Month: July 2011

Today I wish I was a dog.
I’d have no mortgage payment or
bills of any kind to worry about.
Very few responsibilities.
I could even stink to high heaven
and my person would love me anyway.
My primary functions would be to love
and be loved.  I would also have to 
      a) entertain my people with my silly behavior
      b) lie on the couch with a baleful look
      c) jump wildly up and down whenever my people come home 
      d) clean my bowl at every meal.
I think that I could do all of these things
and do them well.  I would make a great dog.

I am putting my modest little wish
(nonetheless fervent) 
(nonetheless heartfelt)
into a small red Chinese boat 
and sending it off into a moonlit sky
to gather the magic of becoming.
From you and you and you
here in the world and
you and you and you
out in the Otherworld
who love(d) me
and who (I know) would 
wish for me also
my modest little wish.
Thanking you in advance
I am Yours Truly.

May we all be
hellbent and benevolent
whole upon breaking
loving and challenging
mysterious and open
willing to fly
witness to magic
dumbfounded
stupefied
polka dotted
magnified and
hopelessly besotted.

They say that in dreams the basement
represents the deep psyche.  The long buried,
stuffed away, most feared, terrible untouchables 
of our Selves.  The place from which nightmares emerge.
Well.  I have torn into my horrifying basement with
reckless abandon of late.  Ripped apart damp
rotting shelves in whose depths lurked
God knows what.  Sucked miles of spider 
webs into the maw of my vacuum cleaner.
Swept up piles of dirt and dust.  Carried out
boxes and bags of useless or abandoned junk, 
the detritus of my sons’ childhoods and my own 
poorly executed home improvements.  
Soon, look!  I will be innocent again.

Hush of a hot Sunday morning 
broken by the hum of the air conditioner
and the sudden barking of my ferocious little dog.
He was a stray I always say, as if that might
explain his fierce Napoleonic tendencies.
Minutes tick by as I contemplate leaving
the cool of my house for the buzzing heat
of outdoors.  My church, my temple.
A choir of katydids will offer hymns
as the cardinal delivers his sermon of the day.

The many old possessions of my boys and me
sat waiting in the driveway for new homes.
Piece by piece they went off in the arms of someone new.
The pig-tailed 4-year-old took the mylar wig.
A collector of memorabilia the imperfect frames.
The ugly old table even found a new home.
The space heater, the many bandanas, the 
shells collected at the beach, two old frying 
pans, the Radio Flyer wagon without a handle, 
the broken chair I’d planned to fix, the moon shoes,
the enamel kitchen table like the one 
my grandmother had, the baskets. 
Don’t you want these metal chairs? I ask.
No?  Well, if you change your mind
and come back later, you might find them
on the curb for free!
All these things we once felt we needed
crowded into my basement are now gone.  
I am light and spacious.  Without 
this burden I feel as if I might fly.

My binoculars were a moot point 
hanging heavily around my neck this morning
as is usually true when I think to take them.
Every bird I might like to have seen hid itself away.
Heron, kingfisher, indigo bunting, bluebird, hawk.
Possibly the yellow breasted chat.  
No one came out to play.  
Hoodwinked yet again, I recalled 
the tiresome Buddhist warning
against holding expectations, 
this time in the guise
of a pair of binoculars.

Enchanted by the cool July morning
I dawdled luxuriously at the creek
studying a velvet black winged dragonfly
while my dogs puddled about.

Each day in the woods I must choose.
The narrow path that climbs the ridge
cool and lacy with leaves and spiderwebs?
Or the open paths bordering the meadow
fragrant with bergamot, alive with birds?
Or yet the one the creek makes in its rocky bed
where I might spy a heron or kingfisher?
Each choice I make, even these small ones,
carries a consequence of some sort.  
Each gives me pause and often I let the dogs
choose.  For which prize might I miss if I 
do this rather than that, go this way rather than that?
What magical happenstance lies where in this
short life of mine? 

A pair of deer stood watching me
in a field of grasses and wildflowers
as I came up the path this steamy July morning.
A male female pair, they made 
what felt like steady inquiring 
eye contact with me.
Friend or foe? they seemed to ask.
Had my little dogs noticed them
they might have gotten a wrong idea.