FootprintsintheWind.com

We grow in conversation not only by adding my ideas to yours, or mixing them into a new brew, but as well by juxtaposing and bouncing and bumping and . . . . So we must attend the little critters hiding in the shadows.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2322

The birds they sing at break of day
Leonard helped us see
The cracks that let the light get in
But I have glimpsed that it may be
There is a light in everything
That must get out, that must get out
That’s why we crack and break

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© c 2024, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/274-5353, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Ritual preserves knowledge essential to cultural survival. In this way, rite-ing is an analog to writing.

:- Doug.

Love is a sack of coins
—A sack of obverses and reverses—
Each conversation is a flip
Dark sides bring light and
Another toss—imagine!

:- Doug.

He’s a tailor. He takes in. . . a lot of people.

:- Doug.

Are there tasks or layers of a conversation that we can use to help us meet and know one another? For example: discovering another as a spiritual treasure; chasing and hiding; entangling and untangling; recognizing cycles of life-death-life; comfortable old slippers; dreams and sadnesses; discovering and adding largenesses; dancing, singing, playing, making poetry, offering prayers; surprised by new life.

:- Doug.

Is it fiction?
Is it true?
It does not matter
Is it life?
All we get to go on

:- Doug.

Time is not so much
what keeps things
from happening
all at once
but what lets us imagine
irregular things have
that place

:- Doug.

Is there a story
in every story
in every breath?

:- Doug.

inspire
pause
expire
pause
respire
pause is neither
neither receiving, gobbling
neither letting, spewing
nor starting all over
nor nothing at all
nor something
nor between
pause is death
pause is not life
pause is not before
before new life
before respire
before is no promise
one day
nothing will follow
pause will stay forever
you will be food for new
life
pause now
you are able
in this conversation
to be food for new
life
you did not know
you were pregnant until

:- Doug.

Not a simple dance revealing conversation to us, life-death-life cycling reveals itself to us. Its conversing, like the beat within our rib-cage, is seldom noticed. Like the angel walking behind us, coming nearer by inches. We feel it does not mean us good—but it does.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2321

When the poem sings
The prose is ready

Please pass it on.

© c 2024, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/274-5353, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

We don’t see when we understand. We don’t take in. We don’t stand under. We make it up. We create. We wave and plant the flag.

A fart arises from the used, dead, offal matter. And yet, of life, it speaks!

:- Doug.

Story comes from my dark waters. It is a fish who stays clear of hook. It falls to me to entice, to struggle, to work, to keep the line taut. It falls to me to bring to the open, to gently unhook, to keep alive and fresh. It falls to me to kill, fillet, fry, and eat. It falls to me to take in, become, give on for life’s workings. It falls to me to die and give my bio-remains on into the circles. Yes, it is all story.

:- Doug.

Life-death-life cycles stir in conversational realms too. Starting, our together-times may be lively. But even then death is on the way. We may get dismayed when fights (that is, life calling up death) interrupt. We can murder the whole thing by giving up before the next stanza (that is, the larger or fresher life). Stanza, recall, is a standing place, a launching pier between spins of the verses. Who are we to say the song must end here?

:- Doug.

In conversing two things: We bring a little of our other into ourselves; we let go a little of ourselves. Perhaps this is fire and death. Perhaps this is a gnawing dark beast and a seedling.

:- Doug.

I seem unable: —to find any animals who don’t have some conversation; —to claim for humans a higher animal state, but only find those animals more closely resembling us; —to hold only humans have emotions or feelings.

Holding these notions is ultimately not significant. What is is to find one another, to create our one another. Conversing, we create not things but persons. It almost seems we are adding layers to the onion, blood to the human beasts.

:- Doug.

Your direction through the door
—what you’re gaining
what you’re losing
what you’re facing—
slices you a wedge
when opening to you
the all around bursts

:- Doug.

These very conversations
These swirling bodies, minds, souls
Are how we transcend reality

:- Doug.

Your friend is your adjacent possible.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2320

Water to water
rain to rain
           puddle to puddle

dust? hardly!
fire from fire
storm from storm
           birthing from waters

we commit
we commend
           we come from

us from us
           person from person
breathing vapors we
water based creatures
           eat water based
creatures becoming
hydrogen hydrogen oxygen

           wet while alive
mysterious while alive
maybe also after

           you spit
in my face
making me wetter
wet your kiss
           sloppy wet mine

on waters born
we die dry
           except the eyes

Please pass it on.

© c 2024, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/274-5353, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

We are a part literate part oral culture. As long as we have vocal folds we will be oral. If we can listen we may hear our oral forebears, our oral selves.

:- Doug.