Easy, up and catch!
Easy, up and catch!
Feel the boat glide
Long, smooth, graceful
Then slowly, easy
Catch!
Drive the knees towards the deck
Swing into the bow
Feel the boat Jump!
Squeezing the shoulder blades
Quiet, relaxed
Deep, dark puddles
Then relaxed, slowly, easy
Catch!
Everyone together
Exactly the same
Moving, gliding the shell forward
Towards the finish line
Ten strokes left!
Five!
One, last, powerful drive…
One, smooth, clean exit…
The bow breaks the finish line
You collapse
But you won!

Standing, studying
Soaking in the atmosphere all around
I close my eyes.
Inhale deeply…
Don’t you smell it?
Millions of lives; the world is so full of life!
Ants, carrying home dinners ten times their size,
Fish bubbling around the streams,
New grass making its first leap towards the sun –
Everything struggling against everything else.
This is the magical dance of life.

*Don’t you dance?

Evening fell
Soft as a black velvet curtain.
A mild breeze played around the trees
And ruffled our hair.
I'd just met you
Roaring in I came
You with your guitar
Came to welcome me at the dock,
To invite me to sit
To listen and laugh
To forget, for some small time,
That small's the only time I have.
You strummed
We talked
About small, insignificant things
And laughed
There was much laughter that night.
I strummed a few chords
Hesitantly accepting the audience
Laughingly bemoaning my inability to play
Later, we talked of life
of stupid teachers
strange students
the quirks of this world in which we live.
We threw watermelons
joking together as the stars grew more pronounced over head.
Moments of comfortable silence,
A fitting prelude to the night's end.