FootprintsintheWind.com

Snowflakes dance
What’s fall even mean?

:- Doug.

If we can meet the stranger, we can start to work toward others ever closer—acquaintance, friend, child, spouse.

:- Doug.

Tell what really happened in our conversation, like what happened when a fish hit and you had to be patient and steady. Step by step. This one went down, not sideways like a bluegill. What happens then, during a conversation? When do you set the hook, what is setting the hook? Instead of letting the fish tire, you would be kind to lead your friend to his or her fascination.

:- Doug.

Exercise: Write one true thing I did not know.

:- Doug.

How would you feel if someone stole your words? Or only your writing? Where in you would you find the world after a night of dreaming? What would you notice sharply, what would you mourn? How would the world rearrange?

:- Doug.

Use Hemingway’s one true sentence in a conversation: what is one true thing each of us can say, just now?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2409

Blessing for the new President
May he keep his
Bowels regular

Please pass it on.

© c 2025, 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

Not spiritual stability
seek
but spiritual vitality

:- Doug.

The rain opens itself
for life
you in conversation for ours

:- Doug.

Reading prompts reader to think. To think in a way unaccustomed. This thinking is near to dreaming, full of images in all senses, seldom in words, often in songs and stories playing out, carrying us along its waves and islands. This thinking stretches us forth to new shores. Here we meet persons like us. All people whom we have allowed to become persons to us are like us, speak with us, even when they do not like us. Here we swim, fly. Here we make good. Reading pulls us out of our single selves. Reading is conversing, conversing reading. Panoramas grow.

:- Doug.

The rain opens itself
for life
you in conversation for ours

:- Doug.

Can we swear our allegiance to a spirit of compassion?

:- Doug.

Sacrifice your stories, never telling
Or sacrifice them to communal campfires:
Choice

:- Doug.

To whom do we pray
if not ourselves
our kind
to make right this world
make better?

:- Doug.

Conversing serves to
or ought to
enlarge worlds

:- Doug.

You have only to search
           Your own body
For what is given you
           An arm a leg a heartbeat
Given by your friend
           A freshening
Of innocence

:- Doug.

The craft worker sees
The leader has sight
But two friends, talking, receive
Vision in exchange for their fear
Of opening eyes

:- Doug.

When you have only the power to weep

:- Doug.

We have a story for every filling conversation
every time we meet as persons
not of blood are we but blood of stories

:- Doug.

You are a secret
wanting to be known
some days

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2408

You two, sitting there
talking
humans half formed, forming

Please pass it on.

© c 2025, 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

Dark matter
Dark energy
Dark matters

:- Doug.

You remember saying things
I never heard you say
Or don’t recall you ever saying
So we each think the other
Is losing grasp of memory
Or even enjoying dementia
Or at least employing it

:- Doug.