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In my heart I was glad, but the city preys at night,
So I was walking angry, looking angry,
Seeming mean past Ben Franklin’s darkened grave,
Past his mint too toward my hotel
When across the street I saw
A bus shelter sheltering someone,
Heaped defensively under dirty blankets,
Sleeping buried trying to stay warm,
I couldn’t see anything about the stranger,
Except that they too didn’t want to be disturbed,
And that they weren’t a bus.
We have bus shelters on every other corner.
Maybe we need more people shelters too.

Kelp fronds seek the sky,
Only breaking the surface,
When their stalks are snapped.

A rental car is worse than a rental home,
Because you can’t paint it the way you like,
Then paint it back when you’re done.
Two coats of primer
Should be enough for anybody.

Thanks, I say,
Over and over.
Thanks, I say,
But its never enough.
Not because others are ungrateful of my gratitude,
But because what I owe to others,
To their patience,
To their kindness,
Cannot be repaid with words,
or one word,
Thanks.
I say.
Above and past that,
Thanks, I must do.

Cold rain, cold rain, blerg.

Cold rain, cold rain, brrrrr.

Cold rain, cold rain, blech,

Cold rain cold rain cold rain meh. 

There’s emoji for ?.
And emoji for ??.
But no emoji for condolences.
We need to offer those less iconically,
Reaching out, not just facing away.
We can’t just skim peoples’ past painful chapters,
We need to be on the same ?.

What is the difference
between music and not music?
Where is the gap between song and sound?
Where is the space between rhythm and repetition?
When are textures just trappings and rests just respites?

Which structures must we shape and which may we suppose from our surroundings?

Is a dirge without melody merely a eulogy?

Do we weep without rhythm so we don’t attract the damned,
When our relentless laments don’t strike up the band,
When our notes have no pitch, and we write and pass by hand?

When the dynamics fall static and we’re scattered on the moans,
Or timbres take root above and cleave past our bones,
What music was left us, and what have we left?

What bassless ambitions will others recall?
What fortes of ours drove friends up the wall?
Why couldn’t we measure more time with them all,
Laughing and singing well after nightfall?
What’s stopping us now, where is our wherewithal?

Why can’t we make music from the soft cues around us?
Why can’t we shake our chains til the ringing unbounds us?
Why can’t we hear the earth, and join in chanting with it?

We can, we can, we can now.
A one, a two,
A one, two, three, four…

The parking lot for the Hidden Lake is a mile north of the Interstate,
Just past the Veterans’ Cemetery.
Wind a mile further or so past the map at the entrance that doesn’t show the newest connecting trails,
Past the roofless cinderblock farmhouse with trees grown up through its dirty floor,
Up, and Over the concrete dancefloor poured during prohibition that overlooks the graveless lawns that hopefully field the outskirts of the cemetery,
And beyond the empty train car that someone must have hauled up here as a joke, or on a dare, or as part of the scheme to conceal consumption of liquors untaxed and unlawful,
And there is the Hidden Lake.
Cut stone walls shear up from a quarry missing a lake’s worth of rock,
And the muddy trail around invites enfoliaged visitors to appreciate it from each side.
Is this a legacy?
Things taken and took from nature, reclaimed and repurposed?
Is this vacation pit more impressive than the all the blocks that were taken from it and have since crumbled?
There are no plaques riveted to the benches extolling, “look upon my works, ye leisurely, and relax!”
Though the stapled paper at the trailhead warns in laminate: “valuables must not be left in vehicles.”
The stewards of this place have seen things taken,
And this place is open to the sky.