I Try To Be Playful

I try to be playful
even as the weeks go by.
I realize what everyone has been saying,
that life gets harder.
It does.
Our particular creases get deeper,
our particular wearing points get more worn.
Our ideas get old.
Now, when a friend is gone
or someone moves away
it is much more important.
This is valuable information,
to know how to carry the things we need
as life happens.
In the romanticizing and justifying and imagining,
to have some tools that do the real work
that sometimes needs to be done.

The Mind To Find A Way

Lately I've had classical music playing during the day,
hoping to add whatever effect daytime classical music might have on my life.
It comes from the other room, through speakers I've hauled across America.
My stereo is a heap of equipment I have collected over the years.
Tinkering here and there, gathering disc changers,
digging an unused receiver from a friend's basement,
that was a real find.
I haven't paid a dime for the whole get-up.
To be separate from the world-turning force,
even in a set of speakers and some wiring,
even with just an antenna and some dials,
to have a screwdriver and two hands and the mind
to find a way.

Get Some Plums

The night before you left we went to the grocery store.
A crate of plums was conspicuous
dark and sexy next to the pale peaches,
water beading on their tight skin.
"Get some plums," you said, your lips forming
as if you were eating one right then.
Later, alone with little to do
I ate them
trying to feel decadent, holding the pits lightly between my teeth
imagining how you might do the same.

I Could Not Have Believed You

Had you told me there would be more smiles
I could not have believed you.
Yet here I lay, smiling like a fool
twofold? tenfold? more frequently than I ever thought
smiles could come.

The Little We Do Each Day

The little we do each day,
well, however much we do
(though it is little, in the grand scheme)
is a making of ourselves.
Would you string a glass bead in with pearls?
So why let a day go asunder with unwanted pursuits?
The arrogance of decision
is perhaps a needed arrogance.
The day is a miniature portrait of nature
of the cycle and the source.
Waking and resting you remember and practice
what has come
what will come.

The Source

Today I stood at the source,
story place and paradise of the Dakota people of Minnesota.
Named in our short history Pike Island
by beefy Zebulon Pike himself.
Sacred meeting place, the source of the universe
now the source of a park and an army fort
United States style.
Still, I went there to stand and try to see it as the source,
leaned on the swollen trunks of massive cottonwood trees
caught my breath in the soft light of canopied maple forest
put my feet in the sand at the confluence of the two rivers
on the island that is the turtle's back.
The island is still there
with frolicking deer and the gentle serrations of elm leaves.
The web of bridges and electricity and buildings is thick,
but the rivers still meet and flow
the land is still there, wet and wooded and waiting.
There is still a source.

About the Storm

All day there have been announcements
about the storm
on its way,
licking and slurping its way
through humidity and breeze and that
—i don't know what it is—
that feeling that says storm's-a-comin'.
And it comes
the trees shiver and bend
the streets are pocked with the falling drops,
branches sway, traffic slows, water flows
and still it is a show,
still it is a production, a performance.
Gusto, bravado, panache, all those words.
That's how it is with these crashing summertime rainfalls.
That's
how it is.