who's left and who's leaving

i thought i’d post a semi-sentimental post per significant holiday starting with thanksgiving:

today was alright. I’m here in tennessee. it’s not warm; in fact, it’s rather mediocre in most ways. dinner was good, though, and I played some touch football in the yard today with much of the family. i loved it.

i am thankful for a family and a bedroom. i am thankful for watson manor and all of the folks there. i am thankful for all of those great folks in GR as well. i am thankful for health and the absence of disease. i am thankful that i am literate (it’s nice being able to read). i’m part-way thankful for tradition. i am not catholic, but i have been contemplating going to a catholic midnight mass on christmas eve. it seems beautiful to me.

to all of you out there: congratulations for being you. there is something beautiful about you. I hope that you can see it.

standing in line of people waiting to use the port-o-potties at a football game I think to myself “the world will probably be ok.”

after four years of participation in a liberal arts education i have come to one conclusion: no one is happy with what they have, who they have, what they are.

To all of the trees: “Is it easy to breathe?
Do you know you’re alive under the sky?”

To all of the clouds, big and small: “Do you know you’re about
till the wind blows you out?”

And if you were these things you would never ever ever know your name.
But you’d be rooted deep to the ground into a seed that blew and out your everything.

Birch paper bark, wrote a letter for everyone to read in the dark.
You wrote back in a bottle. Sent secret down the stream routing me to everything.

The cardinal flies in your blood and the willow wept hair is wet on your head.
Climb down the tree from your cloud. This is the place where we came from. Everything.

I woke up this morning to thick beams  of sunshine poking through my window and landing cheerfully on my pillows and blankets. There is something very special about waking up like that. It makes you want to live for a very long time.

I am writing a paper on Hemingway right now and decided to ride my bike over the the GR public library in order to make it a little less stressful. I’m glad I did. The ride was great and I feel better about this thing now. I have been writing poems lately. Here are some.

One for the morning:

Sleeping well and waking up warm

Every now and then you will wake up early without exhaustion 
and brew the perfect pot of coffee; 
Not too weak nor too strong,
and the sun will shine through the window
onto your quilt after days of grayness.
The children will sleep in, and you will have the morning with your dog.

How you have missed your old dog.

One for the evening:

She is sleeping, hard-faced; pressed onto a pillow, belly down on the mattress.  

-cotton dreaming-
I read late, my eyes aching;
glasses, a continuous trial on my face, the sliding the pushing and prodding of plastic rims and dancing light on glass

-sheets-
our dog moans in his slumber, legs dangling on the edge of the evening.
these word are pills, 
prescriptions for sleep and I’m standing to remove her cardigan,
tucking the blankets under a peaceful body of resting limbs and racing thoughts (birthday parties and drives at night, rain and open doors; hardwood hallways filling with

-sand-
and sunny leaves; tea on the forest floor, or steeping on the table next to our bed)
“You can drink that in the morning” I whisper,”Or dump it out. Whichever you prefer.”