Listening to voices of my favorites
crying the words
Baby, baby, baby
scratchin’ the words
Lordy, lordy
my dear Janis
You gave us the secrets of your soul
and it is embedded in me.
You gave us a piece of your heart
and it beats still within me.
The Monterey Ball and Chain
we watched Mama say Wow!
We went to the Moon
and in August forgot to go home.
DSS
I zoomed past the first day of summer in June, then in August the greatest solar eclipse to cross the United States in almost a century and now in a few more weeks we will be entering September and the Autumn equinox. Time flies sometimes when you are not paying attention. I should say being preoccupied with other phenomenon of the social kind.
Oh, I noticed those physical events. I paused shortly and admired the Sun on the morning of the longest day. I went along with the rest of the family and sported cardboard glasses with the ISO approved lenses and watched the sun, moon and earth alignment that caused the street lights to come on precisely at 01:08 PM on that Monday afternoon. I just wasn’t connected with the Universe as securely as I usually have been in the past.
That Universal gravity, that invisible presence of compassion that we’ve been told was filling the vacuum of the vast misunderstood black emptiness, we call the Universe, just hasn’t been there this year. Everything has seemed to be so..so commonly earthly. I’ve felt this way since the season turned on our shortest day of December’s winter solstice. I became noticeably disturbed by it on our March equinox.
All these wonderful astronomical phenomenon marking our days and I’m unattached, absent and disengaged with them. Since November I’ve been surrounded and living under a hateful absence of compassion. Just as sure as the wrongs and disheartening of Arthur spoiled Camelot, surely this emptiness, this vacuum so close to our homes, will fill our country with the bile of this ignorant man’s hate. When have we, our country, ever been led by this kind of influence? Surely not in the past 60 odd years of my life. Oh, there has been hate in my lifetime but not from the leader of my country.
Whether it will be the denying of climate change or the postponement of scientific exploration here at home and literally of our Universe out there in that real dark vastness, the absence of our leader’s compassion will affect our world. Hate, bigotry and scientific denial has that effect. Perhaps more now than at any other time of our country’s last 100 years we are being threatened by an asteroid, an asteroid of hate. How will we dodge it?
Such is the life of John
Again we are told Where.
The invisible where.
Searching for the mystic chords of memory
we were told binds us to the graves
of the brave, young and the innocent.
These thin chords made only of the light strings
of loud sounds and trailing smoke.
So easily absorbed, so quickly dispersed among the mist.
Chords so soon broken and forgotten.
Nothing done.
And still not touched
by the better angels of our nature.
E.
I’m going to go there again some day
It has been many years
when I walked arm and arm with my sisters
and sang crazy rock and roll songs
And laughed how the new tune could be sang
using the name of our Butternut Hill.
Our Butternut Hill,
So well known for bad brakes
pumping our bicycles up the slope
slowing down all of the way.
spinning a tire on the loose gravel
reaching , reaching for the top.
Known for its bread trucks and
bottled milk men
That slid backwards on the ice
past the stop sign
across Highway 2
and into the ditch below.
Butternut Hill
Why do I remember it still
Just a steep grade on a short block
and now so much easier to climb.
Downhill north, uphill south
Where I learned to reach.
DSS
One hour and thirty minutes
I will be late if not there in
One hour and thirty minutes
But I am in no hurry to burn the time
between now and then
Children are born in that length of time
from no breath and not breathing
to first gasp and first cry.
In that length of time I can sit peacefully
and ride miles high from Chicago to Kansas City
breathing only filtered air
and with window shades pulled
never feel or see a motion
other than a bump from a pocket of air
or a staggering walk to the lavatory.
In that length of time.
I am in no hurry to burn the time
Those ninety invisible minutes
Minutes I must use to wash my body and hair
and shave my creasing face.
For crying out loud..
Husbands and wives are married
in that length of time
in those same damn fleeting minutes
And here I am spending it taking a shower
Important things happen in that relative
but accurate to the second length of time
So I will serve up my own importance
between the now and then
this ninety minutes of life
I may seem late on the time of others
but I won’t be late on mine.
Those spent ninety minutes of time.
DSS
(This is an old one from a few years ago. Back when I looked at time a little differently but not much. Sorry for the re-blog, but I really am working on something new. I think it will be worth your time. )
DistantShipSmoke 