when I saw you I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew
- william shakespeare, romeo and juliet

human resilience.
a cracked egg stitching together the fragile white fractures of its skeleton, mopping up all its insides, wringing them out into a new, makeshift frame (all without hands), and deciding, well,
it's all here (mostly),
most of the yolk is still inside, and still
bright yellow, like the sun.
we carry on.

new and used

yesterday in the used bookstore
(that smells the remarkable way that only used bookstores do, a bit of thrift shop, a bit of cigarette butt, a bit of grandma's outdated floral perfume, a bit of coffee spilled on the egdes and sneezes on the pages, a bit of old bread, a bit of thingsyoufindinyourbasementwhicharethebestthingsbecausetheytellstories)
i read a bit of hemingway by the light flitting in through the blinds, you read
something that i, prefering fantasy, would never read, something about the science of the brain (and you are new but you are refreshingly different),
and some eclectic african music that you find in
eclectic places such as these, with old postcards tacked to the walls and ceiling fans for ventilation and handwritten signs, made
my hips sway ever so subtly left and right on my stool as i read, and you,
in the middle of all this old (around) and all this new (you)(me) came up behind me and said "i love this."
and it could have been the music and
it could have been the book about the brain (a marvelous thing, yes) and
it could have been that breathy combination of air from the slowly spinning fan above us and soft sunlight warming our exposed and busy fingers through the window, that felt just like palm breezes

and i might have been me,
so i said yes,
yes, i love it(all) too.


(the other thing about used books is that they are like grown children or grown animals or grown plants; unlike them, of course, because they cannot move; like them because they have stories, and not just stories in the text of the book, but around it and marked on it, in the notes penciled in the margins, the "To my love"s scrawled in the blank page in the front (designed, it seems, for personal prologues), the dog-earred and rumpled pages and most of all the muffled (but quickly flip the pages, all of them at once, run your thumb through) smells (like reliving an old christmas).

three-minute free write

Some days I look up into the charcoal sky
And see little whisps of white like
Streaks of milk painted by a feather
(closely, only when you look very closely)
Connecting stars and spaces, matter and emptiness.
Some days when I look around me, I see rays of sun
Peeking through the cracks in arms, the distances between people, dogs, telephone poles, cars, trains, grass blades,
Shining across state and city borders, raining on religions and on both sides of war.
Sun and sky, earth and out, we're all
in this togetherness together.
(closely, only when you look very closely)

"The Wind In The Flag"

This Memorial Day editorial, first published in 1947, was written by the late Ben Hur Lampman, associate editor of The Oregonian.

Then do not think of them as being yonder in alien earth with little white crosses above. They are not there. For these were boys who loved the homeland -- her fields and forests, lakes and streams, her villages and cities. These were the boys who went to school here -- and would they stay away when they were mustered out? These were the boys who fished our creeks and climbed our mountains; the boys who plowed our fields and harvested our wheat; who manned our factories and each enterprise of peace. It is not right to think of them as being where they seem to be. It isn't fair. Often they used to talk of going home, and surely -- when death set them free -- surely they came. Now we who knew them well must know they are not there who are forever here, inseparable from the land for which they died. No troopship brought them home, for they came home the quicker and the shorter way. Is it the wind that stirs the flag?

Nor should we think of them as being beneath the sea, where the plane plunged or the wounded ship went down, fathom upon green fathom. They are not there. For these were boys whose laughter scarcely hid from us the consecration which they felt, and when they said that they would soon get it over and come home, they meant it, every word. She called them from their classes and the ball grounds, she called them from the desk and lathe, and from the homes that meant as much to them as to any that ever loved his home with the full measure of devotion. They never thought to see the world, at least until they might be middle-aged, but soon they saw it, island after island, port after foreign port, and many an island was fenced round with flame, and there was one port that they did not fetch. They died too soon to reach it and to hear the bands and speeches. But we who knew them, surely we must know that they were here before that, for they had said they would come home the moment that they could. And so they aren't there, but here. The ship came back without them, if it came at all, but they were here, not there. Is it the wind that stirs the flag again?

And where they kept the bargain, they who died for land and liberty, it matters not at all, nor where they seem to rest -- under the little white crosses or under the sea, or namelessly in the deep jungle. For they were boys who would not stay away when they were done with service, since often they had told themselves the first thing they should do would be to hasten home. And home they must have come. Where the trout rises or the grouse leaps into flight, or at the ball park, or along the seashore, these were the places that they loved -- these that forever are our country, and to which they, by their passing, have confirmed our title. They are here surely enough, and shall be for so long as liberty and America are one, and the flag means still what they knew it meant -- though they didn't say much about it. That was something they left to the orators and the politicians, and the editors. Do not think of them as being elsewhere. For they are not there -- who are here. Look. The light wind stirs the flag as though it caressed it, fold after fold. Look!

Next time I fall in love
I want it to be really giggly happy love, another way
of living love. A loving myself, and loving you, and
loving us love. Not nervous love. Not competitive love, fighting love, or
brash love, inadequate love or changing love.

Bright yellow love that outshines everything
else in the afternoon sky.

Love that, like the sun, sets sometimes but rises
just as fiercly in the morning and wakes up
the rest of life.

i have been hit. i was hiding in the woods, among the brush, admist the thick wood, where hardly any sunlight could even seep in, holding my breath, waiting, paitently, for the correct, precise moment when we could fire, fighting all false anxieties, all sudden bursts of confidence, knowing each shot is precious, timing, timing, timing. when at last i couldn't resist, when the sun shone right on our target like a laserbeam, the calm steadied our fingers and the fog of nights of waiting, standing, marching, crouching, rolled off our brains, we fired one priceless bullet. it went out with all my best intentions, my blessings, our happy memories, holding hands, sitting by the river, laughing ridiculously, the comedy club, the movie downloads, the stupid jokes, your thin lips and my thick, the hope of our whole being behind it, but landed just to the right of my one and only target, the one and true place to impact you, the heart. he fired back and shot me just there, then disappeared into his own brush, his own new, me-less world. my only reminder of him, now, is the blood that pours on me, warms me, the heart's memories that stain myskin red. he has won the war for now. fortunately i have more ammo.