Discovering Beauty in Everyday Life

With gratitude for Grace, Beauty, Kindness, and Love

For months now, Ounce has been trying his best to live in the city. The new light poles with their crossbars here in New York proved too seductive for even our Ounce! Building a nice nest inside a street pipe was irresistible: new, highrise, amenities -- but the noise! Horns, Traffic, and the Pigeons! It was just too much. Well, Ounce is finally back in the park, but it's winter. You know how Ounce is with water...it's impossible to stay away for long. The other day we walked a little too close to Ounce's favorite sculpture swimming bowl. How disappointing, and after an entire summer of city life. Of course it's winter, and although the elements provide a little water sometimes, even gossamer metal is cold this time of year.

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

I was traveling along in my mind the other day, searching for a random thought about a certain something, when I came across an outcrop. Not in my mind, no, but an actual outcrop from a hill. Sitting on the outcrop, believe it or not, was a small practically transparent Pherosa. It may seem odd, since there are so few Pherosas around, but when you see an unusual something sitting on an outcrop that is practically transparent, well. That is exactly what will come to mind. “Can I help you?” It said, and come to think of it I did need a little help with a lot of things. For one, I was concerned about what to do with the rest of my life, and so I asked its name. “Pherosina", said the Pherosa. "Rosey for short.”  “Do you ever wonder what life is all about?” I asked. “Not since I gave up wondering about death”, said Rosey. I had a leaf last year, a leaf on a tiny stem, born that spring, it was a wrinkled little thing (said Rosey). It spread itself and found its lobes ...

Well I did want to talk about love, But there’s so little that I wish to know about it. Crinkling like tinfoil in bright sun, Folding over, captured in the new moon air, Creeping over the window sills, Climbing through the pumpkin patches. Sinking into the inner rooms, leaving copies of itself along the way Peaches covered in thick fresh cream Brown sugar cane and dark molasses, A grassy path in a secret wood Reflections on Second Avenue

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

Pasted to this  moment, longing for a sacred  life, Pinned to Earth, sewn like a button to eternity. Why all this tying down, when I need a new dimension? I’m staggering in the mud of it! Who needs Ten Commandments anyway? Seven sins and seven days, seven seals and seven dwarfs, So why not Seven Commandments? Did Moses get paid by the tablet? OK OK OK OK OK. Suffocating in loose packed piles of dreams, Drowning in a sea of living things. How many bottles need to break before I find a single note? Living under these inky A B C’s Fanning out of fountain pens, scratching, breaking, rubbing, spraying ink and flaying paper. Where is that blotter anyhow? Clementines and limes among polka-dotted things