Ode to Blood

It is getting to where it is needed. Old friends, visible veins, have begun to visit the rock of a foot at the end of my right leg. Under siege, the swelling has been in retreat. Purple and red shifts to pink. The callouses on the soles of my feet are long gone, and summer barefoot season is past. Still can't feel anything on one side under the calf muscle. Tiny corpuscles pick up the toxic waste of too much postponement. Stiffness dreams of breaking the bonds of limitation. Numb, stiff, hard, calcified, I wiggle my toes. Don't really care much about how the skin hangs there, no longer taut; I just want to be move, swivel, bear, and walk. It is blood I need, blood I long for, blood that quells the ache in my heart. I have been frozen for too long.

On Turning Sixty

The decade sounds ominous
Now "S"s as the "F"s
Recede in the rear view mirror

A curdling unease
Vague notions of hobbling
Canes, vanished virility

Creaky joints crimped digestion
And "sir" as the cashier
Rings up milk of magnesia

The mile marker slides
By the window of this
Passing train

A shade lowers a bit
To hide the harsh light

Tell me something
I don't know
That days have numbers

That fall and rise
The price set by how
They are spent

Short supply
Infuses illusion
With clarity

The forelock of time
Waits to be plucked
Love to be spoken

I am learning to
Take a deeper
Breath

A welcome shock
To the System

A sweet taste
Of creosote
Of hot chiles

The Olympics I Would Like to See

It's too late again as I zap the TV after watching Olympic athletes do their things. I've been glued since dinner and it's now early morning on a work day. The short night will hurt when work demands focus that I don't have from lack of sleep.

Oh well. It's worth it. I love this stuff.

And it's not completely what I would like to see.

Yes, Simone Biles and her stratospheric flight in laid-out twisting double back flips is impressive beyond words. And it's not what I have to learn to do.

I would like to see an Olympics for living. You know, juggling work, home, relationships, self-care, world-awareness, finances.

Here are some possibilities:

1.) An Olympics for energy and water saving. Contestants would start with some seed money and have to build, from scratch, a water-harvesting system, solar panels, waste disposal, and efficient structure. There could be individual and team events.

2.) A diaper-changing sprint.

3.) Debt hurdles.

4.) Car maintenance heptathlon.

5.) Teaching marathon (with standardized, timed testing for thirty randomly selected students).

6.) Financial aid forms decathlon.

7.) Floor exercise of tile, grout, sealing, and molding installation.

8.) Doubles and singles parenting with degree of difficulty points for staying calm when the talk gets personal and pushes all kinds of anger/upset buttons. Contestants would be monitored for blood pressure, infanticide fantasies. Bonus points for meditation classes, communication clarity, and setting the bar high.

9.) Morning routine for both style and degree of difficulty after getting up late.

10.) Meal prep given random ingredients in varying stages of freshness. Bonus points when judges actually eat what you cook.

OK, there is more. But this life is an ordeal of sorts, and it would be helpful to see how the pros do some of the tasks. Might learn something...

The Truest Thing

Sun pierces the blinds as the dream so real you could touch it fades into something you can't even remember. Sleep presses down on you like some wrestler trying to pin you to your bed. It has gotten hard, lifting the weight of this life and carrying it with you through the labyrinth that is making a nut of food, shelter, and love in this quicksand of changing rules. You look to what you know, and it doesn't really help. You have to learn, and learning for you is frightening. You have to learn that not knowing is the greater truth. You draw upon this unreasonable fact for strength. Then you take a breath, look hard at the tools you carry, which will never be enough, and you swing your legs out of sleep and look down at the floor. Keep you eyes there. Wake up. Calm the voices that say no. Be vigilant. Remember that you have beliefs and inviolable convictions. Doing little harm when feet are kicking you down is the way. The pain of sharp edges on the soles of your feet as you stand is the price you pay for moving forward into the stream that smooths and polishes your rough edges. You grimace and then let them go, and move, in spite of your desires to sleep, your tender, pink, fresh skin open to what waits for you. You take one step, then another, and you do this because it is what you must. 

The Way Into

Because he had forgotten and become proud, he could not face the fact that he, only he, was responsible for finding fault with the gift of a day. To appease the shame beneath the error that was his pride, he made up stories. He infused those stories with symbols that lit the way indirectly, suggested, through the abundant imagery of the world, a way to the truth that he could not admit, possible as it was, from the periphery, the blind side, unguarded back door. Only through sun, moon, gold, doorways, and monsters did the way to what he had forgotten become clear, admissible to a mind bent on abdicating, on finding the causes of his unhappiness outside himself.   

Sooner or Later

Part One:

You want it to go your way. You know: the money, recognition, achievement, romance, body and other trappings of what a great life is supposed to look like. But, then, for most of us anyway, you stumble, or life yanks out the rug, and you are out of the running. You have to face yourself and figure out what's really important. Because that is no fun, difficult, and not so lucrative, you avoid it, forget it, or just plain refuse to consider the fact, that yes, at some point, you have to lose. If you have the guts to admit it, you see that all those trappings are ultimately empty, especially when it comes time to lose the Big One. So what is one to do? You sit there and wonder and wonder and dig deeper, waiting for some insight in the deepest of deep meditations when a voice from somewhere other than you speaks to the living life within you says "Take a deeper breath."

Part Two:

You ask yourself "What the hell? Who is that?" And just like that, your body knows what to do. Before you can even get behind the idea, your lungs are off and running, taking a breath like no other you can remember taking, inhaling so much that you feel will pop like a balloon before beginning an exhale that evacuates the tiniest sac in your lungs of every molecule of air. You feel like you will die if you don't get some air. But you don't matter anymore because your body has remembered that it is here to live in spite of all your fear and chatter about how things are supposed to be. If you are really lucky, you get out of the way as your miracle that is human form embarks on the bliss of loading your organs, and all your divine architecture, with oxygen, so much that you cannot help but feel the cresting wave of mystery coursing through you, carrying you, being you.

Part Three:

Then the you that says it is you demands to take control of the apparatus and steers it back toward the hope, the belief, the illusion that, somehow, things will go according to plan, until there is no more choice.

You know then you will have to give in, sooner or later.

The Epic Trip Up the Driveway

The boot presses against my shin as I lean into the hill. My weakened leg strains against the resistance of the pedal as we -- leg, brain, balance, bike, boot, and fear -- all fight gravity. I shift into the lowest gear and find just enough strength to creep forward, hoping I don't stall and tip over, doing who knows what damage to the healing tendon. After long, wobbly seconds I reach the top of the hill of my driveway. This first time on a bike in three months is simultaneously a thrill and a reality check of limits. I turn onto Swan Road and gather speed in the downhill run to the bridge. I am rolling! The thrill is almost more than I can bear. Tears from the wind and joy stream down my cheeks. I tell myself I will remember this, will never again take this, nor any other, moment for granted. Traffic passes at fifty miles an hour. I doubt anyone notices the aging cyclist wearing his Aircast pedaling along in the bike lane. It doesn't matter. I am moving, moving back into the world, my waiting work, a new season, a great big unknown. The future is there waiting to be made as I slowly move toward it, into it, one pedal stroke at a time. I have another chance to try and get it right. Wheels, wind, growing strength, and a howling mystery sustain me. I bow in gratitude.