© 2010

What’s Right With Today What’s right with todayis the nearness of it Morning’s been waitingwithout expectation that tincture of yesterdaydissolved overnight you awake to find an acreage within your palm 

At the bridge

 

I went there once and met you at the bridgefollowed your truck up and down the dunes You’d painted the door gray-greensoft brush strokes hid the torn wood You left the railing honest with white, flaking chipsto satisfy someone but didn’t remember who

You mentioned a bonfire that night by the shoreI noticed the tablecloth was just ironed

 

 Your face filled the place where sunlighttried to enter the window You wanted to sit and talkI wanted to walk to the beach You left the door propped with a big shellI turned to see you come down the stepswaiting

Possible  Every desire leaves a mark,stretched tight around hopethe heart’s causeway,lined with lessons learned. Every wish gives shelterto rain-soaked petitions of perhaps,familiar with the reasonable no,but awaiting a better mindset. Every whisper of why iscued by a tilt of the universethat brims with possibilities found by careful footing. To every season there comes a timewhen hope’s next caress reveals,standing in the doorway, a view of all that is possible.

He wrote… about so many thingsbut these two I recall.

That he felt himselfdrowning in the bodies of Japanese sailorsand gasped

That during a momentof ecstasyhe saw the loosened cowstrolling down the far-away lane -all-encompassingwas his visionthat day.

Green Enough 

I would like to be green enough to envy no one,to shy away from that noisy

wantingfor more.

 Spill me intoa seaside dimension where tidal pools remember my name,

 and each shoreline,familiar with

patience,waits with the tidesfor my return.

Marked Fragile I imaginethat there is pleasuresomewherebut it has failed to arriveherein one piece.

It sits atop or below or beneathin pieceswhile you and Iopen and reopen each packagemarked fragile,whether addressed to us or not.

don’t you love kindness? the caught-by-surprisesmile as the dooropens just as you reach to push it before yourgrocery bag of anticipationsogs apart on the floor. such is whatspins electronsrefills memoriessets the tablefor our sometimetime together.

What’s Right With Today

By Jan Keough © 2010

Photographs by Jan Keough