Pre-Decision Decisions

I’ve made a lot of mistakes as a parent, but one tactic I chanced on that seemed to work was to focus more on shaping future behavior than on denigrating present behavior. In a way I think it gave my kids the notion early on that their continued change and growth was a given. For example, I would always make them try a bite of a new food but if they said they didn’t like it, they didn’t have to eat it. But if there was something I expected them eventually to eat, like a salad, I would say, “Oh you don’t like that yet? You will when you’re older,” and then drop it. Then they would have the idea in their head and often decide to prove themselves older by proudly announcing that they wanted to try salad again, and now like it. 

I think that’s a tactic we can use on ourselves, too. When you come to the point of recognizing that you must change something in your life that you know will be difficult to change, sometimes it helps simply to declare to yourself, “This is something I’m eventually going to have to change.” You can’t actually make the change until you fully commit to it— and you won’t know you’re there until you suddenly know you are there— but that’s a big step in getting there. 

Arithmetic

Time’s not a gift of arithmetic—

What I take from my store

Can’t be added to yours—

It can only be shared—

When it is, we’re aware

Of its absence,

If anyone asks us.

Beau Fleuve

This morning at the water’s edge

Near the wastewater plant at 10 am,

I saw three friends with a bonfire smoking

And music playing on someone’s phone

And I kept on running and left them behind

And went back to my house and drew the blinds. 

I cleaned all the floors and prepared for the week,

And I thought about scheduling several things.

And the river looks more the same than not

As it did on the day McKinley was shot

And those who live by it know better than most

The way that time turns us all into ghosts.

United In Diversity

With the world on the brink

All the borders are breached

While new fences enclose

Smaller and smaller spaces

And even the smallest

Conversations become gated. 

The walls that we build 

In between our own thoughts

Find their way to our hands

As we carve the world up.

One Degree

Black pools with cerulean

Beneath the trees at summer’s end.

This season’s leaves are laughing in

The breeze that leaves them on the limb.

The memories of inner rings

Are buried deep beneath the sleep

Of winters they have never seen.

Their inky shadows hug the cool

And pull the dark into the wood.

Salt

Thank you for the sacraments

And your stewardship of

The sacred texts. And thank you, too,

For handing me, while I was lost

In lucid dreams, a box so dark I could not see

Its contents until I was older. 

Sometimes I sit and think of you,

But do not turn my head or halt

Because I know that if I do,

I’ll turn into a pillar of salt. 

Gravity

The moon and the ocean

Have pulled on each other’s

White cords for as long as

The earth’s been in motion,

And it has been slowing

Its spin as if answering

Unspoken questions

About its intentions.

Gravity can pull in

Bodies in motion

And hold them in orbit

Until they can absorb it.