whiskered with morning dew, breaking the sunlight into laughter, your touch as dear as astrophysics. Yellow Tulips, Genus Sureptitious, 9 years old!!

Stippity steppity stoop. I’m always out of the loop. Whatever goes on, If I’m right or I’m wrong, I’m always outside of the group! The other day I happened to say A thing or two About what we should do About saving the day. Not any old day, no, not any at all! This particular day that’s about to befall Us is laden with flowers and birds everywhere, With their pollen and tweets and their devil may care, And their buds and their twigs and their pre-summer sprawl-- We’ve seen nothing like this since the mess last fall! Before it’s too late we should mow, we should prune! We should spray, we should weed, and we must do it soon. Let it go till tomorrow And much to our sorrow The fields and the trails and the streets will be strewn With Petals! with roots! spirea! and yarrow! Central Park Italian Garden, Spring 2013

It’s the daily-ness that wore me down, the over and over and on and on. Winter thudding along, mashing thoughts of spring into the muddy creases, Waiting, waiting. Will nothing ever happen? I am frozen like fingers on a frost-bit doorknob. No don’t try to open it, I’ve tried. Oh, it’s the daily-ness of winter, where is spring? How can I stop this brain-dead dialog, conjuring up a wrinkled copy of last year’s anticipation? Can't I give it one more try? Force out one more inaudible day? Waiting on the curbs and playgrounds, watching through the doors and windows, trudging after draining, unmet expectations along that repetitious path into another afternoon. I saw the yellow first and then that somehow different green: transparent, sun-lit, red-tipped, replicating life. Sun slanting and shifting through the afternoon showers, breaking into rainbows. English Conservancy Garden, April 2013 English Conservancy Gardens, Central Park April 2013

Cherry Blossoms, 2013!!

Like a fly we are caught by the merest chance In the waiting webs of circumstance. Isn’t there time for a second look? To see the puzzled picture In the riddle book? To sniff out the hand that baited the hook? What if there is a snaggy thread Pulled loose by a windblown seed? Don’t wait for a message, just go ahead! Take hold, 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!

Searching, waiting, watching Wondering, praying, pretending Wishing, imaging, insisting! These old green leaves, Wintered over, Simulating new spring green, Witch hazel, yellow and orange, So like forsythia, yet! Where is the booming yellow, Crashing over banks and edges, Catching a sniff of dainty pink?

There’s a secret self inside me hidden, dry as tinder, waiting for the fuse to spark. Lighting up the ancient networks finding dreams as bright as the day they were born.

These are the fallow days, mustard seeds in the planning stages, an applecore tossed into a fertile heap, spring sleeping underground and unaware, resolution makers vowing one more year to rearrange the miracle.

I feel opened up and unwrapped today; did that every happen to you? When that heady concoction of Life just begun comes into your heart and begins to outrun the Sadness and Madness, the Sorrowful Brew, that had captured my mind for an eon or two, before I recovered and finally knew, If I spent just a few of these moments with you, I could vanquish each dissonant thing that I'd done, when I hadn’t a clue what I wanted to do with the what and the why and the who. Let’s close up 2012 with a joyful adieu. lt’s a gorgeous New Year, and it’s waiting for You! South Park, Southern Colorado in December

What happens when love takes the time to strengthen, what happens if it passes, and the day tomorrow leaves behind is chilled and withed, holding us without a chance, at the drop off point where death takes over, how can we hold the weary fort, when battle scars the very heart of the earth. How can we love without knowing, how can we hold on without a knotted center keeping us from flying off, how can I watch the day die and still live to see the morning sneaking back to life against the sallow sky? I did, and then I turned around and just walked out of the picture. What could I do? I didn't know how to talk it over. Magnolia Buds in December, Central Park

Just take my life, I hand it over, palm full and pulsing. I have no stories to tell anymore, No more backups and no more clogs, no retrievals, and no Aha!s They went down the drain with the last hurrah; Give me the point of the captured moment, when the day is lost in the stars. Give me the time for letting go, When faith is as real as a unicorn, Tell me the way to carry you with me In the puddled sway of eternity. Show me the season for a peak at life and a burnished turn of events as well, come with me into the space between the ring of truth and the tolling bell. Harlem Meer from 109th and Fifth Avenue

Late in the dead afternoon I crawled Up the boulder bunched against a foothill. I don’t remember why, not now. I remember the achy feeling though, And the shallow, predictable demise of it all, After those compass-free days, What buried treasure touched the fire, What silky agent pierced the boundary line? The narrow roadway, white and chalked, Hemming the highland summer meadow, Could I forget those stars, however misaligned? Would I delete that edgeless, radiant, holographic night; Could I forget you, and would I live a single day?