YOUR BIG START

If you want to play a role,
first
you’ve got to
learn your part.

But,
if you want to
learn your part,
you’ll want to
play your role
with heart and soul,
from whatever place
and moment
that you start.

It almost doesn’t matter when,
but it’s a pretty universal thing,

that, in order to succeed,
at some brave point you simply need
not just intention
and cognition,
not just hypotheses
nor nose squinched quizzical,
nor hands that wring,

but rather calm
and solid boldness,
visible and physical,

to live or act
or play or work
or pray or sing,

for ’tis thus
you are most apt
to finish well,
or sometimes
just to finish stuff at all,

on journeys
of the heart or mind, or soul–

when you simply pick
some time and place,
and then bring yourself
to do
each and every
thing it takes
to make some sort of start.

Seize the day. AND Let it be.

Seize the day.
AND
Let it be.
Spread down, extend the roots
and reach up the branches,
bring birds and squirrels
in cahoots,
just like
a wildly planted
sturdy, broad, and tall
oak tree.

Stay tightly
in the bounds
of nature.

AND gain the altitude
and longitude and latitude
to that lets you loose
in nature
and the wider, deeper Universe
to be most free.

TO DON MY BEST INTREPID

As life goes on,
there comes a time
I’ve got to don
my very best
intrepid.

Too long
have I longed
for hot or warm
but settled for
just tepid. . .

So, right now
I will cut brave paths
and sing out
joyful, loud and strong,
to do my best–

lest
another fleeting moment pass,
and I’ll have missed
my chance– my last–
for I’ll have waited far too long,

and therefore got decrepit.

LIFE RUNS THROUGH ITS PACES

One thing’s true no matter what
Life runs through all its paces
both
making broad and bold-brushed strokes
and trickling through
scant, puny places,

and it leaves sometimes little clue
on ginger-light, gently trod thickets
or highway-byway beaten paths
where everybody’s mama, brother,
and you, too
show tracks that get so well mixed up
nobody leaves much print behind
not even for the old hack trackers
who can read such subtle traces.

Life dallies now,
and now it speeds,
a stagnant, algae nursing pond,
white mountain water rapid races,

The silent creep of wiggle worms
the happy gleam of tongue and beak and eye
to find said worms
to feed their hungry birdlets’ faces.

The droughts, the floods,
the calms the storms,
the parch, the rot,
the struggle merely to survive,
the surfeit that permits all thrive,
just like the hidden poker hand
that could yield wild full house– Jack, Queen, King–
or else Bill Hickock’s dead man’s hand
a fist black eights and aces.

MOURNING AND JOY

The still air
carries the mournful sound
of a lone flute.

A symphony
lurks between the feathers
in the flutter
of a bird as it springs into flight.

The oars
stroke through
reflective dark water
ripples sound like wet whispers
sliced by the prow
of a small boat afloat.

The sun
comes after its GPS hour
as the new day begins to inflate,

but past the slim moment
of horizon’s brave breach,
it trips
its own light fantastic
as with dancing toes
impossibly fleet.

MORNING WALK IN COOL CREEK SHADE

Morning walk
in cool creek shade
amused by pups
that on me wish to hop,
a neighbor met,
a pleasant talk. . .

That done and said,
the day’s bright path
toward higher ground,
forth right from here
is amply laid.

WHEN PEOPLE LIKE YOU

When it’s plain
that people like you,
just one on one,
or a whole slew,

it helps your mood
to rise more high,

and maybe even
higher still
when you relax
around that fact
and let yourself enjoy
that at least there’s one,
a lot or few
who are feeling
good with you,
though you really
don’t know why.