FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2009

What if ancestors were not ahead of you in line (nor behind you in something some call “time”) but were all around you, all about you, sustaining you as you sustain them? You may get your hazel eyes from your father, your gait from your mother, and your grey hair from your children, but you get your bread from the bread delivery guy, and the farmer, and the wheat plants, and the bee, and the microbial animals, and that star above. We are ancestors to one another.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2008

We learned that divisions and differences were not a problem, rather what we most deeply desired. It turned out the problem was anger, heat. Once we realized that what we listened for in the echoes were differences—someone to say almost the same as us, to say what we said matters, to confirm our being in new words—we started looking for new experiences, new people, new expressions, reveling just here.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2007

What is the true foundation of our life together? Is it a building now violated? Is it this set of laws and constitution? Is it one particular person, or one set of beliefs of what (call it democracy, rule of law, or right to X) is our foundation? Or is it something living that runs through us all, mostly unnoticed, unremarked? This ethereal something is more solid, more foundation, than any stone set upon another.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2004

If we deliberately think one long thought a day, the world will advance dramatically over the next 300 years.

Will you commit to thinking one long thing a day?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2003

Plant a tree
under whose shade
three or four generations
may sit enjoy
perhaps refresh

Say a prayer
under whose light
seven or eight generations
may feel invited
softened opened

Feed a stranger
something for stomach
for wondering and wandering
nourish these
ten or eleven generations
invite to leave his or her
seedling prayer & bit of food

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2002

Do I dread the end of covid-time, this familiar not having to dress well or use mouthwash? Have I developed a liking for holidays without a tiringly long visit by dozens, without having to clean the house before. . . and especially after when I’m so tired? Ahh, Christmas in covid-time!

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2001

Throwaway year
this need not be
we can learn
—and better unlearn—
from finally realizing
our sisters and brothers
as kin, as real, as us
from facing death
as near as breath
from upheaval in
our civic space
—and better unlearn—
what touching, untouching,
tasting, smelling, hearing,
knowing, and unknowing
ought we carry out of
this precedential year?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2000

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

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1999

Today I swallowed my imagination
Took two capsules with a swig of water
I flew I dove I swam and went to places
You have never gone and never will
Small I crawled inside a chrysalis
Came out a butterfly upon a breeze
And large set multitudes to march and sing

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1998

To the extent I can touch the more basic, the better to converse across time spans. My words may no longer carry the meaning I assign to them. What was the thing Papunehang said to John Woolman? “I love to feel where words come from.” From Woolman’s Journal:

On the evening of the 18th I was at their meeting, where pure gospel love was felt, to the tendering of some of our hearts. The interpreters endeavored to acquaint the people with what I said, in short sentences, but found some difficulty, as none of them were quite perfect in the English and Delaware tongues, so they helped one another, and we labored along, Divine love attending. Afterwards, feeling my mind covered with the spirit of prayer, I told the interpreters that I found it in my heart to pray to God, and believed, if I prayed aright, he would hear me; and I expressed my willingness for them to omit interpreting; so our meeting ended with a degree of Divine love. Before the people went out, I observed Papunehang (the man who had been zealous in laboring for a reformation in that town, being then very tender) speaking to one of the interpreters, and I was afterwards told that he said in substance as follows: “I love to feel where words come from.”

That perhaps is my watch word. I want my reader to feel where words come from. Feel and source.

That is how to converse.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1997

Grateful am I for
This pond of many fishes
This stream to walk beside
and jump across
This forest so vast
in 20 years
I have not explored it all
And for the endless stream
of people to love
of things to do for one another
of ancestors to be gathered among

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1996

Her hand print fades
from off the glass
closest she could get
as he lies dying
and I, having
sent her away
— was it gently?—
seeing this embrace
too quickly evaporate
grab a marker
to trace its outline

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1995

Stay with your invitation when it draws objection. You have ruffled the hairs of someone’s imagination. You are doing them good, pushing a bit of humanity out of its nest.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1994

The Light I am experiencing today is drenching. It is pouring down upon Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, upon Donald Trump and Michael Pence, upon the poll workers faithfully still counting votes, upon the whole country, and each state, and upon this dream called the United States of America. It is saturating the ground of each part of this country, it is rising up to our toes. Slowly it is rising to my soles and heels and ankles. Soon it will reach our calves. It is Light of warmth and calm. Drenched are we.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1993

This election
Vote love

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1992

Remember the 545.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1991

We came from star-stuff gathering to waters to dry land and the grasses appeared and the beings too small to see and they gathered into communities called grasses and larger and larger and into beings with fins and with legs four and two and more and so our ancestors are not one but plural and we are plenty and beauty and living and dying and rounding and we today eat of these breathe of these stand on these are these and

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1990

Play with poetry
Inviting you
Sometimes ya just gotta sing

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1989

See: the bully in the covid shop.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1988

You are The United States of America. I am The United States of America. We are a secret each to the other—and essential.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1986

If you knew you were divine, had divinity’s message in you, what would you ask people? How would you engage them in conversation?

If I knew I were divine, how would I engage people in conversation? I would ask them questions to help them see their divinity, their creativity. I would ask them how they would change the world if they could. I would ask them what they could do today to help.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1985

Who says clarity is only in brainwork
earned and propagated?
In that bright morning light I came home
There are processes at work and beauty
Fog comes & goes we know not when nor how

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1984

Truth is at the edge
Of your candle’s light

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