the time of day

It is Sunday morning. I thought of going to church, even wanted to, but staying up so late last night (in the wee hours) now leaves me so tired, after breakfast, that I am toying with the idea of crawling back to bed. It is an idea I hope and pray I resist. Is that depression? The whole feeling has echoes of the days of Sunday morning coming down, with hangovers both physical and existential, now 35 years ago, thank God, but still there for me if I succumb to it. I hear the sparrows and robins. The meteorological conditions seems pleasant. I don't know if any of those factors will be enough to rouse me. Morning is not my time of day anyway. Give me evening, its vespers charms of setting sun, chirping robins, and something something something. Yesterday I browsed two bookstores for a copy of the Book of Common Prayer. Here at home I have one, taken from an Episcopal church more than 15 years ago. Maybe they gave it to me. I guess I'm still a member there but have always wrestled with its suburbanness. I've been thinking of secretly returning it one Sunday, placing it in the pew holder. Why? I guess to allow me to float somewhere else, or because of a secret guilt over stealing that book. Which is nonsense, of course. Maybe I need a book of uncommon prayer. I already have those. In the morning -- usually mornings -- I read from a compilation of writings by Thich Nhat Hank and also, these days, The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer. The latter was given to me last year as a birthday or Christmas present. My tea has gotten lukewarm, not warm at all.

what melts

Is it merely the temperature or a metaphysical thaw, all this melting, this evaporation, this trans-formation; where does it all go; and what is 'it' we are referring to? Not that it is something 'less' because nothing is lost, all is impermanent, the zen masters remind us; all is here, and nothing is lost; no-thing. in the vespers dusk, the scuds of clouds before this cafe window breeze leftward, it may be east or south, or both, I am not sure. These clouds (cumulus, stratus? cumulo-stratus? I forget my cloud taxonomy, from fourth grade; I need a nap, where different clouds can float by in front of a different sort of lens) of dusky gray lavender, ashy dustiness are already rehaped, gone, departed from what my fingers were tapping about moments ago. I do not lament them as lost, or found. Someone a few miles down the road is welcome to greet them. I moved a desk today. It stood in a room, for a few years. I was under that roof some twenty years. I was quick to describe my mood afterward as sad over this but one would have to ask why. Romancing a vision of some ideal that never was? Clinging with claw marks to some sort of cloudy mirage? The skeletal, bronchiated limbs of the winter trees across West Genesee Street stand silently before me. They too are as transient as those clouds above their sight line but one would not think it so readily. Those slender naked branches are eloquent. I bow before them, and them before me.

Walkable Wannabe Talkable

So, what does one experience while walking? It differs daily. It differs from place to place. One person's walkable community is another person's talkable inventory. To wit:

strewn birdseed pecked at by three squirrels, five darting fiches and sparrows, four cautious mourning doves; tired and worn dog waste in the grass; a game of baseball (hardball!) on a copper-sunset diamond, young players, middle aged coaches, no umpires; three green barrels, as in 55-gallon drums, brimming over with trash; a swimming pool filled with silent emerald water, no lifeguards, no swimmers, too cold; green upon layer of green upon darkened or lightened verdure, rolling in contours and 9-hole frustration and pleasure; a pruned bush with a dangling branch of Y; a sacred grove of Tuscany-laden shrubs along the pathway; the robin's evening vesper recitation, persistent and mournful and prescient of dawn

Between the Vespers

Walking at dusk, I see rage

Fade below the horizon

Not quite

The draining away of October light

Fact a shadow

Certain caught sky

A lurid velvet bowl

Held by veiny branches

The high screech of bats

Two zigzagging above

Me almost colliding

The post-Ramadan moon

Crescent and clouded

My not flinching

For once