FootprintsintheWind.com

Our role is to shake up
and we know which things

:- Doug.

The work of dying
might live
in letting loose

:- Doug.

look to see shadows
speak to hear echoes

:- Doug.

Old ones ought to be explorers
Why? Because we are less attached
to raising family, making a name
because we’d be good at exploring
Old lawyers ought to be poets
Because we’d be good at it
less attached
seeing wider and farther
having, no being, compassion
able to see
the special in the ordinary
the business of living
in the catastrophe of the day
Let us guess that our business
is to live through this catastrophe
maybe to envision some other side
some other possibility
something lifting up
woven and lasting

:- Doug.

For this half hour trip
you are invited
to lean back and permit
your analytical side to relax
your car driving side a vacation
take in sights sounds smells
you’d miss in ordinary days
in a word ponder
in a sense dream
so to rewrite yourself large
so to really notice the journey you’re on

:- Doug.

Allow your poetry to show you your precipice
Shout for it to leap up swallowing you

:- Doug.

Do you exist
Outside your writing?
Outside your mind?
Outside the person you
Construct day by day?

:- Doug.

Here are the rules
There are no rules
Or not rhythm
Or not rhyme
Short lines long
Get it down
Let it out to play

:- Doug.

Honor your poetry
Write it down
Converse with it
Allow that it might be
Rewriting you

:- Doug.

Do you have imagination to see?
To hear?
Not to be?

:- Doug.

Aspire to braidedness.

:- Doug.

One: Look in the mirror see what happened when
Two: Examine in the mirror my own actions and values
Three: Step through the mirror see things I missed

:- Doug.

We suppose our lives cannot end
Seeing how life’s stories append and upend

:- Doug.

Poem appears
I come alive

:- Doug.

What is ever before your face
You’ve never noticed?

:- Doug.

When he buries his head in the sand
It’s our butts get kicked

:- Doug.

Writing slows us, so we can actually think. The rest of the times those things we have are thoughts. Used thinking. The products of thinking. And they move so fast they have us. Like the slick talking used car sales person. So write. Write poetry because it slows us even more. It forces thinking over thought.

Write slower. Climb higher. You may see the fog. And the sun just cresting the far hills.

:- Doug.

Climb a taller tree.

:- Doug.

What does a felt change of consciousness mean to me? It means that I see something I had not before. It means that I see familiar things strange. It means sitting on the opposite side of the desk, in a different chair, pointing my head in an unaccustomed direction. It means understanding things in the way another culture would.

There are words for this: defamiliarization; ostranenie (“aw STRAN en knee”).

1. How has the virus made things strange? 2. Tell the story from the pov of the briefcase or the horse. 3. Upside down. 4. 100 uses for X. 5. Ways to measure height of a building with a barometer. 6. Go to an art gallery. 7. Random juxtaposition.

:- Doug.

What are we imposing on later generations?

:- Doug.

Little trickling
Mighty fortressing
Still small
All aboving
Spinning clouding

:- Doug.

What does your bookshelf whisper, shout about you?

:- Doug.

Read something that perplexes you.

:- Doug.