I say a silent prayer for the bird,
the angel statue, the shell I found
on the empty beach, and all those
with broken wings that may not heal
preventing them from flight meant to take.
Broken Wing
Category Observations
In My Fever
I awaken to sunset’s orange glow approaching,
or perhaps it is sunrise battling clouds.
Is that window the East or West?
Without my eyeglasses, the desk lamp glows
like the Sun, but it feels night.
The clock hands say seven without AM/PM
and my brain cannot sense time or
whether I am right side up or
adrift at sea, waves lift and fall,
my head hot and my feet cold.
I scribbled some notes when I woke up and felt like my fever had lifted. The notes didn’t make much sense but I did recall the confusion about time and the feeling that I was at sea.
A few days later, I was flipping through a poetry anthology and came upon “The Walrus and the Carpenter” by Lewis Carroll and these lines seemed just right.
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright —
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
It’s Snowing All Over the World
As the snow falls, I am imagining
how it must have once been when
you had no sense of your place –
when the world was only as large
as you could walk, and the edges
were oceans or mountains where you stopped.
The snow existed as far as you
could see, and as far as you
could imagine the world. Like me, today.
Book of Days
In the Middle Ages, it was common
to always carry a book with you –
that is, if you could read, and
if you could afford books and if
you had the time luxury to read.
Then you might have the Bible or
Book of Days in a beautiful case
as you strolled like Dante through Florence
lunching with primo, secondo and a contorno,
glasses of chianti helping thoughts and conversation.
Cooks and servers filled plates and glasses,
looked over your shoulder at illuminated pages
wondering what they said and if they
could ever own such a book or
even own the precious words written there.
I have written elsewhere about this idea of always carrying a book. Is it something you do?
Writing the Day 