FootprintsintheWind.com

Our place can be known henceforth as Dougsylvania, Doug’s Woods.

:- Doug.

Shaping us shaped by us
Spirit visits as if
—Our thinking: from stored repeated thoughts
To working at thinking
To reverie
To living notions on the wing out of reach
—Weights: from heaviest conscience
To bouncing step
—Colors: from sharpness of red
To fingers outstretched in dark diaphanous swirling violet
—Winds: from fiercest storms
To light whisper of a lover on my cheek
Spirit we have never known you yet!

:- Doug.

There is no distinct message other than perhaps to be present to life, to demonstrate that to the grandchildren, to challenge them to be present and all of us to bend the arc.

:- Doug.

The 300 years gets us out of immediacy, stretches our thinking, makes it useful, and meaningful.

:- Doug.

Perhaps the very act of being present to our own lives is what will be most needful and most useful to those alive in 300 years.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2010

This is the heroic day
the day in which
we do not know

Please pass it on.

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Maybe not so mysterious
matter—brain
producing immaterial—thought
for feet produce action—running
is thinking less particle more wave?

:- Doug.

Maybe sleep
evades our
grasping
pursuing
Rather pours over us
honey
fog

:- Doug.

Not much to say
only this

:- Doug.

A message For the Grandchildren.

:- Doug.

Who am I working for? Prospective ancestors

:- Doug.

Our conversation invents—only after do we become conscious from it, make intention.

:- Doug.

Flawed we say we humans are
Might those flaws be energy
Wildness chaos our world needs
To grow to invent to love
even as it affronts order & control?

:- Doug.

How do I stand at the threshold of a conversation with the generations? A question, a story, a poem.

:- Doug.

How old is a grandchild?
How many grandchildren in this room?
How many words in a poem?
What turns prose into poetry?
When ought a question go unanswered?
How can we call this a poem?
How can a grandchild not make poetry, grandchild?
What stands at the threshold of a poem?
When is play poetry?
How many grandchildren make a poem?
What poem did you sing this morning?

:- Doug.

Out my window
it looks quiet
how do I recognize?

:- Doug.

An intentionally invisible poem is harder to ignore.

:- Doug.

January the month
—to figure it out
—of decisions

:- Doug.

When a poem resists
I will make it sit
Till one of us gets over it

:- Doug.

I am writing to the grandchildren
I am writing to God

:- Doug.

Write!
It’s your responsibility
To ancestors

:- Doug.

I have no right to withhold
my poetry from whatever
grandchildren there might be

:- Doug.

I will want to hear this interview a second time, perhaps to make notes of things triggering. Triggering: that’s a thing for the grandchildren!

:- Doug.