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Of what does forming consist? In-forming of lives, of generations? It must be more subtle than school lessons, more in the salts and silts and trickles of tributaries than in the rush of rapids. Is it in comparisons of our lives to theirs, in “What would Mom do?,” even unawares. What do they add not to you and to me but to the flow of we—knowing we are eddies?

:- Doug.

If I write a song of generations, what would the lyrics be, the rhythm, the melody?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2533

I stand at the fire
Stirring
Heat into food

Please pass it on.

© c 2026, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/274-5353, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

How did people choose to build cathedrals?

:- Doug.

Food speaks to the communion and the flow thro’.

:- Doug.

What can we learn from a future and a past and a humanness we think not open to us?

:- Doug.

I don’t know if I like my beard, but it is growing on me.

:- Doug.

Myths, even stories, are ways generations talk with one another. Think of bedtime stories. Think of the love of Grandparents for Grandchildren, passing along hard earned knowledge, maybe wisdom, and of the disdain of youth tossing it all over, only years later going to search for it—and for Grandparents.

:- Doug.

As we progress, perhaps we will discover some things about conversation. . . and ourselves. . . .

:- Doug.

What you think you read is not, cannot be, all there is here to be found.

:- Doug.

For you see, in the dark, here something hides, here hides our delight. . . .

:- Doug.

Did you realize that when you are conversing you are bringing forth in front of your eyes—birthing—a person? —A person never before seen, who will disappear as you part?

Do you recognize when your conversation rolls over into meeting, then you begin to meld an us out of the two of you?

Do you stop in your tracks open mouthed when something arises from those two of you meeting, something you know, maybe even you dare to name it soul?—A soul not of yours or of your friend’s but brought to being out of two?

:- Doug.

I am working at becoming better at writing.

:- Doug.

What are grandchildren for? Wherefore grandparents?

:- Doug.

Let’s make an art of conversing across generations!

:- Doug.

We converse across generations by foods & recipes & methods of cooking
By dreams we instill in our grandchildren
By the inheritance we receive from our children
(No, not just insanity)
—the pull to provide for, foster, propel them.

:- Doug.

Wrinkles are how to get under the coverings (e.g. labels).

:- Doug.

The generations beloved—How do we love those generations?

:- Doug.

We play with words, images from the everyday, sounds, shapes of life itself, yours & mine, his & hers
Our art has touched to & beyond time out past anyone’s memory
& here we find the pull of conversing, meeting, and soul-calling-up
—life!—
& its satisfaction.

We find ourselves in, and we make for ourselves, a melody haunting & harmonious &
Cacophonous
Working, incessantly laboring, at throwing our antithetical powers
Into what might, only might,
Become a tumbling barrel for the manufacture of gunpowder for those who come next to overtake us.

:- Doug.

Embracing & exhausting—those are our life’s tasks, drinking full even the last hot chocolate.

:- Doug.

Destruction
In forest is pruning
Making room
Making nourishment
Allowing in air & birds & food from the sun.

:- Doug.

In re-learning to fall (why “fall?”) asleep
I find the trick’s not so much blanking my mind
as blurring it
The re-verse of daytime
When focus is the unexamined value;
Now to let wash over me by immersing and pulling back a distance
Both and at once

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2532

Out your front window, you saw the old woman fall at the street’s edge, & you saw me come to help her. You came over to look. I asked
If you would let me use your phone to call for help, or if you could drive us to the hospital, & you said “My phone. . .” as your voice trailed off, and you
Turned and returned to your house;
It may have been my imagination: Did you mutter you did not
Want to get involved?

You are human
You are involved

Please pass it on.

© c 2026, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/274-5353, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com