an essay disguised as journal, more prose than poem,
         but you decide.   and are thus forewarned.
 
 
sunlight this morning was nearly tumbling.   nearly startling.

waves splashing on shoreline rocks.   wild.   like that.

as a child I recall how there, close up beside those rocks,
the waves would crash and climb, climb up closer to me.
how that frightened me into wanting feather wings.

some words now frighten me.   no, not words, it’s the
thoughts beneath.   the more I look, thoughts and feelings
begin being the same.   look for brightness.   resolved.
         I try.

yet, new life within every change.   made new again.
         unexpectedly.
 
 
one rule:   wear clean socks.   or no socks at all.
 
 
nothing and everything, that’s how this story begins.

is nothing just what we don’t yet have the sense to know?

there is more nothing than the stuff we recognize.   nothing
is what stuff moves through.   redressing our relationships.
         no nothing, no movement otherwise.
 
 
be the sailor who knows the sea within which we float.
         is it float, or is it swim?   I don’t know.
 
 
and it’s more than language at fault.
the only way we have to describe nothing is by what it is not.

even that name itself, we say “no thing”, thus described using
our own “some thing” way of sensing anything.   what it isn’t.
         nothing might be anything possible that isn’t
         now, isn’t here.   possible.
 
 
         @

randomly, in either hand.   is reason a mask?

so who first?   who to trust?   you know.   chicken or egg?

thus feeling or thought?   which is parent?   which is child?
yet why need there be a first?

is our universe not big enough to be simultaneous?
 
 
         @

where does passion linger for you?

I love the pen, my fingers doing scrimshaw ink on paper.
I love the labor to keep scribbles on the page, inside their
lines, not taking flight into a greater arc of wilding hand.

I love the crossings out, the new words added in.   the lines
and arrows directing language about the page.

         I love the listening,   where it begins.

and you?   where does your compass lean?
describe your living map.   use hands.   draw.
 
 
         @

lately I’ve told myself I’m thinking too much about death.
about not being here any more.   but no.   wrong.
         I’m thinking about living.
         better eyes, better ears, better feet.   better heart.

an obsession?   possibly.   but isn’t that a right devotion
to embrace?
 
 
         @

are we afraid of being nothing?   am I?

we are matter.   we always will be.   maybe energy, but
that’s matter too.   Einstein says.   still something, you see.
         we remain.

yet who we are does include nothing, the not-matter me,
laid out between each molecule, each atom.   more space
than matter itself we are.
         we are relationship.

existence is only because nothing and matter are married.
         neither is, without the other.
 
 
         @

there is beauty in this bonding of palms.   no confusion here.

         an autumn tree, first snow on mountain tops.
         someone you recognize walks by.   smile.
         a difference of only timely scale.
 
 
 
so, what does this all mean to me?
see the threads cast about.   a fish in water.   then two.

when we touch it feels like Spring to me.