The growth of the Willows correspond
to the increased loudness of their rustling
reaching for the Sun
while the winds ruffle their leaves
waving to the Universe with spindly boughs
massed together like an impenetrable jungle.
How those thin and shaky trees survive winter
the battering wind and chill factor, is amazing.

The Library van has reversed into place
the same place it parks every month
It came over on the  9.30 am ferry
as it has done for at least twenty years.
Folk arrive like a small swarm of insects
all hurry out car doors laden with books.
This will increase come the dark winter
the time of Human slowed activity.
Come next spring, all will be a little wider read.

I’m sitting on the porch,
and I’m listening.
To the crickets, the air conditioner, the cars.
I feel, at once, very at home.
Summers of Governor’s Place past, eating Otter Pops outside until our tongues turned a weird brown-gray color from the combination of different dyes.

I remind myself to look up, to look at the stars.
Yes, they’re still there—the same ones Katie and I used to “moonbathe” under, lying on the warm concrete of her driveway.

How have I forgotten to look at the stars?
“Look at the way the light is hitting the building!” was my constant refrain in Paris. I was always looking up, soaking it in.
But of course, in Paris, everything is beautiful.

Certainly, my life now has a lot of light to be seen: In the morning, when the sun pours into the stairwell through Isaac’s stained glass.
In the evening, as red bricks seemingly absorb the sunset’s oranges and reds and then reply with a cooling lavender just as the light begins to fade.

I want to see, I want to know every chirp, every dribble.
I want to inspect each speck of dust, greet every ant circling the sink in the kitchen.
I need to know every part of my life and the life happening within and around me.

The details may not always be the shine of a moonbeam cast upon a dreamy French rooftop —but in fact, was the color of our Popsicle tongues not also the exact same hue?

Look up
Look around
Take in where you’re sitting, where you’re living. Stop counting weeks—you cannot make a science out of spontaneity.

A train sounds in the distance and I pause because I want to invite that, too, to be a part of this moment.

I keep coming back to Cheryl Strayed’s “I’m going to put myself in the way of beauty.” . . .  I just think I’m going to look closer around me.

I sit within the greats
just a fly
-if even but a fly.
On the pages of poetry
as I read and transform
from a fly
-the great poetry
of years and minds
takes me to itself.

we could *** ,drugs and rock and roll
personally I never was going to be Mr Pension;
cut hedges and take the wife to bingo
somewhere middling feels normal enough

its not that you are spinning because you have consumed too much alcohol
You have consumed a lot of alcohol
and now you cannot balance yourself on a spinning ball

I came to search for you in the desert
distraction at its minimum
and discovered it was you who led me
And wanted to give all, more than I did

Only a solitary fly, up and down the window pane wanders.
All the world is statue dormant;
even the sea refuses to move.
The sky is a constant grey horizon stretched overhead.
Me and the fly at the end of the world, waiting
Who will have who for supper.