FootprintsintheWind.com

A poem
Is a list
With a direction

:- Doug.

If all were
as it seems
. . .

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2252

If
the thing
you read
is clear
you do
not under
stand

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

We humans seem often to covet a god’s-eye view. We seek the mountaintop, the tree top, the scout to tell us the lay of the land, to see everything, all at once, beforehand. We want both-and thinking. Maybe we do well to look another direction.

:- Doug.

Old English is closer to the body and the earth than the Caesars ever spoke.

:- Doug.

Do we dip into conversations, and only seldom go completely under? Some people attempt a swim keeping their hairdo dry.

:- Doug.

Immersive conversation is the kind when you and I disappear under the waves, and yet we each stand out more distinctly than ever.

:- Doug.

What is that converse in the high sense
Which we must, to take in, stand tip-toe?

*I consider myself heard, take in the other
*We move one another to new territory not foreseen
*I have understood you well
*But there is so much more to understand & traverse & make
*I am slaked; I thirst
*We leave with much to ponder and study; reaching out

:- Doug.

In conversation wild and raw
we speak a language
unknown to common hours

:- Doug.

Each word you speak or read
A trickster, a shape-shifter, now
A portal to strange empires, now
A kaleidoscope of butterflies
Were you quick enough?

:- Doug.

Is there one butterfly and many individuals, as some have thought? Is there one human and many examples? Why then do we converse, why do the birds call? Do the birds call just because they make a particular sound, or are they communicating?

:- Doug.

Each conversation of this kind is one we can have with no one else.

:- Doug.

When we are in this kind of conversation we are in a thing from which we cannot get out.

:- Doug.

Which lens works for you?

:- Doug.

Conversation can be a process of dead reckoning.

:- Doug.

What is the chief question that is trying your life these days?

:- Doug.

Ice is gone but not
the fog paddle spurs canoe
through gentle sloshes

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2251

What in conversing is unfinished? Of course every conversation. But might we seek to actually stop a conversation at a juicy spot? That’s provocative.

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

We do well at intervals to declare a time ripe for our tired world to end and us to start afresh.

:- Doug.

Our struggle in conversation is to touch the most tender spots.

:- Doug.

Families gather
Kids play being grown ups who
Yearn to be child-like

:- Doug.

Knowing a wicked problem yields only good and not so, frees us from guilt. It forgives us our falling shorts.

:- Doug.

One wicked problem of conversation is How to help someone to die?

:- Doug.