though i have never willingly picked up a burden in all my life, it is a mystery and a sign of humour from above that through the years my feet have sunk deeper and deeper into the earth. through i have tried to leave no trail behind, to be like a fish passing through water, still i have left a clear and clumsy path through the hearts and minds of my friends.

 

november 2002

 

some folk who knew him thought him dull, he spoke just a little
enough to get by, he werent interested in much, he cooked his meals
plain, watched the television like a regular guy, didnt much blow
off steam but when he did by god, he did, he got downright mean though those days werent so often after he got a little older. some called him crazy in those days which is better than dull to a young man but not an oldster, surely not, who prefers peace and silence

 

anyway, most of his friends left him to his diet of plain air.

 

 those
who really knew him knew he was a complicated man, not at all as placid
as he seemed, he himself knew that he had been rejected by his own
soul, that the spirit inside him, maybe the spirit of an old man, had
forgotten its reason for coming back and wanted to sleep again, the
great buddhist sleep of non-being.

 so he had the hardest time waking up that old spirit except by banging pots together and making a rukus
which he did a plenty of as a young man, but as an older and wiser
fella he got caught up in that sleepy kind of way and sort of drifted
off into waiting around for what he called his eventual end.

 

sometimes he'd fall in love and for a little while his old soul
would raise itself up from its funeral platform and stare out
into the world open mouthed, young again for a little while and tremulous as a teenager again but always its went back to sleeping
high up in the tree of his deep self, waiting for the buzzards
that would eventual coming circling circling, and make a meal of
him and give him back his slumber

 

at age twenty nine he fell into agreement with his tired old friend and decided deep sleep was far preferable to ruckus, and he didnt stir
much again, drifting into the life a good woman, who was likewise
tired and quiet minded, and who took care of him when his sleep walking
got him sore and feverish, and whose delicate forehead he would stroke when she got sad and felt as low as willow branches and together
they slept together, made love together in a dreamy way like the
entwining of branches or like blossoms falling together from
the high branches of their birth not mindful of where the wind was taking em except that it was and who can change what is