Monday, July 26, 2010

in the alright evenings

So if anyone should ask, tell them I’ve been lickin’ coconut skins, and we’ve been hangin’ out, tell them God just dropped by to forgive our sins, and relieve us our doubt.  La la la la la lie, la la la la la la lie.

On the backporch of America, where noisy night light bugs fly and bright the dark blue yawning sky, we sing songs into the sound, crouched into our chairs concentrated.  On the tail-end of the hottest southern summer day, the after-humid rain, the magical dusk calm that follows.  Where once we were all strangers, and still are, but sharing something unsaid in the ever-evening.  Like seeing that everyman has his instrument, and every woman has her own, and that it all comes from the same place eventually.

Knowing that every workaday heart has it's doubts, thoughts that maybe the perfect life has flown coop.  That what happened to the dreaming tree, to the life ideal imagined, before your nose?  For certain there is a proper respect, a necessary grievance, for what's already been sung... but out of which seeds the maturity, the lesson learned, to recognize the moment while the light bug flashing lasts.

So if at all we are considered, consider us this lesson learned.  And it's why we’re still here, late,  laughing awake, and smoking chimney’s:  to put some fire up your ass.  Heard you were living normal life is when somebody's got to ask have you been kicking coconut skins?  And have you been hangin’ out?  Because God just dropped by to forgive our sins, and turn us inside out.  With youth anthems, and at-home hymns, and getting-younger-till-it-ends songs. Give your mother apple pie, and the father cloudless sky.  And know that it all returns to the same place eventually songs.

Underneath the Hickory trees where the antelope roam, underneath the milky galaxy where the ant hill home, underneath our fire faces gladly be, underneath strong meals and constellation-wheels - this is where you simply find me.  And so if anyone should ask (and especially the girl from the north country), tell them I’ve been fixing everything we did wrong.  Because I know you human tried, know we ordained to say goodbye, but I forgive your pretty face for to love you like a child.  

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

the illinois river

for everyday I work on the Illinois River get half a day off with pay, all day long I’m makin’ up barges, on a long, hot, summer day” – Sara Watkins

It came to me today, returned like a forgotten friend.  We drove west into the hill country, backwards in time and scope.  Parked on the gravel stretch beside the highway, cars zooming round the curve at 60 mph’s plus some, zooming by in big whoosh whooshes.  Hiked a narrow trail through a corridor of trees parallel to the highway.  Headbands loose t-shirts swim-shorts and water sandals.  Weary.  Rejuvenated by a sudden afternoon off, afternoon to explore, afternoon to finally put hard hard money at work, afternoon to free.  And amid the sweltering heat were a-brewing storms, like premonitory things; and perhaps not so coincidentally.  The hazy sky cast sun-shadows on rock and river.  Could’ve been dusk, could’ve been dawn. Waded knee-deep through the low draught-ridden creek.  There for an hour or four, and all the while the feeling setting in – like sun sets into skin slowly darkening reddening hardening. Waded out to mid-stream empty-handed as the day I arrived.  Waded out to mid-stream stood grounded on slippery underwater wet-smooth rocks; stood there in the rushing, amid the dash wooshing and river washing.  And then, myriad rain-drops in a chaos pattern of returning home in quiet splashes.  And only the sound of what is.  And then, slightly bending knees and torso, deliberately dipped cupped hands half into water, and paused motionless, entrenched as a stock-still tree-trunk, and watched the river change it’s course to accommodate calloused, creative, potentially great only commonplace, above all owned, above all borrowed, hands.  Saw the immense potential of the natural standing order of things; saw you in his natural habitat, and land in hers; saw the ocean of the sea and the ocean of the sky, the two combined; saw the great cycle of water life gone and lost rush, and finally, saw myself, citizen of only the earth, a creek toward a stream toward a river leading upwards to higher sources, and so on – saw brilliant impermanence, free rushing saved away timeless now.  And smiled, realizing it had been a good while.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

like a little lake, for instance

For instance,
's a mysterious lake that the morning mist makes in the clean waking hour of dawn
geese flying overhead ducks heads in their shoulders as men mow the lawn down
and I sit apart from it all
the pin oak the red oak, the drying up dead oak, been here through impossible times
but the lake as new as the morning dew, and men, just a blip in the books
and I find it hard to believe
the young girl the strong girl, the drying up old man, passing each other in stride
red neck-striped turtle just floats in the surface, all dressed up with nothing to know
and the sun stronger shines through the steam
round and round the heat is hot, fine gravel crunch beneath jogging feet shoes
a pocket of wild in parking lot country, and closing in quick, they say
- the world isn't over - just the world that you knew
and it hasn't a name you can fight
and it isn't much wrong or much right.