It is comforting

It is comforting to think there are academics walking along leaf strewn paths in the fall
thinking deeply about something, their collars popped up against the sharp breeze,
hands in pockets, moving among old, brick buildings that ring out the time,
brows furrowed with the imprint of hours of ideas foundering, collapsing, springing up,
molded hot, slowly solidifying, only to be pounded out again and again.

It is comforting to know knowledge and ideas are held in these people and their libraries,
silently wafting into the world in ways unseen.

If you study technology, surely we can see the result--
cars, shoes, blenders, spiral notebooks, Gatorade.
But thoughts, new perspectives, these are as diffuse as light itself,
intensified by academies as a beacon, though not as useful as our own star.

Perhaps the comfort is in knowing that what humans are is inside,
and there are those who can speak about the gadgets with words of caution and wisdom.
They do the work, write a book, and share what they know, some distilled version of it, with the rest of us,
perhaps opening a crack in our mistified, crusted brains of monotonous labor.

Walk, think, occupy old brick buildings, lecture in musty rooms, and keep artifacts in windowless studies,
then release all that work like a balloon that lifts us up into thin places.

Fur Strainer

This is how my cat lays in the window on a sunny day.
She stretches her feet from one side to the other, filling up the entire sill,
then turns her belly towards the sun, her fur poking through the screen like it's a fur strainer,
and she lays there, eyes closed, happy.

Pay Attention

sliver to full
ray to glory
bud to flower
yeast to bread
ephyrae to jelly fish
baby to woman
pine cone to redwood
blade to wheat
closed to open

Not Just Too Short

brazen red breast of robin
in the gray cold of January.
hoar frost reaching east
on every inch
of life.
joy that comes with choosing
to leave it, leave it all behind.
lay down burdens, give up ghosts, choose
an alter of light.
not just too short,
moonlight
on a mountain slope
owls
hooting in the dark
birds at dawn, and my Love's stubbled cheek
at night
it is song--oh joy! it is dance
and to give
up the idea of a weary world.
not just too short
too unlived
too shallow.
be a scuba diver of life
go deep at slack tide
see the wonders hidden
from our eyes and open
to our hearts