From a Car Window

Watching the city grow and change 

year to year from a car window 

is impossible until squinting at

the faded blue paint on a brick building 

announcing a grocery store; 

  

seeing empty lots where 

  ‘remember that house that was there’; 

driving down a street that once was 

the middle of a grain field;

   

 houses worn and crumpling 

  from years with prairie weather, 

some kept up and still as neat and tidy 

as when they were young ~ 

sporting new siding and new roofs;

  

office buildings and housing units 

sprouted like new shoots of wheat in the spring;

new scaffolding asks ‘what’s that going to be?’

Watching the city grow and change 

year to year from a car window. 

“A city is more than a place in space, it is a drama time.”

~ Patrick Geddes, Science, City and Regional Planning, Sociology

Under the Blanket

stay cozy under the blanket ~ 

  normal feels good 

    but not strong. 

don’t have to surrender 

  to belief. 

That would take energy ~ 

feeling ‘not 25 anymore’. 

a distressing thought. 

at both ages ~ lying down, 

  feet up feels the same. 

No worries about being tired, 

  being out of balance,
    being afraid of our own mortality. 

With every age and stage of life 

~ being in the world changes. 

How anyone adjusts 

to these minute changes ~

one of life’s great mysteries. 

But adjust we do with 

the same wants and needs - 

balance shifting from wants to needs. 

But oh, how do we still

 ‘want’ the bright shiny things.

“I fall into all kinds of inauthenticity 

when I conspire to forget my mortality.”

~ Sam Keen, author

This Little Muse

A fragment of thought 

fluttered into the light, 

lit on my finger,

rested long enough 

to pen this little muse. 

Fluttering away into 

the cool night air, 

I could only wish it well.

“Words are but pictures of our thoughts”

~ John Dryden, poet

(1631 ~ 1700)