Floating by,
Absence of remedy,
Truth so often forgot,
There, for simple eyes to see,
careful distinction
leaves clouded minds.

And hopeful I am
waiting.
Another breeze
Let another game float by.

How long to fall?
One day, ten seconds?

The dusk of busy day,
When other games were played,
We turned our blind eyes,
another lost.
Sun sets, and night rises.

There was a moment that caught me by surprise. It’s the kind that is easy to forget, the sort that passes by. It comes as quickly as it goes. It is the sort of thing that is meant to be unnoticed for it will inevitably be forgotten by its bearer as much as anyone who happens to catch it.

It was a look, the kind of look that isn’t directed anywhere, it is a look into one’s self in the moment you’re in. It was a look of passing reflection. The happy kind. The kind that signals to the looker “I am here”.

We were all sitting around a table. Laughs exchanged. Humor shared, not because jokes were necessarily funny, or even complete, but because it was understood that the intent was there and that, in itself was enough. More in the eyes than the words. Sentences at those times fill the space between feelings. And, so the look.

Looking down at feet that weren’t there. In a moment a glance up and an instruction to pay attention; we are here. camaraderie. Looking down, the corners of lips curving up. A glazed stare hidden by a shadow cast over her face. None would have noticed, yet it was there. It was stepping aside for a time, three seconds in our time, forever in the time of moments.

Some nights everyone has their own look. Some of us look at each other. Words heard, seldom listed to. Some will stare at the plate in front, none know we are looking. Our focus is too strong to reflect on the reflecting for we are so deep that reflection is impossible. Minds blank for all except an unadulterated visceral feeling; now, this second I am OK.

That is the essence of a moment, it passes unnoticed. Those moments that don’t become a part of a whole, that sit there on their own aside from those we’ll remember. They are the ones that matter. It’s in those moments that we know that we are in fact where we are. But, as we would have it those too are the moments we forget. They become un-woven from the fabric of our memories.

Night,
Paint blue across the back or my living room,
A little piece of nothing drifts on through.

I know my eyes are heavy now
But I’ve lit this light anew.

Excited by the quiet,
A car parks her ride,
Her murmur a little reminder that time will wander by.

I’ve chosen my surrender
In a moments creative peace,
So, I’ll sit and just ponder what words will be released.

She’ll read with a bed light
And I’ll open the door,
We’ll revel in our rebellion like we did before
And tomorrow we’ll talk to strangers

And rest a little more.

It’s funny the thoughts that go through your mind as you wake up, scrambling to put something on your body as you shiver from the cold. Despite the fog of waking there is a deep clarity we learn to ignore. We’re too busy trying to find the muster to know what the day is about, whether or not we’re going to have a shower and “is there the time to make coffee?”

But, just before mechanics start to take effect; before we’ve managed to figure out which pair of socks to wear and if there’ll be time to write those last-minute e-mails there; right in front of us is a picture of ourselves, a picture that only the bridge between waking and sleeping can paint. It is the oneiric reality of us. It is something that lies between sleep and waking; between this world as it would have us and the selves as we would us be.

Surrounded by the fog of waking and the mist of sleeping I saw a picture. It was at once wonderful, full of history, hope and meaning and at the same time sad and melancholy. It is strange how a picture; an image on its own can connote more thought that a string of thoughts. It is as if that picture were each and every thought we could have bundled together; one object greater than the sum of objects that make it. A ball of string; at once its own object and yet, at the same time so many other possible objects.

What I saw was a person scrambling for meaning; pure of heart, confused about the day. For one moment I put my mask to the side and I focused on that person. The poignancy of the image made me feel. I felt a want to do something honest, to be of meaning; to do something I knew I couldn’t.

This morning when I woke I saw your heart. It was the first thought of my day. And so, because of that I write my first words to you. I write with a love and a depth that comes, not from deliberation but, from the deepest part of my psyche.