isn’t it odd (a wonderment) how I don’t see what’s (revealed) hidden right in front of my fallow face?   here, lets allow these words, borne into sprouts.
 

tectonic revelation

So seven hundred miles, no, it wasn’t that.   Tuesday perhaps, no.   Things I forgot to bring along.   Things I remembered, and did.   (no, none of those)

            (Sssshh…)

I’ve well past described the sea-change for me, leaving California (shy, reluctant me) and driving North (one trailer in tow) here to Washington (near all unknown) (no me, no them).   It was no plan (changing more than geography) but was genuine (surprise) (like a puppet show?).   This transformation I’d thought was me finding making declaring some new face of me.   As some sources might say, previously solitude was my comfort home, how I energized myself – it was the bones of me. Now was I mirror image, sustained by conscious relationship (fancy words for talk with me, please).   New way to walk on two legs?   I thought so.
            I was wrong.

a muted kind of slap, then repeat.   blue dress above (after thought).   recognized (said a voice), hello.   past my slower better sight, responding, hello.   she continued down the street.
       I smiled.    nothing much, just like everything.

Not wanting to roll in my history (a scent of otherness), that was mostly left to be left behind.   Short sighted.   Better navigation to look see the bigger arc of experience.   Who was I then?   Who am I now?   Like such numerous mysteries, obvious enough with open eyes.   (open eyes)   (no fear enclosed)

            question was, how come my thirst?

Proportional?   Seeming not.   I remember an earthen Anderson dam to the East of the valley floor.   Dirt on top, you could drive across, boulders at the base.   Massive, sturdy we’d have thought.   But – water wins by being small.   So too my thirst soaking into ground.

Simple answer raises a hand.   What was new was not my desire, my thirst to engage, but rather was my cloaking fear (we say shy) giving way.   Wanted thus (from the beginning of the universe).   See, it was only a bucket of stones, unfettered pain needing shyness (withdrawal), concealing better birthing nature.   The sensation is not-eating.   Belly swells with emptiness (you’ve seen the pictures).

            now, native me on two feet

Even sitting still when you come near, I can lean in to engage with you.   Do you respond?   Do you?   Not mine to say that part.   Like a poem says, I can start the thread but it is your play next to follow or no.   Possibilities.  Stars from drifting clouds of gas.   Who’d have guessed.   But yea, obvious, even certain to be.

            I am.     with a period at the end.
 
 
 

here, some tails to wag

Lesson learned.   My habit, cup of coffee, sit on a public bench just beside the sidewalk path.   Meeting strangers sometimes works like this – walking past my sitting self day after day, some reluctant folks figured, at least he hasn’t bitten me yet.   Maybe risk, hello.   Look ma, no hands!

            @

Read this poem aloud    Write a healing poem was the prompt.   Not “about” but what is, in & of itself.   Consider how you’d answer yourself.   Is it even possible?   Some questions are worth failing if that’s the price.

Makes the question – what is real?   Can words, can a poem make that difference?   I don’t know.   Me, I think the poem falls short.   But two notions came to me of possibility.

          Wise sayings heal nothing.
          Saying does.    Speak to me.

          Meaning is in what we pronounce.
          Let us say what we mean to be.

            @

I know a man who sees the truth.   No mistake.   But what to say, hard to render experience into symbolic words, already one step removed.   Being alone with true being.   Very hard to say the truth.   Sorry, I say.

            @

Childless.   Maybe it was kind (yes and no) wanting none.   Not wanting to give a child a father (filled with coal). Children see.   What kind of gift could I be?   Also why I never much spent time with the children of my friends. I never said, but that’s why.

            @

I miss cigarettes.   But considering, no way doing that.   Remember precisely why I began.   In college, painfully shy, cigarettes were my friend.   Actually, they were punctuation for anything and everything.   Don’t miss the chemistry, but the emotional component, yes.   So be it.

            @

I think of you, ardent reader if you’ve plowed yourself this far along.   No small thanks.   Walking down the street, here and there a cat I don’t know but who welcomes a friend.   This too is how I wish we each could be.

            @

Wise man said, wanna know your purpose in life?   Look see what you attract, what you repel.   Same same.   That’s your home.