A potpourri of thoughts over the weekend, most unfinished and certainly unedited…but it’s time for a nap.

The tree is up by me and decorated by Maureen. The “Noel” sign is up. It is all mine and an incredible jury rig (that’s for my sea-going friends), Rube  Goldberg affair, that if i keep improving for the next 20 years, it might look professional – a later post will repeat the horrors from about 25 years ago.

It’s been a weekend plus of stray thoughts running through this empty head. It hit me today’s sports announcers sound more like gossipers on the corner and tell me more than i care to know to support their latest analysis, accurate or not. Then, the ones for Sunday night football all predicted the Chiefs would win. I couldn’t put up with the post-game mumbo jumbo, but i’m betting none of them brought up the fact they were wrong: sullies their reputation they think, i guess.

The below were thoughts not yet well captured. i’m working on making them better, but i have been known to sluff off on finishing such things, so here they are:

antiquity me

i prefer a cedar Christmas tree
chopped down by us
in a world long ago
in a place far away
and
we decorated the tree
in the small living room
with only a real holly wreath
hanging on the front door –
i know because around six-years old
i stuck a holly berry
up my nose
requiring the family doc,
Doctor Lowe of local renown,
coming over to remove
the berry with tweezers –
they were simple decorations
compared to today’s lawns with
plastic myriads of comic characters,
religious figures, legends epitomized
with enough lights to light up Vegas
but
if they like fake,
go for it i’m okay with that
just prefer
something simpler
for i’m old fashioned.

storm clouds

i have seen the storm clouds gathering
over the horizon
two points off the starboard bow,
NNE or Nor, Nor, by NorEast,
storm clouds, cumulonimbus,
fearsome dark gray-black,
would bring us to the reality of
the omnipotence of the sea,
finding it beautiful,
fearsome, yes, but beautiful;
remembering, i wish
i could see them gathering again,
feel the power,
smell the coming rain
again.

no running

remember when you were a young’un
feeling the pure unbounded joy
of running?

i remember when i learned
my best friend’s mother
died too soon,
running as fast as i could
in a steady spring rain
until i thought my lungs would burst,
feeling some relief.

i remember taking up running
in the middle of the divorce,
not knowing how to pace myself,
then stop, winded
only a short distance
before walking home.

i remember running
through rice paddies, jungle,
a mud hut village
in Sri Lanka in the rain feeling
like i was a young’un again
running with unbounded joy.

i remember running on Coronado’s beach
at noon every weekday,
often with friends matching pace,
feeling like i was floating on the waves.

I remember the grinding up and down hills
in near euphoria;
endorphins i think they call them
and
later while grinding, panting,
finding it was now work, labor,
not near euphoria;
now, i walk,
doc’s orders:
says i’m too old to run,
something might break;
lord, when i walk,
it’s okay, even enjoyable sometimes
but
not like running;
not like running.

a place i knew

i would like to take you
to a place i knew
it is no longer there,
blown away by changes through time.

it was a lovely place
quiet, peaceful,
on the shoreline of a creek,
a spring just off the dock;
folks there didn’t lock their doors,
homes or cars,
until it was time to go to bed.
children played outside;
walked to school by themselves;
rode one-speed bikes with abandon
all over town,
often with baseball cards in the spokes
to sound like a motor bike,
hah!
men fishing on the bank
in the early morning,
late afternoon,
for crappie mostly;

this is no judgement of mine,
only the observation
old men remember fondly
things being not like then:
i’m too old to criticize the younger;
they will have their own memories
to cherish and miss.