FootprintsintheWind.com

Throw in yourself!
Throw in
Your Self!
A street dervish
Begs your generous response
Not for the dervish’s good
For the world’s!
Throw in not some coins
Not some bills
But your whole wallet
Credit cards and all!
And the hand that is throwing it in!
Count not the cost
Nor try to look ahead
What’s received is what’s thrown

:- Doug.

What is the Baby Boomer Generation generating next?

:- Doug.

Let’s give the oil companies a subsidy—as large, just different from what they have now. Take away the subsidy for producing gasoline and move it to developing new safe sustaining energy. Instead of taking out of our nearly empty piggy bank, they can make and fill a new one.

:- Doug.

Cars & chairs & whippoorwills
Sweat & winks & bitter tears
Stars & moons & baby poop
Symphonies of harp & birdsong
All of these & more make our world one

:- Doug.

When Mom’s mind begins to crack and shrivel
We want to go retrieve the pieces
From our remembered store
Even though we know
There’s no thread to stitch
Memory to flesh

:- Doug.

With fresh eyes I will see something new.

:- Doug.

A big car wreck—trucks too—
twenty, twenty-some vehicles
the center ones transformed out
of recognition inseparable, & some
almost in time stopped, barely
dented, many drive around
this is life & we are this

:- Doug.

We till the garden putting under
Last year’s stalks and leaves
To fertilize, to clear
Hear we plant the seeds
Of this year’s work

:- Doug.

Aswim in the ocean of
Galaxies & universes is
Our particular world of
Little paychecks & big super stores &
Momma’s in the nursing home

:- Doug.

Loud brakes & horn breaking
Your concentration on something
Not here, not now
G*d is
Small child barely noticed pulling
Lightly on your sleeve for
How long? She is too

:- Doug.

Juxtapose
Juxtapose
Just suppose
& use where it takes you
To walk to another town
Juxt suppose
Just depose
Corn and pea pods
From out your garden
Squash the lentils &
Plant party invitations instead
Maybe you’ll harvest
Limericks & piccolos &
Lovers this year!

:- Doug.

What would you write
With your grief-cursor?
What is the rhythm
What the rhyme
Of your father’s shrinking mind
And future?
Where the wholeness
Can you help—or allow—the
Circle to close
This breach that feels so heavy, today?

:- Doug.

There’s no need to feel guilty. General guilt does not count—for any thing. Just get busy and help make us whole.

:- Doug.

Touch who touches you.

:- Doug.

The larger number of stones are on the base of the pyramid; the greater circumference is comprised of those who stand on the margins. And this is where the work needs doing.

:- Doug.

We make our world; what kind of world do we want to make? Do we think nothing ought to be improved?

:- Doug.

Are we trapped? Have we no choices?

:- Doug.

Do we live by default?

:- Doug.

Let’s be all about Big Talk conversation.

:- Doug.

There’s more I don’t know than I do—what a liberating phrase!

:- Doug.

Adrienne Rich says of the Jews “we are connected [as]…the pariah, suspect, marginalized, easily scapegoated, dispossessed.” (Arts of the Possible, p 144.) As a Christian I was taught to think of Israel, God’s chosen people, as conquerors, the ones who ultimately got the land of milk and honey. But for eons God’s people have been the dispossessed. What if God’s people were Isaiah’s suffering servant? What if God identified with the littlest, the least, the leper—and wanted to stand near? What if the work of God’s people were to bring the outcast in?

:- Doug.

I’ve trained myself to see wider, longer, wholer. These are things I used to miss, and now I see more I am missing.

:- Doug.

In 1776 we wanted freedom
To live alone, as individuals
To do separate things
Then Davy Crockett said
“My neighbor’s too close
If I can see his chimney smoke”
Today the freedoms we need are
To come together, to make whole

:- Doug.