FootprintsintheWind.com

Walk lightly, and carry a big invitation….

:- Doug.

I live in invitation
Or at least I want to
Hearing invitations and accepting
Or not
Being pleased when others accept
Or not
Invitation is all around us
Mostly unseen
What we breathe
Who we might already be

:- Doug.

Of what are you ignorant? I do not know is the only answer: I am ignorant of that of which I am ignorant, but I am not ignorant that I am ignorant. I do not know the ways of quarks and gluons, of mystery and moment, of love and life. Real, unknown: unknowable? The unknown is what calls us forth, makes us possible, offers to us the invitation to invite others.

There is work to be done, and invitations to give. I want to stay here with you, and I want to get moving. Now, Hear, Stay, Play.

:- Doug.

Do we want to keep on floundering around, or do we want to get on with it?

:- Doug.

Peace is the space between Yes and No
The nest in which they nestle

:- Doug.

What’s working in my life right now?

:- Doug.

And see
How life is deeper
Hear for thee
Think in poetry

:- Doug.

Many an
Act of Congress has
—In dis order—
An End, a Beginning,
And a Muddle

:- Doug.

A tax to pay
After all the taxes
On all the income and property
Over all the years
Still the state claims share
Of what is left
When we die

What justice this?
What lobby of dead people
Can oppose?

Why the tax?
Some say Redistribute
Earth’s wealth
Back to all the people

But if the tax be upon
The poor and middle
What justice this?

Quietly you may hear truer:
Because we can
What justice this?

:- Doug.

In a time to which only imagination has the key, perhaps now time, hear time, ever never, our lives truly live among the giants….

:- Doug.

A short story

Diapers—oooo-yuck!
Three children—seven, one, newborn
A little mother with the baby boys
Helping Mom
Mom helping Dad with the business
Keeping house year after year
“Are we there yet?”
Kids squabbling
Put the older one in the middle
Sometimes that works

Decades pass
The house has new neighbors
Not so much in the country anymore
Building a new house next door
Mom and Dad excited

Dad’s health failing
Business doing well with son
Dad still goes in
Reads the news
Watches the birds

Dad has died
All alone, big house
Memories all about
Pictures on the walls
Grandchildren give her pride
Children’s squabble mellower

Gifts she knows they do not need
Each birthday and Christmas
“Will I have enough?”
“Ma, there’s enough”
“I love to give the gifts
I love to give myself”

In my Will my gifts fit each one
And each one has all my heart
How is this possible?

Now Mom is gone
The inheritance tax return
Tells all but tells nothing
It tells a short story
The real wealth is not counted here
And yet, if you listen closely, you hear—

Bedtime stories, books read aloud
Dolls dressed, tea parties attended
Attended well
Ouchies kissed
Laughter, love
Still flowing, flowing

In this brief tax report
All of it echoes
Echoes

:- Doug.

Not a sit-in
Not a buy-in
It’s a join-in

:- Doug.

It takes two hands
—yours and mine—
to make a better Now
This is the rule of two hands

:- Doug.

Why should we hold ourselves back from working on the big issues: global warming, economic meltdown?

:- Doug.

How big is a Will? What color, what dance, what aroma? How green?

:- Doug.

These are our children, yours and mine, and I am pregnant, you are pregnant, love is the impregnation. Love impregnates.

Love births life. It is gravity-field gathering us together to meet and meet again for here we take the action of love, here we come alive, here is born the third person in between.

Here is the narrow ridge, running from you to me and back, if we but climb it rather than see it as barrier, the narrow ridge upon which we can play as on a mountain meadow knowing and being known laughing and holding hands spinning till the tears come and we fall down in the soft flowers and get up to plant our grandchildren’s forests.

We are planting our grandchildren’s forests: fresh oxygen-creating forests, dark undergrowth forests, hidden paths and sunlight shining in, forests full of life and death, dark and light, mystery and generation, shelter and storm, things that wriggle and crawl and leap, and our voices calling Take my hand.

:- Doug.

We are starting to get to
the depths of the law.
How do people get along together?
What is lawful?
Whatever the answer,
truth, reality, must be part of it,
so chaos and complexity,
good and evil, light and dark
must claim their rightful roles
So too money and love,
work and play, enemy and lover
We are, we do, we meet

:- Doug.

Business is river’s current,
flowing, racing,
spinning in the backwaters,
carrying flotsam and commerce,
doing the work of the furnace and anvil,
computer and test tube,
telephone and banker,
touching, moving, running over,
never the same twice,
always the same in
movement and reaching, grasping,
allowing little time for reflection except
what we extract,
its largeness being in its rush,
its smallness too,
and we, we the ones
who must make large

:- Doug.

A Will is a story
Mother or Father telling
of love, of dreams, of hopes

An Estate is the next scene
The scroll unrolls with
unseen beginning and ending
Each person a jewel on the string,
sparrow in the storm, or wind itself
Each chooses a role,
each role chooses a person

Then the person is Mother or Father telling
of love, dreams, hopes
Jewels, sparrows, wind

:- Doug.

Whom does your life touch?

:- Doug.

A Will is a want, a desire. I will for you…loving, laughing, whole-making, dreaming, praying, working, playing, staying, moving, dancing, image-making, poem-making, song-making, touching and being touched, story-making, story-telling, people-birthing: all this is love, life!

:- Doug.

Deep Wills
Who are my children?
Who am I?
Grandchildren learning to walk
Learning to talk
Have we yet learned to talk
About what is at our foundations?
Money does not speak to Honey

Instead, tell stories
Yours: How did you get here?
How did you meet?
Whom have you become?
These help me figure out who I am
Whom I might become
What I can do in this world
For my loved ones
For loving the peoples

Instead, write poems
Poems might be stories
Of our family, tribe, people
Of our humanity
Poems might be songs
To remind us we are artists
Divine, capable of the universe
Poems might be found among lists
Grocery lists, to do lists, lists of families
Of what you see
Of what sees you
And whom
Of what is of significance
Or suggestive, evocative
Of significance
Of how meaning-filled our lives are
If we write poetry

Instead, get to work
What is your work?
Why have you chosen that work?
What work do you choose now
In this epoch of your life?
What is the most important thing
We can be working on, Now?

Instead, tell us:
What is important
To you?
To the long road of Life
History
Memory
Whom we are
Whom we can be
Leave this to us
And then we fulfill
Your Deep Will

:- Doug.

My poetry is not for understanding
For putting into a cubby hole
In your brain, your mind, even your universe
But for crawling inside
Falling into a larger world

You cannot understand my poetry
It is not made for understanding
Instead for

Come inside

:- Doug.