FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1983

I’ll tell you which way the world is going to go. It’s humans loosely in charge of where the human world will go. Some will be lost and some for a long while. Some will see this way and some will march off that. Some will timidly test the waters. All will muddle. Strong actors will arise and seize others’ lives. All will be in different places and stages of grief. Some will see this; some will say this. Most will not. All are explorers, willing or not. This is the way the world will go.

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My poetry is prime
1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 …

:- Doug.

If you can enter
the mystery of the poem
you share its strength

:- Doug.

Creation is a river
Sourced in morning dew
Life in a drop swimming

:- Doug.

Is a poem flowing words
or flowing images?
Must or flow among?

:- Doug.

Face your life to find your life
Deeper, truer, more real
than money-bought comfort
there is a price, yes
and maybe

:- Doug.

This is the time to do the work I really want to do. I am no longer afraid I will become stale, for I will have folks with whom to converse—I will find them. I am maker of persons, maker of us.

:- Doug.

Poetry is my exploration

:- Doug.

It’s a choice as you age
are you wisened
or only wizened?

:- Doug.

There’s a kernel in that seed or
maybe it’s a seed in that kernel
something green with power to grow
choose the word not just concrete, but
specific, peculiar, a door hanging
by one hinge
in a wind storm (make this a serious long exercise)

:- Doug.

Life gets happier
Life becomes integral
—as you examine yours—
(yes I challenge you)
Of what’s your integrality
consist? Of what’s your
happiness?

:- Doug.

Poems have no goal
nor end and only a
delicious ongoingness

:- Doug.

Record happinesses, too.

:- Doug.

Inside your next poem
may be
inside the mystery

:- Doug.

If Jesus can do it
So can you
That is the story

:- Doug.

We think movement change
Jumbling will be our savior
Then we sit
On the other side of the desk
Meeting? Our same selves?

:- Doug.

Maybe by the end of the course you’ll choose what story to write.

To write is to explore
A course is life
Maybe is all there is

:- Doug.

What I’m teaching is my life
What you’re learning is story writing
Perhaps

:- Doug.

Aren’t we the pair?
I talk softly
You hear hardly

:- Doug.

A cardboard box holds no water.

:- Doug.

I was going to tell you about the 17 or so poems I wrote in response to an event to figure out what happened, to ask myself what I could have done differently, to ask myself why this was so disturbing to me, to ask myself why this event had me over so many weeks so engaged. But I won’t do that. The end of it was that I discovered something I could have done.

But that’s the point: reflection is the province of age, and the bright light of old people poetry. It is hard work, and a most rewarding thing to do, now.

:- Doug.

I like my writing today. It still has edges needing trimming, sanding, finish sanding, yet it feels of me.

Then again, maybe the edges belong, like the intentional imperfections in a Japanese painting.

:- Doug.

This last might be the start of a poem, or it might be the whole.

:- Doug.