Visitor

visiting light 

slips through my fingers

 like morning mist

~ zjm

15/8/19

Leaving

I don't need a reason
For what I became
I've got these excuses
They're tired and they're lame
I don't need a pardon, no no, no no, no
There's no one left to blame
I'm leaving the table
I'm out of the game
I'm leaving the table
I'm out of the game

~ Leonard Cohen

My song for today

"I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls."

~ Anais Nin

Exhale

Beautiful sunrise with cool low humidity air greeting my morning. 

Left my parking lot and stopped at McDonalds to get coffee and a sausage sandwich. Talked with a young man about to end his 10 hour shift, go grocery shopping, then home to his 2 and a half, and 1 and a half year old kids, spend some time with them, and his wife, before trying to sleep this afternoon to ready himself for work tonight. 

He was full of optimism laced with fatigue ... 

I am in front of the Y, getting mentally and physically ready to make my way to the pool to swim and work out this body that battles me constantly ... 

Thinking of my daughter Megan ...  my grandkids Emilio ... Camilo ... and Neali, asleep far away on another coast ...

All of us
Tired
Resting
Getting ready 
Hunting for cagey optimism 
To live another day

Exhale ...

~ zjm

10/8/19

From the parking lot I call home

Before

I sleep ...

Cat naps in my

Projectile home

That guide me to a new dawn

Crammed in like

Charlie the Tuna in a can

Yet

There is beauty to drink

That tames the soul

And brings rest

~ zjm

9/8/2019

Relinquishment

August 7

First day of autumn 

On ancient calendars 

First brushes of colour

Hint of changes

On their way

Welcome or not

Dark

Cold

Snow

Shadows

Starkness 

 Death

That offers the costly

Olive branch

Of rebirth 

zjm ~

Proof Positive

(For Edward Abbey)

In the desert

The searing desert

The desert with its waves

A sea of hidden color melding into an ocean with no relief of water

Turbulence that swallows the whole

I hold a picture taken in morning shadows of hanging grapes against morning fog on the sea

 I look at it, and see me and you

"Goddamn, we were here

There we are"

Cave paintings

raw and muted colors

markings from scrapings of rock against rock

Everybody trying to leave a scraping somewhere that is recognized

embraced as real

as beauty

Stood at Donner Pass yesterday on July 13 ... my dyslexic 65th birthday

Rather, I sat in my car looking out the window over Donner Pass

 Hurts less to not move and look

Think Moses felt that way?

The wagons of the Dead are long gone

as are the cannibals with the will to survive

All that remains

is the color of the lake

the formations of rock 

the sky 

the trees 

all inviting one

to rest

to recline into free fall

Fading shadows of the encroaching Nevada desert circle me

scattering my memories and sense of self

But morning returns and desert air enters and departs at will

Here I am

Cave painting on the desert floor

Donner Pass behind me

along with the muddled fog on the sea

~ zjm

Reno

14 July 2019