FootprintsintheWind.com

Visit many and varied places in your life, watch mental movies of things barely remembered, see: your long musings matter.

:- Doug.

Just looking at images of fog, I was taken back to the morning on Swan Lake in the early dawn, the light fog, the figure 8s I made with the canoe.

:- Doug.

Poetry signifies moving back a step or two from our normal, rational, analytical world. Poetry signifies a larger, longer, wider, more profound view. Poetry signifies slowing the mind to think more. Poetry signifies attention. Poetry signifies taking in, assimilating, being washed over, becoming porous to what surrounds, what touches. Poetry signifies giving without intention to get. Poetry signifies work, sweat, danger, a cutting open oneself to find what is really in those guts, and displaying it for one to see, maybe for many to see.

:- Doug.

Play more. Write images. Carry yourself along to larger, a train through the skies. Ghosts of you past and future.

:- Doug.

Of your life, what is the work?

:- Doug

Write more. For writing is thinking. Writing is conversing.

:- Doug.

The equal and opposite of a great truth is another great truth. So what is a great truth?

:- Doug.

As we leave the valley and its packed thick and overflowing bright white fog we settle in again to the rhythm of the tracks and the swaying and the lurching of the cars.

:- Doug.

Yes there is something new under the sun. You.

:- Doug.

I’m not actually talking about poetry. This too is poetry in the sense I mean. Thinking, ahh thinking, thinking long. Wide. Far. Pondering. These things in your heart. Playfully.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1973

On meeting the stranger unmasked
stop
turn aside a bit as friendly gesture
pray
a bubble of protection surrounding

Please pass it on.

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Poetry is a test run
in new ways to think
the needle skips a groove
you hear the juxtaposition
you start to sing a new song

:- Doug.

Dare to stretch conversation
New shapes sizes weaves
Colors flavors fragrances
What might that mean?
What then might we mean?

:- Doug.

Think unthinkably

:- Doug.

Our role is to shake up
and we know which things

:- Doug.

The work of dying
might live
in letting loose

:- Doug.

look to see shadows
speak to hear echoes

:- Doug.

Old ones ought to be explorers
Why? Because we are less attached
to raising family, making a name
because we’d be good at exploring
Old lawyers ought to be poets
Because we’d be good at it
less attached
seeing wider and farther
having, no being, compassion
able to see
the special in the ordinary
the business of living
in the catastrophe of the day
Let us guess that our business
is to live through this catastrophe
maybe to envision some other side
some other possibility
something lifting up
woven and lasting

:- Doug.

For this half hour trip
you are invited
to lean back and permit
your analytical side to relax
your car driving side a vacation
take in sights sounds smells
you’d miss in ordinary days
in a word ponder
in a sense dream
so to rewrite yourself large
so to really notice the journey you’re on

:- Doug.

Allow your poetry to show you your precipice
Shout for it to leap up swallowing you

:- Doug.

Do you exist
Outside your writing?
Outside your mind?
Outside the person you
Construct day by day?

:- Doug.

Here are the rules
There are no rules
Or not rhythm
Or not rhyme
Short lines long
Get it down
Let it out to play

:- Doug.

Honor your poetry
Write it down
Converse with it
Allow that it might be
Rewriting you

:- Doug.