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I walk and talk.

Sometimes it’s borderline arguing.

Sometimes what is said cuts right to the bone

And hurts in ways the receiver cries,

All the while I am just walking all alone.

I tell a joke and laugh out loud,

It is good that I am often on the path by myself.

So my chuckle bothers no one anyway,

And I don’t have to explain the nuances

In everything I think and say.

I tell a story with plot twists

And an array of characters

With complexities impacting simplicity

And I become lost in my attempt

To escape my own complicity.

But, it is the safest walk I know.

I neither fall nor does my spirit sag.

My language is so strong and clear,

I am not at all ambiguous.

I understand myself here.

When someone I love very much heard the scant details that I am sure about of my childhood pain,

The response was, “You shouldn’t even be here!”

The meaning in that declaration was jarring and simultaneously supportive.

The odds were against me.

Against me graduating from high school.

Against me having loving and lasting relationships.

Never mind a graduate degree, a nearly 40-year marriage and three wonderful adult children.

And never ever been arrested, not even once.

It’s not that I never show evidence of the scars.

It’s not that I never ever walked over the invisible but not imaginary lines

That can alter the course of a life.

It’s that somehow I never got injured,

Perhaps sometimes got caught, in one way or another, and then released,

Avoiding being labeled, stereotyped and stigmatized.

Somehow I got another chance after every misstep.

When I act as the helper,

I never forget that I have seemed to be in a protective bubble,

Allowed to float purposely between my own challenges and others’ challenges.

I don’t know why, I don’t know how.

I just don’t know.

Someone bent the string just enough

And I’ve been sustained.

What happened to this bush centuries ago 

that compelled the emergence of razor sharp thorns all over her branches

so that whoever dares to touch a branch bleeds profusely?

It is merely but desperately trying to protect the part of it that still blooms.

Because she’s happy when she blossoms.

She’s determined to survive so she can reveal her true colors.

There’s a season every year, she shows the world just how beautiful she really is.

Clean as a whistle.

What if this simile is not a true simile,

but an ironic twist.

What if the innovator knew that

a real whistle is full of

every thing that has been the user’s mouth.

Every piece of meat,

every sip of tomato juice,

every loose item that somehow has found its way into that mouth.

And that every time you told someone that you were

clean as a whistle

you were actually telling them who you really are.

An object that makes a sweet, shrill noise

abetted

by bacteria and mold.

1

This administration cut funding and now the trails are overgrown.

The flowering bushes drape themselves over each side of these paths along the ocean shore.

I feel like a returning soldier honored by this blend of blossoms.

Then suddenly I realize that neglect is neglect

and this path will only turn uglier and uglier in time.

Now I am thinking of those who have served and fought

and how for far too many their continuing suffering is all about neglect.

2

Then I see the fisherman.

I notice that he appears to be from the East.

I think of all the people I see here who fish.

How so many come here to fish who have come to live here from other countries, often to survive.

How they are so nice and how they smile at me.

How happy they seem to be so early in the morning.

How they bring their families and show so much love for their children.

How they come with carts and wagons and two to three poles for each adult and older child.

How they lug empty buckets and coolers with lunches and beverages.

How they leave proud of how many fish they’ve caught and how varied their haul is.

I think how this year I see less.

And I think how now there must be lots of very good people,

skilled at fishing, families who love each other,

Now afraid to fish.

3

On these narrow paths, we walk side by side, or run side by side,

But when someone is walking toward you, you go to single file.

A middle age couple, walking hand in hand, separate to go single file.

I tried to yield so they could stay enjoined.

Seeing them hand in hand is what I needed at that moment.

It gladdened by heart.

They were kind and considerate to this old man.

After they passed, I turned around and their hands were together again.

I took that as a sign of hope.

I was ready to return home now,

but I take it all with me when I go

She inquires, as she prepares to insert acupuncture needles,

“How are you doing?”

I consider my response, wanting it to be helpful and clever.

I’m like that, or try to be.

“Something crawled up my skin yesterday,” I start.

“And now it wants to crawl all over the freakin’ place,

and I know you can help. Right?”

She asks, “Well, how were you before this snag?”

I think snag is such an apt term.

It sounds temporary yet tenaciously tangled.

I offer, “I was ok until this thing!”

I’ve come to know that I trust this treatment.

Ancient wisdom meets medicine seeking to clear the energy pathways,

which right now are clogged with floating substances

made of anger, resentment, disbelief and distrust.

I sit and allow the real or imagined clearing,

the shrinking, nearly disappearing or evaporating tangible tension.

This hour I sit, with my mind still spinning,

but not being able to check a text or answer a call,

or look something else up.

A fighting chance to leave the fight

for another day, another night

or let it go completely and be alright.

I have had a tiny stick of dynamite inside of me for so long

I couldn’t remember even if I tried.

It was implanted before long-term memory developed.

I guess I should be thankful, right?

But the butterflies you all feel sometimes;

I feel all the time.

Always a bit worried,

a bit frightened.

Always a bit shaky.

And it sits there surrounded by candles to light my way.

Some are fragrant.

Some are colorful.

Some are small but shine so brightly

with flames that refuse to go out.

Some have burned down to the end of the wick.

But I seem to add a very tiny new candle for every year I am still here.

But I thank God I have those candles,

But I also wondered if they would conspire with the murderous interloper.

So far, so good.

Patiently.

I wait for the finch to face me.

Despite my experience of knowing that once she does turn,

she will be startled and fly away;

still I wait.

She’ll fly away not knowing that I harbor no evil intent;

not knowing that I love her

and would never harm her.

She knows that her yellowness makes her stand out

on the curtain of green leaves

and her learned response is to dart away from any danger.

Sadly for me and for her I represent that.

So I will admire her from a distance

and lessen her anxiety.

That’s love.

I watched a bird sing today.

Yes, watched.

I heard it, too.

But it was remarkable to watch.

This particular catbird sang with sincerity

And perfect pitch.

Its eyes were soft but focused.

The notes flowed like lyrics.

I don’t know what was said,

But I imagined it to be

Morning has broken,

But the world has not.

Dylan has said that it doesn’t matter

what the lyrics meant to him.

What matters is what you take away.

I thanked the catbird and walked away.

The thunder was only inferred on the original recording.

But the punk rock bassist makes sure you don’t miss it this time.

He puts the simple but insistent bottom at the forefront of the song.

For hours later I still can hear the thumping in my ears.

I am sure if I go back to film version, – quieter, folkier –

I will still hear this bassline.

It can’t be unheard, now.

And I think, “Well that’s not the way Benjamin would have played it”,

and Mrs. Robinson never would have hit on that guy.

I picture him as somewhat quiet like Benjamin,

But with tattoos and piercings, perhaps overgrown spiked hair,

sweating bullets at the Rat and stealing the song from the singer.

Shy, but under it all some kind of aggression that he inflicts on those poor four strings.

And I wonder if this was his peak,

And if he has since settled down in Suburbia,

Married with now already grown kids,

Balding and moving much more slowly, but happily.

But never having found that kind of reckless magic ever again.

I wonder if he looks back and says those were the days

Or if he celebrates all they came after.

And if he moved on to other ways to make thunder,

and whether he now still sweats but more sweetly.

But then I wonder if he ever picks up that bass again and plays that riff over and over again

And beats the shit out of those four strings again

And if it makes him just a little more alive.