Waiting for the white paper
which underlies this writing
to loose a flow of words
finding Peace
in the facing-off:
a pumpkin and a purple cushion..
Henry David Thoreau chose
to sit on a solitary pumpkin
not a crowded purple cushion..
Many we know might charge him
with most slothful neglect..
Our venerable teachers
have exhorted us to
lift up the purple
with their assumption:
what is real is purple..
Yet we..startled by experience
find that very often
purple is pain..
We long to sit on that pumpkin
long since overgrown
with dead purple vines..
At last in our longing
the pumpkin may speak
of what lies in hiding
.. 'til just now..
with Peace emerging
the Pumpkin is Purple...

On days like this
cool, with little winds
desert birds forage for sticks
they build nests perched in cactus
some build green in palo verde trees
always I think of baby birds in spring
hatchlings, the fledglings that fly
I travel far beyond the noise of towns
watch the movement of cooling clouds
the roundness of rain upon the ground
the grey banked scurrilous skies
of hurried birds, their silhouettes before a storm
daisies that close, cold amid the stones
beneath where snakes and lizards go
slither and crawl in this landscape of saguaros
and I, ever tethered can only dream to fly.

You know how-don't ever tell me you don't
How I love the sun rays play with the cloud
As I curiously look up, I clearly see me falling
Through the swaying foliages of a cloud tree
Frolicking with the philanderer wind tickling her.
Sowing goosebumps you think, as falling raindrops
While she wishes she wouldn't respond to such
                                           frivolous machinations.
Is it love?
She gets no answer.The day marches on
an illusory ground, not worried about  THE END

Falling through the space, I see a sky full of holes.
Absence in presence and presence clouding absence
This, nobody ever takes notice.
                                                    An invisible particle
Of matter yet to be discovered,
I was stardust for a while,
I was falling,
Then I was quantas of energy
Without a given name, that wanted
To be on the move, singing,
While there is still  a song within.
Yes I was falling.
I confess: every night , I was curious about the moon's routine
Even on those nights she kept me waiting in the darkness guessing
"Woman, by spurning my love , you destroy light legitimately  ours".
The love I only kept,  for your silver lashes that pleases me!
I was falling:
On the face
Of the moon
I saw it's
        Reflection.

I was falling
All alone,from
Your memory
Like the
                Crinkled
                     Petal
                          Of a dead
                                   Flower.

We're talking
put up a hand
to stop a hurricane
futile here,
folks.
Two days past trying
while listening
to Hermine's tails
lashing at the windows,
I reach deep
into a well of emptiness
for a lost bucket
of words
filled with dusted
dried feelings,
the rope frayed
to snapping.
A thirst to heal
will lead me to drill
elsewhere,
thirsting for the tears
commingling with rain,
the tears that burst
from a stone-crag heart
in artesian splendor.

The power of music
and friendship
heals dead connections;
a well-meaning member
of a jam session
offers me a guitar.
I politely decline,
embarrassed by my disability,
and they shrug.  Your choice.
The familiar curves
beneath my arm
like a woman
from my past,
my amnesiac left hand
reaches for the
muscle memory
of fifty years' practice.
After an agonizing minute,
the G chord miraculously plays,
as I played it at five,
the three big fingers alone
strong enough to hold it.
The switch to C impossible;
so I play a variation.
Doesn't sound bad with the group.
My God, I might play a D7
by the next time it comes around
in the song.
The gang is playing old standards,
Ohio State music;
three chords and a cloud of dust,
which suits my present skill(?) well.
I almost cried when a few tunes later,
we sang A Horse With No Name
to my accompaniment.

Beethoven was deaf, yet heard the Ode To Joy.
Hawking is paralyzed, and travels the universe.
I have three good fingers,
and no good excuses.