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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2329

I had a dream. I became Thou.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2328

This morning I’ve been reading John Dewey
He carries the tone of the nineteenth century
So too does Virginia Woolf
But then there’s Walt Whitman
Who wrote earlier
Who comes to me as alive in my age
And Blake—My! My!
And Rumi and Rilke
They all wrote to me
And to generations after mine
They wrote from the stars
This is the way to write
To you

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2327

How does it affect one’s thinking to be left-handed? Your hand always immediately covers what you write. How would that train your memory?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2326

A person is a sort of poem and each reader reads her differently. So we are each, for the number of readers we have, that many poems. Just as each person hears a different song each playing, so for each hearer we have we are many so many songs.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2325

Our friend is a well opening underground to a rushing ocean, a roiling river, a boiling cauldron. Into our friend we drop our visions, fears, possibilities, our souls, spirits, dreams, knowing—without proof, knowing—that they will be returned to us infused.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2324

A lone dove huddles on the limb up high
long long time mid the bright fresh snows
moving only its head
what does it see with
eyes that swivel independently?
what does it hear of my world
more than I of its?

being at such height
and able to go higher
does it sit absorbed into
the land where the Essences live?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2323

How ought one approach a sacred gathering, that is, a conversation? Perhaps like a New Orleans jazz funeral. Is that with bounce and music, slow joy, drums and tambourine?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2322

The birds they sing at break of day
Leonard helped us see
The cracks that let the light get in
But I have glimpsed that it may be
There is a light in everything
That must get out, that must get out
That’s why we crack and break

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2321

When the poem sings
The prose is ready

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2320

Water to water
rain to rain
           puddle to puddle

dust? hardly!
fire from fire
storm from storm
           birthing from waters

we commit
we commend
           we come from

us from us
           person from person
breathing vapors we
water based creatures
           eat water based
creatures becoming
hydrogen hydrogen oxygen

           wet while alive
mysterious while alive
maybe also after

           you spit
in my face
making me wetter
wet your kiss
           sloppy wet mine

on waters born
we die dry
           except the eyes

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2319

Just as a toddler looks into the face of a puppy or horse or elephant and squeals, having seen himself, so you too can look in the face of your friend and see something new in yourself. You probably ought now to squeal.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2318

The flower, the poet, and the sausage: One way to compose a poem is the “natural way, in which a poem is born from within itself….” When Phil pointed out this Bashō quotation to me, I wondered how a poem could become from within itself. I played with this. Maybe the haiku is borne out of the meeting: the meeting of the flower with the poet. The poem is then a third thing. A poem is neither flower nor poet. I point my index fingers toward one another a nose-length away from my eyes. As they approach, a sausage appears and hovers between them. The flower and the poet come near, they meet, and the haiku hovers there. The haiku is the sausage. Phil reminded me not to watch haiku being made.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2317

Conversation is ordeal.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2316

After the meeting
which changed the four of us
these woods offered quieting
I entered by a path maybe I knew
the woods at once grew
to become for me
a forest dark
and fog was lingering
from this morning
still the air was warmer
than the snow
I said lingering, but
this fog was rising from the snow
like smoke
as if the snow were afire
so this smoke drifted along
to the south
leaving the forest
I said smoke, but
it seems a band of brothers
arms across shoulders
walking home
after the day’s labors
laughing, rowdy, tired, dirty
I said brothers, but
the trees, the fog, the birds
were all singing
new songs
in this forest of poems

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2315

Find something to stand in the way: write that. Not everything has an answer that will help. The difficulty might turn up another difficulty more fruitful than an answer.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2314

Bells along the string
from you to me: no magic
slightest touch, all ring

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2313

Conversations are events outside time.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2312

Ought we acknowledge the four or seven directions? Probably not because this does not come out of us, this myth does not reside in us. But we can acknowledge our other and who that other person represents. In our times, we don’t have a way to do that—we must invent it. Perhaps better said, we must invest it—with our own spirits, intentions, reality. We are then claiming this place-time as of profound relevance. The question is, can we let these—or some—spiritual principles inform our conversation, our meeting, our relationship? Can we meet Thou to Thou?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2311

If you can hold your conversation in light of the mythological, it will go its way, and you will advance humanity.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2310

The sweet and the savory
the acid the bitter the heat
is this cookery or conversery?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2309

In conversation, can we feel free enough to be annoyed by our other, and to admit it to him or her?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2308

Consider the limits you cannot overcome. Things you cannot learn. Tasks at which you will never adequately succeed. Meetings where you have your stand and your friend takes hers. Where joy comes against tragedy comes once more against impossible joy. Where your sinews give their last—and then life spits in your face. Where you must decide. It is here—yes?—where you might gain your whole life.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2307

The photo is not the person.

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