Spackle knives, Dandelions and Spoons

I was at the park the other day, it was one of those exceptionally beautiful days where the temperature and the breeze and the clarity of the air culminate into an atmosphere of contentment. It was the kind of day that makes you stop, take a deep breath, close your eyes and just... be.

So, I'm at the park enjoyong this a-typical time durring the week and I just start watching things around me. Well, more specificaly the people around me. Moms with their children, adults with puppies, teenagers laying in the grass laughing. People reading books while listening to music or just napping in the afternoon. Then my attention is grabbed by a few small children playing together, they were all probably close in age, I'm guessing sixish. You know the kids I'm talking about. Kindergarten age. The kids that are always running, jumping, swinging their arms usually all at the same time.Everything at this age is BIG, every movement. Kids at play fascinate me. Maybe it's because I had the kind of childhood that so many of us did, the kind that doesn't foster imaginative play-time. Maybe it's because I can see the socio-interaction of adults in the way that children interact with eachother when they don't think anyone is looking. Boys typically at this age are just starting to notice girls are "different" and are just starting to figure out what this new information exactly means in their life. This is usually the time when boys start playing rough and pretending to blow stuff up, making lots of unusual noises instead of using their vocabulary. Girls on the other hand tend to start noticing the things around them that are "pretty", like flowers and clouds and ribbons in their hair. Girls also find it annoying, at this age, that boys don't just sit on the grass and talk instead of trying to dig or climb stuff while making uninteligable, gutteral noises. In watching these particular children there are three boys and a girl playing under a massive old gnarled tree, probably about six feet around with parts of the root system poking like veins through the soil. The shade from the tree prevents any grass from growing there so it's just dirt. This, however is perfectly fine with the boys who imediately sit down and start pushing the dirt into piles, while the girl stands on the ridge of a root looking down suspiciously at the boys.
After a few minutes of interaction with eachother I notice one of the boys. The "leader" of the group pulls from his pocket a small spackle knife. The boys, of couse, are elated each in turn wanting to hold the desired object and talking about how cool it is and what an awesome thing to happen to have in a pocket. At this point, the girl most decidedly leaves the group and plops down to hunt some clover and pick dandelions for her mother. The boys though, in a hustle of excitedand animated activity, decide that they are going to attempt to chop down the tree with the spackle knife. Cheers and affirmative grunts issue from all the boys present and this, this is what caught my attention.

How pleasing would it be to have that kind of thought process?! I mean really. Think about it! All that confidence with just enough ignorance and naivete mixed in. To be a child again. To live in a world where things like chopping down trees with spackle knives and digging to China with spoons are really possible. To have such a view of your place in the world and the faith of your mastery over every situation. To believe that you live in a world where everything is big and it's not scary.

Wow.

Nutshells

A fracture has occurred.
Or rather you wish me to believe it's so.
That we are never really the people we think we are
is not such an amazing comentary on life.
Unless you read the TIMES.

I wouldn't say that I'm the pendulum
in the middle is boring, but what else will you hear
all those moments that burst forth and fizzle
in the grayness of simply living.

So many conversations we could be having
Ideas floating, coaxing, swallowing hard
that jagged little pill of envy when you finaly learn
the truth is passing you on the street everyday
in the middle of Autumn while the ducks fly overhead.

Whatever you do...

For God's sake, don't hurt me.

There are so many things in this life I have learned to forgive. Complacency, Laziness, Selfishness, Rudeness, Lateness... the list goes on. I have not however mastered the art of forgiving the lie. Any lie. Little white lies. Out-right lies. Lies that are unspoken waiting behind your eyes. You know what I'm trying to say. We have all been on the recieving end of a betrayal or a deception. It cuts, it can mortaly wound. Aimed at the jugular, it thrusts it's way into the self and the lifeblood of any friendship can drain away in a matter of seconds. It can happen quite by accident or it can be as premeditated as making a grocery list. Either way you're looking at manslaughter or murder one.

Understand, I'm admitting my fault. I am saying, for the whole world to hear, that I have a defecit of character. I try. There are times when I try harder than others to bandage the wounds, and there are times when I don't try at all. This is my failing.

I guess what I'm saying is, right now, if you wounded me in this way, I don't know which I would choose. I feel so often as I get older that I just don't have the capacitiy to bleed anymore without dying.

I'm frightened.

So, for God's sake, whatever you do...

Please don't lie to me.

The Life of O'Riely

I can hear the wispers of a thousand memories
in the waves of the sea
sitting on a blanket under the moon
I recall most vividly
our conversation about Life,
about Loss,
about Love.


"Have you ever been in Love", timidly and woefuly
your words spilled and dripped with an irritating cadence
onto my lap, down my leg and into my left shoe
I spoke with lips silent and eyes laughing
ruefully

I answered finaly in my own sweet time
years and and age ago when I wore that blue dress
"How Freudian." I said "For humanity to look to some
egalitarian epiphany. Some long ago
tribal right of passage into adulthood
like a man wearing a fedora."

It's twenty years hence that age and I have sewn
the seeds of birth and death and day to day
and hour to hour watching you wanting me
to wear again that blue dress and so I smile
wide and strong and clear in the moonlight

"It's not being in love that changes us" I sigh
and roll over with my nose on your chin
feeling the prickle of your beard and lifting a hand
to carress your face, "It's the act of loving."

And I can hear the wispers of a thousand memories
in the Life of you and me.