FootprintsintheWind.com

Poetry
making play

:- Doug.

It is not wise that, and I do not want, easy questions be asked of me: but difficult ones to challenge who asks and especially me.

:- Doug.

Be prepared for people who don’t have a good question to ask: what questions do you really wish people to ask you?

:- Doug.

In life I value layers. I value nuance, difference, variety, thinking new things, novelty, inventing, valuing. Moving. Verbs. Adjectives. You. You challenging me. Red bud trees in bloom. Tomatoes producing. Compost heaps working. Cardinal against a snowy background. I value discovering in your stories your values and your values flashing and even contradicting.

:- Doug.

If you ask someone their values, you may get something easy, like love and family. Then blank stares. Stories might be more fruitful.

:- Doug.

Stimulus-response in humans is a 3-part occasion. We often skip over the dash, which stands for choice. Humans can add a pause between. In the pause can come choice. Choice in turn revolves on value. What values do we choose to use to inform our response?

:- Doug.

“Entrance” the sign read.
What a lovely way to meet!

:- Doug.

Single mindedness has much to anti-recommend it.

:- Doug.

1 + 1 = 3, in conversational calculus.

:- Doug.

If the ultimate end of life is to increase value, then that requires life to seek to expand, increase, protect, and interconnect with other life. Antithetical to value therefore is killing and any harm to living organisms.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2232

Paladins on steeds
Maidens in beflowered gardens
Clouds sailing the seven skies
My pen contains
You

Please pass it on.

© c 2023, 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

Compassion grows
out of the soil of
wholes larger than self

:- Doug.

Give your questionings
beyond your answerings
and far beyond your speculations

:- Doug.

Do not end
—at the bottom of a page
—on an even line
—or merely odd
but seek out the prime
what’s beyond stopping and
convenience

:- Doug.

The end of the riddle is not its unknotting, but its contest. Can you?

:- Doug.

Decay, distill, grow might map to separation, liminality, incorporation and to a going from profane to sacred, and to the call to adventure, the meeting, the return, and to journey, threat, and return.

:- Doug.

Metaphors are tools to help us think, to ask questions. Images wrestle us.

:- Doug.

Bucket brigade
Layers of rocky sediment
we are the middle
always, ever, can only be
the muddle

:- Doug.

Deep? Covered over!

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2231

Two rules
you will die
discovery is kind

Please pass it on.

© c 2023, 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

Walking together
gives us a larger world
brings forth unison
when we walk in woods
we find our biophilia
reverie and reverence
we become real

:- Doug.

Wrestle life
so it unlocks
and sets off
the fireworks
of you

:- Doug.

Sound conversational practice requires, in part, leaving out.

:- Doug.