the tree

The tree in the backyard

Flourished like death

Blossoms all fallen

Bare branches Reaching upwards 

A reminder that the more beautiful the life

The fewer can have it

integument

"Integument" means my skin

It's hard to imagine a worse-sounding word for what it is 

My outer layers 

Adorned but unarmored 

Mostly soft but rough in parts

Poets yammer on about the feelings deep inside

But what about the middle feelings

Brackish, where rivers meet oceans

And the fish that can live in both

Their integument grew scales 

arid

In the desert, he survived on the dew of her memory 

and crushed dried mesquite seed pods

He knew where she was

To go to her unbidden would be...uncouth 

and he loved her too much to do that

He walked along the ancient crumbling brick canals

His third-favorite sound was clattering masonry

Someday he'd have a yard of 

cobblestone

red brick 

and walls of gabion

un-mortared so the grass could grow through the cracks

If it ever rained again

Soldier Once

i was a soldier once 

and War is mostly waiting

i saw lots of sunrises and sunsets 

and blocks of midnight hours 

a marathon of intermittent sleeps

dreaming and waking can blend into each other

if you're not careful

i didn't want to be a soldier after all

it turned out

but the training has been useful to me

there will be doubt and despair 

and hours lying in the freezing muck 

of a hastily-dug fighting position

fear is learned and maybe it can be unlearned 

it probably won't be though

the panic will push out reason

when the training isn't there

every army sleepwalks

bulwarks and rubbish heaps 

but War is mostly waiting 

over mountains, under hills

you're out there somewhere waiting too 

and I am a soldier still

Attic Library

Assume an archaic, dreamlike repose

Old bookshelves with grooves in the grain

Favored volumes wearing runners into the wood 

If every tome were taken

boxed and bound and bonded

The shelves would keep their memory

In the Morse and Braille of cell walls

A map or star chart

Leading back to you

Lessons From Cartoons

"Neutral jing" is a concept I first encountered in a cartoon about martial arts and elemental magic. When entering a battle, there is offense, defense, and also... doing nothing.

But it's not really doing nothing. Neutral jing involves listening, observing, presenting the outward appearance of inaction, all while waiting for the right moment to strike.

You might even have to take some hits until the optimal moment presents itself. Suffer a few slings and arrows. 

It's a risk, certainly. It's certainly not the default stance to take. 

It's been useful to me to understand that I don't have to know how to fix it. Yet. Hold on to the idea. Stay clever. Stay strong. Stay stubborn. Stay kind. Work hard. Build bridges. Make connections. 

Everything's connected, I think. So find the connections. Find the path. Grow towards home. 

Temporal anamoly

Has it been an entire season? You were my lighthouse, a burning sphere of prisms illuminating the shore after a dozen lifetimes of darkness, and I can begin to swim back. 

And then time changes too, to conspire against us.

Nothing new. Those ocean is vast, but every ocean has a shore.