~singing in the loft~
~balcony~
~feathers dripping dew~
~& doo on you~
~wings fluttering~
~talons grasping~
~a circling retreat~
~dive of vengeance~
~masters of survival~
~reptilian spore~
~lizard wings wizard~
~tongue in beak cawing~
~dripping aeon~
~a limbing gasp~
~egg fertilization~
~Birds I View~
~whomever hears a choir~
~must needs long for noel~
~just so... those inclined toward~
~the voices of birds~
~listen for spring~
~as one might any day sing~
~yet exalt in the clamor~
~of rich pitch soprano~
~& tenor rising~
~on alto bass legs to soar~
~all ways speak an air of wing~
~there were five this morning~
~whose dark coat raven~
~one more bearer await the pall~
~together badger the hawk~
~make a meal of its prey
~caw, caw, caw the hunter~
~they strut in magnificent jest~
~whose eyes four hundred years~
~they live each & longer even~
~unimpressed by fate~
~scavengers & better for it~
~such are the birds I view~
~gray tongues wagging lament~
~threatening at once to land~
~that the sky would fall~
~to bury its stick pins~
~ebon cloak named night~
~these bits of blue/black~
~lift the mantle & fear not~
~that gone unexplained~
~its quick reason~
~a dark eye bead~
~such are the birds' eye view~
http://wordwulf.com
WordWulf
Inquiries: tracy@traceliteraryagency.com
& wordwulf@wordwulf.com
©artwork & words conceived by & property of
Tom (WordWulf) Sterner©
Birds I View was published in Newsletter Inago
~the soul is left to wander~
~dazed & confus’d searching~
~Jim Morrison~
~there is an ethical aristocracy just as there is a spiritual one~
~Nietzsche~
~children as our conscience~
~spirit guide intentional~
~WordWulf~
~Instance of Id~
At some very deep and necessary level, my children have been essential masters of my spirit. The singer in me might have sung himself to death, the writer written himself over the edge to the other side. Harley Davidsons, brothers of the blood, cocaine nights and meth weekends would surely have claimed me, consumed me body and soul.
Staring into campfires shared with night riders never compared to family camps, marshmallows, snipe hunts, shaking bushes and grizzly bear growls. What a thrill, the handsome squeals of boys and girls afraid to be scared, delighted to be so (and safe). Always my children’s eyes have been in the campfire speaking, “It’s okay, Daddy, come on home now. We are waiting, faces in the window.”
Not being a man of virtuous patience, I have led a full life with the hammer down. Standing in line leaning on a shovel, burying fellow madmen over the years, I have wondered what made me different from the good men died, that shovel full of dirt on the last mortal door slammed shut.
Freud described the psychic apparatus as being composed of three parts, three theoretical constructs. According to his model the id is the uncoordinated instinctual self, ego the “now,” organized and realistic piece. Lastly, the super ego is critical and moralizing.
In consideration of this philosophy my super ego has most times been staring into the eyes calling out from the flames. My damned ego was dancing around the fire, flames spewing from the spout of a five gallon gas can. It howled until it could howl no more then took gulps of gas and spit flames into the face of the night and the astonished crowd ducking and moving on the dance floor. Within the undeniable hunger to create and survive, I find my id, a deep well of desire for creativity, no value judgments, a reservoir of no fear.
Such a place in a manmade like the man I am would demand a kind and attentive master. Shot at, stabbed and run over, six decades of life behind me, I understand at last who they are, these keepers, how well I find them and me in their eyes.
http://wordwulf.com
WordWulf
Inquiries: tracy@traceliteraryagency.com & wordwulf@wordwulf.com
She lived a hard life in a world where survival was the everyday waterline of success. I left her in that white room six years ago to howl a lament in the hospital parking lot, what turned out to be her death song. My sister came to join me. “Momma’s pain is over,” she said, “She is lost to us now.” I hurried back to the room to visit Momma’s hollow corpse.
Some weeks later my good sister advised me that she, two of my brothers, and other two sisters were taking Momma’s ashes from Colorado to Wyoming. They intended to make a ceremonial goodbye, to loose Momma’s remains on the Wyoming wind as Momma had done with her husband, our stepfather, five years before. She released him to the garden and the small square of grass on their red dirt, moo cow, Wyoming ranch. My sister asked me, “Will you go with us?”
Oldest of seven children, Momma’s first son, I replied, “No, I’m not ready to say farewell to her and would never leave her with the monster man, our stepfather. The oldest of my brothers, fourteen months younger than myself, was “doing time” in the prison at Canon City. Momma never liked him much, favored me always. The two of us, my brother and me, knew a different kind of life than our siblings. We shared a love/hate bond because of the Momma dynamic. I asked my sister to divide Momma into seven parts. “Take them all to Wyoming and do what you will with five of them. Bring the two last back to Colorado after they have witnessed five degrees of separation. These two parts I will keep for myself.”
Life goes on. Six years later I found myself married to what finally felt like “the right woman” for me. She was sixth born in a middle-class family of seven children. Her father was a successful pharmacist and devoted father, her mother a good church woman and dedicated wife and mother. My wife regaled me with happy stories of family road trips and camp-outs, girl scouts and bible study. The younger man, me, would have become confused and angry listening to stories from that “other world.”
We live in California now, my wife and I, 1280 miles away from my five children in Colorado, each of those miles the one too far. Having spent her childhood in Washington and Oregon, many of my wife’s stories have the ocean as a backdrop, the most significant of those, in my opinion, were the two trips she and her siblings took, the singular dual ritual of releasing father and mother into the wind and vast deeps of the Pacific, a place they both admired, respected, and loved.
Recently I drove those 1280 miles to spend a couple of weeks with my children and grandchildren. My youngest son of twenty-three years returned to California with me to spend a few days visiting. Momma was with us in her plastic bag in the black plastic box with the lid that will never close.
My Colorado boy wanted to see the ocean and so off we went. My wife drove us the 150 squiggly miles to where California ends in the west. I took two pinches of Momma from the box, spread them on the sand-silt of the beach, pressed my fingers to my lips, tasted the silken residue of Momma’s ashes.
My son stood ankle deep in the tide. “Woo!hoo” he whooped ecstatic, speaking into his projector while filming the big water, his vast, endless and beautiful youth enveloped by and a-tempo with the terrible roar of the ages. I returned my gaze to the sand, water licking at my boots, and she was gone.
Momma was afraid of water. She took no comfort in its swell and weigh. Still I gave a bit of her back. She would have liked my wife’s people, her parents. The me I am now would have too. In another life where it was safe to let go we might have been regular folks, good people, like them.
My brother is bitter, wants no part of what is left of Momma. The ashes left are mine to do with whatever I choose. I’ll take her with us when we move back to Colorado, repeat the ocean ritual in those great Rocky Mountains we both loved so well. I might never let go of my Cherokee Mother, she will certainly never let go of me. If it were to be, the lid would close o’er that plastic box of Momma’s Ashes.
http://wordwulf.comWordWulfPacific Interlude
~Momma’s Rain~ (excerpt – chapter seven)
It is 1960, autumn in Denver, Colorado. Ten-year-old Timmy hopes to spend a day at home with his mother & siblings before school begins for the semester but his father, hung over & behind schedule because of his drinking, forces the boy to come with him to clean up scraps in the yard while he finishes roofing the house.
~listen to the wind she said~
~let it speak to your eyes~
~no one will steal your horses~
~all your children will be wise~
Chapter Seven
~Children and Angels Alike~
Daddy came down for a smoke break and mentioned some spots in the yard the lady of the house said he had missed while cleaning. He had decided they would work through lunch (hurray!) and just get the damned job done. They didn’t have a rake and Timmy couldn’t see the spots he mentioned, so he crawled around the outside of the house on his hands and knees. He used his fingers as rakes, pulling them through the grass, and depositing every nail and minuscule scrap onto a shingle wrapper he dragged along behind himself. He usually liked the people in the houses where they worked. This lady, he decided, must be evil. How could she dare pile one more indignity upon one such as himself who had spent the day suffering one after an-unbelievable-other?
As has happened many times in his life since, he was forced to eat a tender-bit of self-ingested crow. It was hot and he was sweating, feeling lowly and put upon. He was sure he had never been so awfully sorry for his poor, miserable self and completely justified in his feelings. An angelic female voice from nowhere and everywhere said, “Timmy.” He squinted his eyes and raised himself up into a kneeling position. Just as he gave up searching for the sound and got back to his hand raking, the voice said his name again. This time it was accompanied by the tin tinkle wink of metal on glass.
He moved toward the house and stood up.
“Come on in the back door, Timmy,” the voice said from what appeared to be the kitchen window, cleanser and a metal sponge holder on the sill. He still didn’t see a person. “Come on,” the voice urged, “I have something special for you.”
Timmy broke a bunch of Momma and Daddy rules when he went in that back door. “Don’t talk to strangers,” etc. etc. If Daddy caught him ... but he was busy ridging the house. Timmy could hear the singing rhythm of his axe. If it ceased its working song, he would have plenty of lead time to run outside and get back to work.
So in he went and up the six steps to the kitchen. He expected the usual matronly old lady who would offer him a glass of water or milk, maybe even a Coke. Instead he stepped into the kitchen and found himself in the company of a real live angel. Her body was twisted, braced into and supported by a chrome walker gadget with rubber brake/wheel attachments. She wasn’t old at all and whatever evil chord pulled her body down extended to the left side of her face. The horrifying rictus of her countenance was overcome absolute by some angelic aura emanating from her bluer than white eyes. She smiled from the side of her face that was hers. Timmy was owned and blessed of the moment.
“This is yours,” she said, her eyes stealing his and leading them to her crippled fallen hand. It clutched the walker and a ten-dollar bill between angel skin and steel. “Take it,” she insisted as if she could hear the whispers of a thousand refusals echoing through his brain.
He stepped forward and reached for the money. She surprised him by pressing it into his hand.
“You are a hard worker,” she said. “You keep this money all for yourself.” Her twisted hand felt like heaven’s breath.
Timmy didn’t know what to say ... so he didn’t.
“Come have tea,” she offered. “It has been the longest time since I had a handsome young man over for tea.”
There was a gleaming ornate silver tray and serving set on the table across from the window. Timmy reached for the server and she said, “That won’t do. You’re my guest; please be seated.”
He sat in a chair and watched in awe as she transferred her broken body laboriously from the walker into a chair of sorts with canvas back and seat. Once she was seated, she extended her hand to him again.
“How rude of me. My name is Jude. Do you take sugar in your tea?”
Timmy spoke for the first time to her and barely, “I.. uh.. I think so.”
He had never seen one so afflicted and not overcome in the least. She poured two cups of tea.
“Two sugars?” she asked sweetly, a tiny silver tong come to her hand. Timmy was tongue-tied. “I think three,” she laughed, “and two for me.”
He felt all giddy inside. He wanted to hug her and run away. Daddy’s roofing axe pounded its ridge rhythm and sugar cubes dissolved before his eyes.
“Our imperfections can be used to define us,” Jude said softly. “Rather would I drink to them.” She lifted her glass cup and clinked it against his.
He felt stupid as soon as he said it, “Cheers,” and sipped a bit of tea. He had never had hot tea and sure hadn’t lived a life where toasts were offered. Social graces didn’t amount to much where he came from.
“One day your sight will be repaired,” she advised him. “Don’t forget what you saw before.”
Timmy didn’t know what to say but felt all at once as if something was very wrong. Then he realized what it was. Daddy’s axe had stopped singing. He gulped his tea down.
“Thank-you, Ma'am, I gotta go.”
“Jude,” she said, placing her hand on his. “I know you have to go, Timmy, but you’ll see me again.”
See more at Amazon
This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar. ~ a man on the road ~ usually doesn’t have much ~
~ in the weigh of money & possessions ~ what worth is positive energy ~
~ vitality of spirit ~ a predisposition toward hopes & dreams ~
~ the hunger & willingness to share them ~ He carries his dreams in a bucket. It is shot through with holes and leaking, splashing the tarmac, shoulder of the road in liquid arcs, tiny streams crisscrossing. He is a sight to see with his backpack and bucket, feet tripping forward, a staccato march toward what is left in the bucket, inadvertently, some of that which has been spilled along the way. He has half a sandwich left over from a stop at a Seven Eleven, an old army canteen full of cheap red wine, a ten dollar bill hidden in the sole of his shoe.
Round and round, he swings the bucket. The sun highlights a circle silhouette, the arc of his throw, reach of his dreams. Both hands on its handle, he flips it over, sits down on top of it, opens the canteen, takes a conservative swallow. A crow shines blue/black in the tree of his shade. Caw-caw, it speaks to him in an ancient voice. The highwayman laughs, taps out a finger-beat percussion on the side of his bucket seat full of dreams. He begins to hum and the bird cocks its head. Their eyes meet; they are birds of a feather.
The day passes and the bucket fills with bits and pieces. The highwayman sorts through lies, truth, half lies delivered in steps through holes in his mind. He turns down a ride in a Coupe De Ville, climbs into the back of an old beat-up pickup truck with a lovely crowd of Cherokee Children. They smile shyly with their dark eyes. He stares at his shoes and smiles back. From the bottom of their eyes, they are birds of a feather. The children dig into his bucket with hungry hands. He leaves ten dollars with their father, the driver of the truck, sets off down the shoulder of the road to refill it with a wink to the day and the voice of the crow.
~ we were city folks ~ my stepdad grew up on a farm ~
~ bought a rundown ranch in Wyoming when he retired ~
~ Momma asked what I wanted of her things when she passed away ~
~ I refused to consider an answer ~ I said simply ~
~ I don’t want your stuff ~ I want you ~
~Momma’s Truck/The Coloradoan~ It was six months, Momma, before I found the courage to knock the Wyoming mud off the wheels of your truck. It was six months more, today in fact, before I cleaned the inside. I found a penny under the floor-mat
and a book of notes written in your hand. They are where you left them, as much a part of the truck now as the wheels and doors.
She cleaned up real nice, Momma. My son, my Tommy, tuned ‘er up and she runs real nice. I told you I would never accept a thing if you left us and I meant every word. It was a wise and sage move on your part to put the title in my name as well as your own. I’m glad you did. There’s no way I could ignore that. Aside from my old Hawg she’s the only vehicle I’ll ever drive.
It was difficult for me when you followed your man to Wyoming to spend your last years on that far hardscrabble ranch. I tried to go with you but returned to Colorado less than a year later. Yes, Colorado, my home, the place where I was born and raised by your loving hands. I’ve never owned a license plate with a cowboy on it but yours hangs in a place of honor over the back of my bed.
That Ford of yours looks good with mountains front and back and I keep my share of your ashes in a black box on my desk. My siblings followed your wishes and spread theirs on that Wyoming wind you said never blew.
Forgive me this bit of selfishness. It is true, I’ll never let you go. I’ve asked my wife and children to put me in that box with you when the time comes and keep us together always in close proximity to my writing and music.
I used that picture of you and dad, 1949, Hideaway Park, Colorado, where I was conceived, for the cover of my second novel, “Frail Monsters/Wounded Souls: American Camp: Momma’s Rain.” I’m a Coloradoan, Momma;
so are my sons and daughters. It is a good place to be from, so good, in fact, I will never leave and so are you, a wonderful place to be from. I think you knew I’d eventually bring you home and spend the rest of my life finding my way back into your arms.
This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar. ~I’ll never be a one-step man~
~too easily amazed and sidetracked~
~by the subterfuge of their meandering tales and asides~
~out-dickered and usually paying the asking price~
~I am pleasantly lost in the where of the sixteenth eagle~
~Eagle Bumps/One-Step Men~ What a glorious Sunday morning this is. It’s sixty-two degrees here in California with a cool breeze wafting through, kissing the stucco and glass of houses erected six feet from one another. It’ll do; this Sunday I’m okay with that. I told my children (before they were adults and I hope they still believe it) that Sterners don’t get goose bumps on their flesh. In our family we get eagle bumps. This cool morning has peppered my flesh with them.
Eagle bumps and cars swishing by on Highway 44 a few blocks south of here remind me of a Sunday morning in Wyoming in 1990 when I was involved with picking up a swather my stepdad, Glen, had purchased from an old sheep rancher named Jake. He was quite a character. Actually they were both characters (as if I’m not). Jake pointed up to the sky and suggested I count the eagles circling there, riding the currents, searching for prey or maybe just roller-coastering the wind.
Counting circling birds is one of those undertakings easier said than done. I kept coming up with fourteen, a number which doubled ol’ Jake over, bent at the waist and laughing his ass off every time I said it. Glen was aggravated by our intercourse. A one-step man, he wanted to get the swather back to his ranch so we could grease ‘er up and begin cutting his hay and alfalfa. Jake ignored his interruptions, wouldn’t listen to Glen’s dickering over the price of the machine, until he had finished schooling me on the art of counting swirling objects high in the sky. “Ya gotta mark a bird with yer eye,” he instructed, “Don’t blink; one blink and ya gotta start all over. Follow that bird and count ‘em off. You’ll get ‘er right every time.
There were fifteen eagles circling that day. Jake winked at me from his crinkly weathered face and reported that, at this time of year, eagles would always be found in pairs. To Glen’s consternation, this statement began the next step in Jake’s majestic bird tutorial. We had to find the sixteenth eagle. Glen gave up his dickering for a moment and, using his one-step man’s predator eye, found the bird perched on a telephone wire across the old washboard gravel road. “There ya go!” Jake laughed, coughing a bit between puffs on his Marlboro, “Ya got a good eye, son.”
Glen thanked him and attempted to one-step his way back into dickering. “You’re asking $1600.00 for that swather. It’s a John Deere, just what I’m looking for. I got fourteen one-hundred-dollar bills in my pocket here and Tom along to drive ‘er away.”
Jake continued to ignore him, chuckled and asked me what I was looking at. I was watching crows on the telephone wire with the lone eagle. They were caw-caw-cawing, hopping from side to side on the wire, raising all kinds of particular hell with the eagle. Never mind numbers, I was mightily impressed with the crows. I figured the eagle could easily take them down one chomp at a time and wondered why it didn’t. “Countin’ crows on a wire is a whole different barrel o’ fish,” Jake chortled, “Mark yer bird by a tall tree in the background, somethin’ that’s not movin’ or likely to move. Keep at it, you’ll get ‘er, kid.” I was forty years old and felt pretty good being referred to as a kid by this seasoned veteran, master of life and its living.
The morning dragged on and, around noon, Jake’s wife came from her country kitchen with egg salad sandwiches and a pitcher of lemonade. She was a taciturn woman, plump and composed in her flower-print Sunday dress and white apron with black cows wandering all over it. Standing next to her tall and lanky husband, they reminded me of the number ten. In the Olympics of Life that’s the number I would assign to them. “Fifty-five years this good woman has put up with me!” Jake quipped between bites.
Birds, jumper cables, and the art of cutting hay were the subjects of conversation during lunch. Glen knew better than to dicker during a country meal. Mrs. Jake (I never did know her name) went into the house to “freshen up”. She took the lunch dishes with her and soon emerged without her cow apron, pecked a kiss on Jake’s cheek and departed without a word in the couple’s ten-year-old Oldsmobile. “Off to sew quilts and gab with the church ladies; now we can have a beer,” Jake reported with a crinkly wink.
The afternoon wore on while Jake regaled us with stories of animal rights groups and the death of lambs. “They say there’s only two pair o’ matin’ eagles left in Wyoming,” he laughed while pointing a gnarled finger into the wild blue yonder. “Them feathered folks sure got a lot ‘o company. Must be from other states, maybe Colorado and South Dakota.”
“I’d like to get that swather home before dark,” Glen added hopefully, “Tom’s a city man. He’s never driven one, might drive off the road in the dark.”
“You’re in for a treat,” Jake said to me as he walked over to the machine. “That there’s the steering wheel but ya only use that to trim ‘er up. These levers here are the left and right turns o’ the machine.” The hunk of green steel, all belts, pulleys and grease zirks he was referring to reminded me of a Frazetta rendition of an iron dragonfly from hell.
“Like I said,” Glen put in, “I got fourteen one-hundred-dollar bills here. My hired man (that was me) has some money saved up. He has three kids to feed all by himself. I’d sure feel bad if I had to borrow money from him to buy the swather.”
“Come back another day if you have to,” Jake replied nonchalantly. “I expect some other lookers. I got prospects but you might get ‘er after all. You’re my closest neighbor and Tom here can drive ‘er ten miles down that ol’ dirt road. Anybody else’ll have to pay freight.”
“Ah hell,” Glen carped, extending a hand toward me. Upon this prearranged signal, I took the ten twenty-dollar bills Glen had given me at breakfast from my shirt pocket and handed them to him. He folded them into his wad of C-notes and handed them over to Jake.
Jake ambled off to the barn to get the owner’s manual and parts list for the twenty-year-old machine. Glen frowned at me. “You ‘n your damned birds just cost me two hundred dollars.”
Ol’ Jake died of cancer a couple of months later. I imagine he knew that was coming when he spent a day in the wild expanse of his Wyoming front yard dickering and telling stories with Glen and me. What a gift such knowing is. I’ll never be a one-step man, too easily amazed and sidetracked by the subterfuge of their meandering tales and asides. Out-dickered and usually paying the asking price, I am pleasantly lost in the where of the sixteenth eagle, the orneriness of crows, explaining eagle bumps to my grandchildren.
I do my best to keep promises and did so in the case of Jake by never telling anyone about the hundred dollars he poked into my shirt pocket before I mounted the cockpit of the swather monster. “Don’t tell him,” he said with a nod toward Glen who waited impatiently in his truck to follow me home in the dark. “You do somethin’ nice for those kids o’ your’un. Don’t tell them neither.” I went with them to see a movie at the Cowboy Theater in New Castle a week or so later. We enjoyed a steak dinner at the Cowboy Café and had enough money left for everyone to buy some goodies at 7-11, then drove fifty miles laughing and singing down the dirt road to our home on Skull and Crossbones Road.
~If I Father~
~eighteen when my first daughter was born~thirty-seven when the fifth child~
~my second son came to join us~
~those three girls & two boys have had quite a time with me~
~sharing life with them~the single most significant event of my being~
~has been a prayer~the oldest of eight children~searching for a lifeline~
~I wondered~if I father~
~I have watched each of them sleep~
~tasted the perfect bloom~
~of their sweet child breath~
~thought of myself ~
~as the great protector~
~keeper of precious fragile flames~
~not so much I think~
~as I witness their awakening~
~into the dawn of youth~
~the embrace of young adulthood~
~parenthood~
~I listened to their stories~
~told one to the other and others~
~voices pure and beautiful ~
~as fine silk~
~texture my ears could touch~
~while listening~
~I learned of their suffering~
~that their lives had been staggered~
~by sullen blows of doubt~
~& fear that I~
~their father~
~might come crashing~
~through those doubting walls~
~to discover them~
~in the company of the ghosts~
~of their imperfections~ ~in the night~
~voices speak to me~
~the tiny ones of my children~
~who have come to go~
~will always remain with me~
~grown past the child whispers~
~I aspire to hear~
~I answer them~
~in fatherly mumbles~
~tears in my eyes & melancholy~
~for what has passed~
~in my time of living~
~you see they are the protectors~
~of my imperfections~
~I congratulate myself on a job well done~
~because they need me less now ~
~than ever before~
~& never so much as I imagined~
~in my fatherly throes ~
~my attempts to interpret~
~fatherly duties~
~do’s, dues, & don’ts
~a symphony of tiny voices~
~echoes ring down~
~the spiral canyon of my years~
~they speak to me~
~in a perfect symmetry~
~of childhood wisdom~
~they fairly embrace me to stand~ ~there are those~
~who accuse me of talking to myself~
~they got that right~
~my children are myself~
~the very ones I am addressing~
~ones I have become~
~I may be answering questions~
~from a score of years gone~
~by and by as I watch~
~my daughter with her daughter~
~my oldest son in conversation~
~with his brother~
~twelve years his junior~
~yes daughters & sons~
~with sons & daughters~
~to all of them I say~
~I am your father~
~that is all I am~
~& in that complete~
~you lend me strength~
~make me proud~
~in a most beautiful revelation~
~the knowledge & carriage~
~of our shared imperfections~
~stepping forward through it all~
~embracing & supporting one another~
~you carry me to a place~
~of unconditional devotion~
~love without fear~
~lighting candles~
~in the dark corners of my spirit~
~I am made to be free~
~a man~
~my children have been~
~& remain yet~
~perfect sentinels of my journey~
~If I come to see beyond the shadow~
~If I come to walk into and through the fire~
~If I come to feel~
~to love and be loved~
~If I father~
~I Would~
~if I could be a pillow~
~a safe place~
~to lay me down your grief~
~I would~
~if I could be a basket~
~I would gather all your sorrow~
~cast it out into the seven directions~
~I would~
~if I could be a fountain~
~I would flow with you~
~through the seven waters of your spirit
~I would always be your friend~
~I would ~
~I’m a lucky man~sitting in a lawn chair~Colorado springtime~
~breathing in~breathing out~that’s enough~time spent well~
~my wife’s in California~earning our living~she’ll join me in a couple of weeks~
~she brings home the bacon~til my words find their weigh~I’m a lucky man~
~Venerable Youth~
~wherever I am~
~sparrows’ voices will remind me~
~of this day when I am~
~watching his sister~
~cut his hair~
~these vulnerable youth~
~children of mine~
~it is peaceful like~
~after love making~
~after death~
~on the afternoon breeze~
~before midnight~
~peaceful like~
~sparrow feathers~
~in a burning bag~
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