on Memorial Day
#crossingover #giftoflife #living #memorialday #momentomori #now #remember
Once cloud-high mountains, shaped and worn from hundreds of millions of rainfalls, windfalls, frosts. Rounded now
Yes. And the rivers. The wind and the rain. The wildflowers. The marshes
My body. Outstretched. On a deck. Between the Sky and the Earth.
After you uncork him and he appears in a serpentine of white smoke. Before he grants you
Those many, sung and unsung, who gave themselves, often gave up their lives, to fight, in wars,
A frosted cake layered with cars and people, rosetted with gulls, points out toward quiet afternoon islands.
How deeply are you living, friend? How sense-deep. How heart, and
While countries, armies and ideologies battle, bees make honey. Butterflies float, and drink the nectar from gently open flowers.
The keys to the house, or car. The address of a restaurant. The grocery list. The name of a tree or bird or passing acquaintance.
A sure sign of soon-coming Summer. Another sweet, salt-aired Summer.
The limpa from Scandinavia. The ciabatta, and the michetta from Italia, also known as Rosetta. The mantou from China.
It arrives on a warm white cloud. It arrives on soft rolls of ocean waves along a sand pebbled shore. It arrives on a bed
The courtly old lady, widowed for decades, and her calico cat, who take each afternoon sun
After all the rain monsooning through the day, cascading through the leaves of the still—green— with-Summer trees.
Blonde head under baobab. Sun under shade. You sit on an African day,