FootprintsintheWind.com

How do we bring you to whole
When you want to pull apart
Your heart I think is torn & hurts
& so does mine for all I want
—all we want—is to hug to hear to be heard

:- Doug.

How to shift bicycle gears & when
I grew up when bikes were one speed
& a ten-speed was a rich boy’s toy
So I never knew
Once after I married I got a 5-speed
the handle grip twists & clicks to change
but never figured out which gear was high
or why you’d choose any one
I saw a man pedaling faster than his wheels
—Why? & if I’m going uphill?
Someday someone tells the secret &
then it all makes sense—is easier
—or they don’t

:- Doug.

You are other, different, drawing us to something higher, yet intimate, a part of us, the very heart of us.

:- Doug.

Already there!
Let down your shoulders
Among compadres
Be heard
Without straining, stretch

:- Doug.

Other
Elsewhere
There
Among
G*d is

:- Doug.

What I am about varies day to day, and yet, and yet, the one simple foolish loving voice among is the same, is still simple: foolishly love. Throw life around! Be among my people. All people are my people. Even the birds and trees and horses and fish and deer!

:- Doug.

Somewhere there is an image floating up in my imagination bringing me to accepting what is. Like a mother hen coaxing her chicks along—all she has is a cluck and a wing. I guess she could snap too, if someone got really out of line.

:- Doug.

If I were as short to the ground
as a robin
a wonderland of food &
adventure I’d see
& days full of flight &
places to visit
& songs to sing
O & heart throbbing sorrowing notes

:- Doug.

Many thoughts
express themselves
best in poetry

:- Doug.

Choose good &
allow it &
it in others
stand firm in
the face of evil &
indolence
allow life to live
guide with a gentle hand

:- Doug.

This letter, this letter—so daily—closed to me
Open and plain to thee my life, my life
Who still loves me unaccountably

:- Doug.

Meaning, identity, loss, transcendence, despair, laughter, tears, undone, undoing, teaching, spirit, leaving, review, learning: these are some of the works of aging.

Here is hope in dying. The specific hope will of course be different for each of us and each group of us. Yet the dying helps us go on. We are deeply enlivened by what we learn from those who are dying. Other beasts and even vegetation recycle physically into food for lives great and small who come later; perhaps we humans can cycle our spirits’ best to others of our species. Death can be a growth of spirit. But we must attend.

:- Doug.

God is irrelevant
To G*d
Whatever our thoughts
The Really Real
Loves us & all

:- Doug.

After years of toil and worry we have finally done the impossible: we have changed something from black to white: our hair!

:- Doug.

What is the work of old age?

:- Doug.

Are you elders of the tribe?

:- Doug.

Than what we suppose
G*d is wholly
Other

:- Doug.

Privileged to change one another
We are not;
		Ours is to share some light

:- Doug.

Remind elders of their wisdom, ask them about it, invite.

:- Doug.

What if we did not stand
up for rights
but sat with others
& heard,
then held them lightly?

:- Doug.

Great grandmother
I nearly remember you
great grandson
I hear you coming
I stand in the midst
of generations
& watch & speak & be

:- Doug.

I don’t carry the whole band, or even my section.

:- Doug.

For as long as I have known you, you have spoken incessantly of what you lack, what pains you. I do not attempt to change you but if you will become aware, there is hope.

:- Doug.