to mend, perhaps to dream

mending.
waiting.

dusting also. and that smear of white paint still on the glass.

the light of morning points out all the stuff, and in the light of morning you think you'll get to it later. when the night's aches lessen, when the book you're reading comes to its end. by the end of the day, in the still heat of the day, when your feet are up and the first cicada interrupts the silence, you'll think this weekend. it will wait.

and then the weekend comes.

and goes.

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mending my soul

walking into the night, into the summer night

into the surroundingness of cicada song

into the muggy starlight

it's all one, it's all one.

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Three crows walk in circles around the old oak tree, and I think to myself ritual, I think to myself of dogs and cats circling before laying themselves down, I think of the story told in my father's family of a distant cousin who circled and circled in the yard, circled hard, thinking, before killing himself. Circled so hard he left his trail in the red dirt, a circle carved by thoughts. An old story, before my father's time, but I refuse to judge. Perhaps he was mending in the only way he knew how, perhaps his thread broke and he came undone. A thread breaks into the tiniest of pieces, and sometimes, despite a world full of perhapses and maybes and all the king's horses and all the king's men . . . well, you know. Sometimes the wind blows away those pieces before you can begin to put them together again.

A fourth crow appears and they all fly away.

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the heat of day stays on my skin and in it,

a fever carried into the healing night,

gone by morning to begin again.

gray sky to blue.  

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a new door

It’s a loosy goosy house, this house of mine, one that lets winter’s cold air in whether you want it in or not, but still, every morning, the first thing I do is open the front door. It’s made of glass, more window than door, and I can see out whether it’s open or closed, but to open it, and leave it open, is to bring the new day inside.  And in the way of things, let the old day go.  Yesterday can escape. 

I let heat out the door in winter, and I free the air conditioning in the summer.  In the spring blossoms from flowering trees find their way in; in the fall windblown leaves scatter across the floor – moons and stars under my feet.  The rain blows in all year long.  

"Happiness sneaks in
through a door you didn't know you left open."

 - John Barrymore

This morning, from my morning pages:

across the street, a neighbor is mowing his lawn early against the humidity that will only grow worse during the day, and next door the new neighbors are arguing with each other, slamming doors and speaking in loud sarcasm.  i could close the door and hush them all, but i can smell the honeysuckle blossoms along the creek and there is a cat sleeping next to my thigh, and so, no.  i will sit a while and write down the morning.

one thousand blackbirds

lift in flight at the sound of

one door opening.

                                                                                            - Kelly Letky

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It is almost June, not yet summer, and my map brings me here.  This new place may be my summerhouse with the doors thrown open to whatever summer brings or it may be permanent. It's too soon to tell. I need a change, somewhere new to run to.  My name at the top of the page.  I plant my flag at the top of this mountain I have been climbing for too, too long, and take a breath.  I will take a different path down.

Paths and doors and maps crowded with words and tears and laughter. Empty pages and houses teetering on the edge.  Crows and prose and poetry.  St. Exupery's stars.  Still here for me, at this new address.

Let us see what happens.
No rules.

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