I've been falling for a long time. Looking after my father. He is going ta the doctor all the time now. and My sister's child, while she out smoking and carrying on in di clubs an such places; he just sitting there watching the wildflowers. Such an odd kid, I wonder what goes on in that head of his. My sister always singing about about innocence and the light from the sky.
And I hear the landlords heavy foot coming up the stairs like the shivering from a thunder storm. I know he's gonna come in here, so I'm still as glass and the light catches me just so. I think maybe he won't see me and I'll slip-a-way like a fish in the pond. I'm praying the child just sits there; stay still, and the landlord won't notice, he'll think nobody's home.

I can hear his hand on the door and I'm trapped. Sweat beads on my forehead an the heat run down my nose and drop to the table; a little pool that smells like sunblock and fear.

At the same time there's someone in the street shouting about the air plane he sees and I can hear the plane zooming like an angry hive of bees in a hurricane. The landlord belches and he clatters down the stairs to see.
Just as I'm learning to breathe, again, I look out the window and there is the boy looking up at me, his eyes bright with knowledge knowing, and I shiver like I'm naked with the fingertips of morning mist running up my spine.
Coming back to my kitchen table i remember; My father coming back from the healer, and I get up from the kitchen table and call the boy to come in.

The road not taken veers off to the left behind me, choked with rhododendrons and mountain laurels.  It's not that I never noticed it before I pass this way coming home every day fore eleven years of my life I rode my bicycle past it a hundred times each summer as my sister and I raced around the block. our world was bounded by this circular cul-de-sac in the wooded slopes of Mount Misery. I'd never though about it much, that the road might lead somewhere, or have a name. We merely passed it by and Halloween weed walk right past without a word from Mrs. Merchant to the Acker's house where my sister's best friend lived. If I had know the crumbling tar and gravel lead to some other place, I would have gone there, and I'm sure I went everywhere else that I could have. Growing up as I did in an old stone house surrounded by trees made the impulse to explore very strong. I wandered around the old Krup house, abandoned since his death, and found the secret garden in the back, burgeoning with daffodils and tulips planted by his wife I guess, many years before my birth. I wandered in the thick laurel and dogwood that sloped away behind the mulberry tree in our backyard. There was an old oak there whose roots curled around to make a basin lined with moss and even in the dry summer months this pool sparkled with dark water I was afraid to touch. Far bellow that I followed the ravine down to where it opened out onto the harbor beach and an artesian spring trickled out across the sand next to a weathered stone wall where some one had built a bonfire some time in the past month.
I was always alone then, there seems no reason I would have not gone up that road. I can't remember any thing about it except the parting glance I had just before we moved away. I asked myself where does that go?
Now years later I can see what I did not know. The maps reveal that little has changed over all this time, I can see how different my life would have been If I had known the short cut to Diane's house. But then would that first kiss and that last good by have been as sweet, if I could have gotten there in  just ten minutes instead of an hour's ride up to the ridge and then the long ride down to where she lived?

    The Gulls at Isles of Shoals

    Ah! the ubiquitous herring gull.
    How they haunted me as a child:
    At times, placid as mallards,
    Or bending their wings in the breeze,
    Hung motionless,
    Poised to fall
    on food

    I held up
    Bread crusts and fish bits
    While they fought to take
    The morsels from my hand.

    At Isles of Shoals
    We saw their rookeries on Smuttynose.
    (the grim shack and weathered headstones
    overrun with pale vines of dodder)
    My sister and I walked there
    A hundred years after.
    No one told us there was murder done.

    The gulls there wheeled
    Around us screaming.
    As we passed among the nests,
    Some birds would swoop
    To steal a hatchling
    From another's brood.

    We left in horror
    As they tore
    The chicks apart;
    Screaming, in midair.

    We both stayed silent
    On the long row home.

Aug 23, 2006, 5:34 PM:

http://pods.gaia.com/room_for_rumi/discussions/view/48152
http://snipurl.com/31qg3

A shoe in the window, or it's a cat
She seemed to say, with her mouth half open
Pointing with both hands. See. There. Look at that.
Face damp with spray (or tears from the ocean.)
"it came out less than I intended,"
She said clearly, I could hear. Both eyes
Look at me. The cat...
"I walked there," making coffee,
"Couldn't see the point," she said,
"Clearly." The soft grey in the corner.
And curled around her ankle.
Faint moaning in the distance,
She shakes the droplets from her hat brim.
A little cry of hunger from below.

I'm not sure i really want
to be remembered.
so much of what i've done
caused pain for others.
left things broken or used up.
Those are the marks I've left
If I could finish what i've started.
repair the damage done
erase the mark
leave the water clear
That would be enough.
just a sense of light
in the hearts of my beloved
instead of the burden of sorrow.

"It's as if he was never here at all."

Ive been kind of out of touch for a long time., Unsure whether my writing communicates at all, I post rambling letters on my blogs, entitled "Dear Lama." I have some friends who are Lamas, and I receive teachings from them but none of those relationships have deepened to the point where i could call them Guru. I'm lust throuing it out there like a prayer...Lama can you here me?

I talk to my mother a lot. I met her when I was twenty-five. sometimes we communicate with just a few words.
Sometimes we talk to fill up the silence
.
I talk to my friend's old cat Charlie and tell her that there really is some food in her bowl. sometimes she just looks at me and cries. All i can say is "I know what you mean."

I spoke to a guy in a convenience store about the Springsteen song "dancing in the dark." I said It was't the first time I heard it but they Played it at the fourth of July celebration in 1984 at the Philadelphia Museum steps . (Where Sly Stallone runs up and down in "Rocky")
The song was playin on the radio when I talked to him. I didn't mention that my girlfriend was pregnant at the time or that i was happy to be alive.
A few days later i read that my friend from the store had recently  been united with his girl friend from 1968, and the daughter and granddaughter whom he had never met.. I ve always fely something pass between us besides small change and soft drinks.

Sometimes I write things on the Internet an hope that someone will understand.

Friday, at our small town fourth of July celebration, i exchanged a wink and a smile with an of duty belly dancer.

That's communication.

Am I leaving You Out?

let me know!

http://www.hypergurl.com/marquee.html
I must get this to work on zaadz!
This is cool!

Storms balance Everybody 
I thought i had made the change
held the moment in my hand
But just like you
i mistook what i knew
for what was new.
now i stand 
in a shattering land.

curiouser
and

Storms balance Everybody