Transcendental Etude

"No one ever told us we had to study our lives,
make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history
or music, that we should begin
with the simple exercises first
and slowly go on trying
the hard ones, practicing till strength
and accuracy became one with the daring
to leap into transcendence, take the chance
of breaking down the wild arpeggio
or faulting the full sentence of the fugue.
--And in fact we can't live like that: we take on
everything at once before we've even begun
to read or mark time, we're forced to begin
in the midst of the hard movement,
the one already sounding as we are born."

- From Transcendental Etude, Adrienne Rich

Lost and found

If I let my imagination run free,
What if it doesn't come back to me?

The Color Wheel

I've captured my emotions just beneath the surface. Rainbow colored lights flash beneath my skin—ready to burst when punctured. Red. Blue. It’s a dangerous lottery. Red is feeling hot today.

I push it further down and the pressure grows. The red begins to boil. I cover it with a gloss of yellow.

Time passes. All the colors fade.

The wisdom of chocolate

Today I took advice from the inside of a Dove Promise wrapper. Outcome remains to be seen.

Randomness

I saw the Old Man and the Sea today
In Colonial Williamsburg

Walking a slow gait

A man out of place
in a place out of time