FootprintsintheWind.com

Resistance to masking
arises from fear of unmasking
my self to my self

:- Doug.

The fight against the mask
is the fight against facing
the shock of one’s unmasked self

:- Doug.

Honor this!

:- Doug.

Shadow
disappearing around the corner
a poem is

:- Doug.

Poetic thinking is symbols—morphing to images—flying off—loping off—crawling, slithering, exploding—surprising!—and then we see if those threads may yet have held—in the basket below—that wispy substance—our minds

:- Doug.

sign
(poetry)
is shorthand

:- Doug.

Those half thoughts—at mornings—dawn of waking consciousness—I’ve learned to trust—they can impregnate—the vulnerable, the venerable—parts of my day—spread a plume of fragrance—

:- Doug.

Dream I had—exhuming to loving—beautiful, uplifting—of course I will remember—no need to write it—and I did remember—it carried me into an extended dream—grabbed me, vivid—that’s dream’s way of staying—in shadows.

—Dream I had (or had me….

:- Doug.

I could restore my images
well enough
to see the wonder
fuzzy logic
fuzzy images
carry us
transpose

:- Doug.

There are at least two kinds of a poet’s editing: that to clean up, make more effective; and that to make more true to discovery.

:- Doug.

Poetry is making clear the edges of the fog
Poetry is making clear the beauty of the fog
Poetry is making clear the learnings in the fog

:- Doug.

But life goes on and so
our train moved on
I knew that tableau
of fog and valley
and beauty
will never repeat
nor will its lessons
yet it is important
at that instant
out that window
I was looking

:- Doug.

Visit many and varied places in your life, watch mental movies of things barely remembered, see: your long musings matter.

:- Doug.

Just looking at images of fog, I was taken back to the morning on Swan Lake in the early dawn, the light fog, the figure 8s I made with the canoe.

:- Doug.

Poetry signifies moving back a step or two from our normal, rational, analytical world. Poetry signifies a larger, longer, wider, more profound view. Poetry signifies slowing the mind to think more. Poetry signifies attention. Poetry signifies taking in, assimilating, being washed over, becoming porous to what surrounds, what touches. Poetry signifies giving without intention to get. Poetry signifies work, sweat, danger, a cutting open oneself to find what is really in those guts, and displaying it for one to see, maybe for many to see.

:- Doug.

Play more. Write images. Carry yourself along to larger, a train through the skies. Ghosts of you past and future.

:- Doug.

Of your life, what is the work?

:- Doug

Write more. For writing is thinking. Writing is conversing.

:- Doug.

The equal and opposite of a great truth is another great truth. So what is a great truth?

:- Doug.

As we leave the valley and its packed thick and overflowing bright white fog we settle in again to the rhythm of the tracks and the swaying and the lurching of the cars.

:- Doug.

Yes there is something new under the sun. You.

:- Doug.

I’m not actually talking about poetry. This too is poetry in the sense I mean. Thinking, ahh thinking, thinking long. Wide. Far. Pondering. These things in your heart. Playfully.

:- Doug.

Poetry is a test run
in new ways to think
the needle skips a groove
you hear the juxtaposition
you start to sing a new song

:- Doug.