for P.W.
#1950s #bluerinse #boyhood #growingup #hair #hairdresser #kansas #memories #midwest #mother #nostalgia #wichita
It’s an early Spring morning of bellsong and birdsong, sunsong
Burnished at first, then blemished— an earthly foreshadowing. Then bearded for a while.
While the town sleeps and dreams behind me. And pined islands lay silently, invisibly off the salt-tongued shore.
Blonde head under baobab. Sun under shade. You sit on an African day,
To ask your Self. In the still of the night, whether bright-starred or half-mooned. In the midst of the day,
Red lights flaring like Roman candles at empty intersections. Headlights wanding like blind men’s sticks
My body. Outstretched. On a deck. Between the Sky and the Earth.
The Maine woods. The coastal woods. Where coming into Spring he resides, is at home. Where he keeps a fire burning
The only thing warm tonight in the deep winter sky ~ and soon to occlude. The Wolf Moon, Ice Moon, Old Moon.
The tender new leaves of the trees, emergently green. The white feathers of the wading egret.
A sure sign of soon-coming Summer. Another sweet, salt-aired Summer.
Be still now with the Earth. Still with the Sun, the Land, Sea
While countries, armies and ideologies battle, bees make honey. Butterflies float, and drink the nectar from gently open flowers.
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
What we belong to. What we can point to out there; around us. And what a singular gift. Our innate sentience.