Christmas Day 2023 Sequence (Poems)

Let the wind in –

Let it curl my hair & offer me that breath which is proof of life.

Let there be a bit of woodsmoke on it to sing in my nostrils,

Let my ego drop away

Begone

For just an eager minute.

Let me turn into the next me, wrap that around

My chill at growing

My reluctance to leave the warm nest

Where all I do to be fed is open my mouth & call.

Isn’t the wind a wonder?

I am emptying my head as fast as I can,

Emptying it of this reality: these thoughts

I am mounting motors I know not how to use: Dreams

The hot-air balloons of flying away …

I take no direction

I simply take off

Alongside the wind.

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I once taught these things,

These rusted lessons I found in the damnedest place,

But who wants to learn these?

What matters is I took the topic & turned it into a way to serve others

A knowledge of unremembered interest

In a library class.

That was a lifetime ago – that was in Maryland.

That was jobs ago, a career moved behind me now.

Half sticking out of the shadow bag, catching on things.

I will teach again, for that is what I do; I have a lot to say

That would interest some to know.

Time occludes my life when it only occurs in one dimension.

I grow in so many.

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Before I go under…I am worn the next day

But I birthed the poem.

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Poems come on the edges of sleep, riding that tide I thought

To lift me from the beach.

I am removed, outside mine own reality.

Just beyond that I thought truth to be.

Only that thought washed up & curling in the glistening sand

I must go look; I cannot let it wash to sea, it is mine

I claim it: I own it: I remember it. Be warned:

I fight for that which is mine & if you claim this errant thought,

I will snatch it back.

But you are busy with your own beaches & deserts & skies

I leave  you to your tides, your errant ways, your tickets to ride.

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I am emptying the trap of dreams

I am replacing the bald facts

Laid on calendar & table

With these ideas, this ephemera, this eponymous

Rainfall, each drop begetting its own growth.

The dreams clatter out on the counter:

Some scuttle away on more than four legs

Others land, heavy, solid, well-thought-out

But no longer fitting, become animé to my

Artfully drawn Reality.

I mark their fall with crayon, the outline subject to rain-erasure

But not my fault dreams change on the morning.

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It isn’t easy to talk about the future of Mankind

We could go either way; any way; the other way

That one the women are always whispering about:

World Peace.

Whoa, whoa, I know what you’re saying here

You’re putting your hope in the backpack for the Warrior

While your dream curls up in the basket of the Mother,

Its full lips reaching, trembling with love.

There is no other way:

The fight for life begins when

you put up your own.

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