vision of a waitress

Something about here alone at the table feeling that all too familiar lost in the universe or a quiet small town café on a main drag somewhere out in America that defines me, and telling it to a coffee cup.  The sole patron of westward spaces. Here at the table where I vaguely remember being before in another familiar life.  And watch the movies play while family friends brothers and lovers come and go emptying and filling chairs in a time-lapse sequence.  Even see memories of me on the sepia screen, birthdays family Sundays Friday night ballgames and fancy date dinners, from somber goodbyes to excited celebrations all along the Table spectrum.  Where every original thought was ever concieved or scribbled, where every group of officers sat and discussed the mornign agenda, where every set of grey-haired women ever gathered on a Monday morning to reconfirm the doctrines of goodness and change, where every group of bearded intellectuals met promptly to parley on the metaphysical makeup of God and meaning, where every seeking individual ever mused upon the watershed.   And always somehow this table the constant in a world of variables.  See now the gone tablecloth over rough plastic table with three good legs and one seen better days; the gone steel/plush chair with foamy rip right down the center that screeks across the linoleum; and either in the dusky morning or the waning early evening always – on the road from west to east coming together; the sad triumphant triumverant of knife fork spoon hastily wrapped in synthetic napkin and rolled up next to the plate; the blinking fluorescent lights illuminating street signs license plates stop lights and famous framed dollar bills; the big hairy dark haired chef slapping cold eggs onto a sizzling frying pan in the back there, sprinkling this and that and sandwiching hot butter inbetween two triangles of processed white toast; and the meat - big sizzling sausages rolling around over hopping bacon jumping grease and thick ham slabs getting warm too; big coffee pots always a-brewing in eternal rotation decaf or non sugar spoon and creamer nine sugar packet types to choose from neatly.  Something to do with me here temporary and the gone motherly waitress destined to stay and offer eternal wayward kindness to all the passers-through.  See her coming my way now with a world of trouble on her brow and a load to bear,  the greatest American novel still yet (and always) unwritten is the story of her 42 ordinary years, and yet she brushing all these aside to smile and motherly flirt while proudly scooting loaded plate underneath my chin as for child and great big mug of steaming coffee with plastic coke glass of ice water cubes floating against each other in there.  “Anything else, hun?”  Leaves me alone with great anticipatory thoughts of food and open distant thoughts of the road what has been and what will around the bend.  And when it’s all said and done she exchanges me a check for the empty greased plates and cold quarter full coffee mug which now she cradles deftly on one arm back into the bowels of the kitchen.  I pay with crumpled cash and out the plastic door causing the bell to ring, into car or truck or van and back across the black tar pavement streams to rivers to freeways and always abiding the law of the yellow lines as if some safety there inbetween, headed home or otherwise.  And later tonight, out the very same plastic door where eventually my waitress (double shift today and another on the way) turns out the lights, hastily flips around the open/close sign, sweetly says goodnight to the last customer while stacking chairs on top of tables to sweep before walking home by streetlamp to fall asleep with tired hair down still apron'd in the living room chair and dream about the good old days and all the worrisome days to come.  

the day hike scene

Sitting atop Craggy Pinnacle and the sun creeping behind me feel it's warmth.  Almost 10am, took about two and a half, three hours from the falls; boy I's up early this morning...  Near four thirty or five snapped wide awake and thought "a hike it is!"  Up early refreshed seeing as how having nursed the bonfire to sleep not long after sundown the evening before.  Took a minute to stare into the ember constellations glowing, then into the tent for reading adventures by headlamp, then drifting off before the third song.  Anyway up in the cold quiet dark of moonlight and clear thoughts, down to the waterfall for fresh water filling cups and bottles all - all the while darting accusing headlight this way and that toward every night noise expecting hungry staring eyes watching.  And shhh the otherworldy sound of two owls conversing somewhere perched above.  Packing up camp as the sky begins to bright - no sun yet - just that ever subtle illumination of the world that goes unnoticed from minute to minute till suddenly you realize "oh!  the cows need a milking..."  Strung my rucksack in a tree and I was off uphill alive boots clomping blood pumping eyes wide and gaining elevation.  Over fallen logs through creeks and catching all cobwebs every few feet of trail calling all morning spiders.  Butterflies up with the sun lazy recklessly bumping into me no idea.  Recognizing different families of greenery living at different heights along the mountain.  Find me chanting mantras unknowingly bits of songs and lost conversations who knows where they come.  Moving always forward always higher and generally falling daze to the foot to foot trance, all the while wondering who's out there staring back.

And now, after all this, sitting atop the Eastern United States - out of food, low on water and ready for a sun-nap such as these rocks of ages must be so accustomed.

working draft

I believe much more freely than I disbelieve.  I am quicker to agree than otherwise.  There is nothing I won't question, and nothing I will assume.  I could care less about proving or disproving, only wish to incorporate.  Everything I have ever learned has been the same lesson in different words.  Mysteries never last, but stories persist.  The greatest danger in the world is habit.  Habits are close cousins of Rules, and repetition will eventually ruin anything.  You might mistake my belief in all things for disbelief.  

I do not miss the days gone, or wish that tomorrow would come sooner; I wish to be here.  I have not been worried since I stopped worrying.  Everything has immeasurable beauty in it, and humor too.  I do not understand what it is to be bored, and couldn't be lonely if I tried.  I knew it before I was told.  You might mistake my self-reliance for selfishness.  

I could care less where you came from, or what other people say about you; I am concerned only with who you are.  I am not who I used to be, and do not assume that you are either.  I do not ask for forgiveness, because I have done nothing that needs forgiven.  Likewise, you have no business feeling guilty around me.  Nobody will ever understand you as well as you do.  In fact, no-one will ever know you, only relate.  And this is not sad.  I have a very big family, and we are all related.  You might mistake my love for all people as un-love.

In any case, do not take my word for it.

cheap buys, guys!

here's a poem about the three hours of free time between the time you wake up and when it's time to go to work:

needs to write

needs to exercise

needs to write, read, eat, fight

right now

needs money like a blue sky -

cheap buys, guys!

dollar thrill bills on friday nights

monday wednesday doomsday

will there be work on the worn horizon?

work for the weary?

work for the ready-bodied?

the fiery eyed and the ocean gazers?

the pony-tailed pontificators?

the bearded, the bedraggled,

the me's and the you's (but who's counting?)

still, the squirrel outside my window 

keeps busy, peanuts and pay-corns

sunday afternoon and

outside the blinding window

"howl, howl" says the dwindling wind

"who?" says the azure void, "says who?"

"please" I says

say us how to bloom and spare us your truth

last thing this generation needs is a name

's a tired old game

used to have a dream

then I went sane

here's the solution

says I, to me, softly:

uproot away from it all

start over simple-handed

learn the flowers, learn

heart is hidden 'neath the uncut sky...

"hasn't worked yet," says the optimist

"hasn't ever worked," says the yawning dusk

"hurry up!" says the due bill

"All-A-Buzz!" does the conductor

("grumble, grumble, grumble")

maybe we are

nothing but smarty-ants

bee-lining towards workaday

till one day

queen bee goes missing

takes her money to the bank and

leaves us constellation fishing,

"be back in 10 to 15"

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.  

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.

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.