I'm not writing as many poems nowadays, and at times I wonder why? Maybe it's because there is less pain and struggle than there used to be. Or, maybe it's because pleasure and pain, struggle and harmony, are not so distant from one another anymore. Perhaps the Rockies and Grand Tetons are being smoothed out into the Catskills, as this flow of life passes over them. Life's river, at times placid, mirror smooth, at times churning and full of the wild and the wilderness. Yet the source is always the same, a small spring bubbling up out of nowhere in particular, going nowhere in particular, complete in itself. If I can, I want to find a way back to that source. Remembering the words of Walt Whitman might help: "Lounge and the Muse will come." Or the words of a smart but more blunt character, my Pop: "So you're going on the bum again, are you?" It's ironic isn't it, but also makes sense, if you want "art" to express itself, it needs room. Not unlike the squash and cucumber plants in our garden. Box'm in with too little space, too much purposeful activity, and the weeds and fencing chokes and stunts them. Another way of seeing it ... being lost, searching for a way, even with some desperation, creates. Finding one's way to solid footing, a direction, getting secure, comfortable ... well, I don't know? But I will say, my life in many ways has gotten better, much better. How? I simply find myself in the day I'm actually in more often. And that day is an okay day, a good day, a bright day even at 83 years. The atmosphere of anticipated joy or trauma, expected acceptance or rejection, has thinned out, much of the time, to the point of transparency and invention. An ancient Chinese Zennie said: "Imagination becomes experience." My hope: As the poems of pain and loss found me, let the poems of "cease-fire" and harmony find me.
