All Fall Down

*

Laid in the hammock for the first time today and watched the blue sky through the backlit red leaves of the Japanese Maple tree while the water in the koi pond burbled and a breeze jangled the wind chimes. A buzzard circled high overhead. My hands ached from weeding and throbbed from stinging nettles up to my elbows and I had never felt better.

Got to work on a new painting.

Ate leftover braised chicken thighs in lemon with fennel and olives from Thomas Keller's "Ad hoc at home" cook book that the woman on the verge brought home from the library yesterday.

Fuck me running, it were good.


*

I can feel my sap rising with the spring. Like a bear lumbering out into the sunlight after a long winter's hibernation.


It feels like I'm coming back to life.



*

The house is spanking clean and filled with light and flowers and fresh air. Everything glows.


*


You get these days, you seize them. You jam them into your mouth and bite down and let the juice run down your chin and you gorge yourself on them until you are sick with it.


*


I raise my glass in a toast of thanks to the mindless unfolding of the great wheezing machine of life!


*


Namaste.



***

Reverend Pease Dreams of The Sea

*

Spring is in full throttle, driving every living thing mad with joy and longing.


The birds are crazy with song.


The sky is so blue it hurts to look at it.


*


For hundreds of thousands of years there were other human species on this planet. They painted their bodies and buried their dead and surrounded the gravesites with flowers. They hunted and made tools and made love and made babies. They were eaten by giant wolves and crushed underfoot by Mastadons and their young were carried off by great eagles and they died before age forty and they are gone now every one of them.


Like smoke they have vanished into the air.



*


I love my small life and treasure it all the more for its fragility and hopeless outcome.


*


I don't say it often enough, but I am deeply grateful that you come here to read and look around.



I hope this day brings you pleasure, comfort, peace, and something good for dinner.



*


Namaste.


**

The Miller's Wife

*

Last week I took another confession on a child molester. He had molested this little boy three years ago but the case had been dismissed due to proof issues. So the boy's mother lets the guy move back in with her a couple of months later. You can guess what happened next.

I got a confession on the new one and the old one, too, so now he's going to go for both of them, a long time gone.

*

A buddy of mine, guy I used to work murders with when I was at the S.O. had a stroke last week. He's in ICU still, can't talk, half paralyzed, the whole enchilada. He's forty-eight.

I've been by three times, but they won't let me see him.


I'd just like to hold his hand for a minute.


He's not a bad guy.


*


I feel out of sorts in a deep way.


*



All my gears are slipping.



*



Namaste.



***

In The City Of Granted Wishes

*

We are in the city for our 20th wedding anniversary. ( But we shacked up for three years before we got married, so there is a correlated 23 yr. count as well.)

We have eaten udon noodles and Indian curry and soaked in a japanese tub and walked in the rain and we are having a blast.

It is our favorite place other than home.


*


I could not be happier, nor richer in love.



***


Namaste.


*

Our Lord and Master

*

Cleaning the house makes me feel happier. Rubbing everything down with Pledge and a worn out cloth, vacuuming under everything, getting in all the nooks and corners. Going at the stove until it gleams, degreasing the stove hood.

If she let me I'd live in a white box with wood floors and two pieces of furniture and everything would glow.

Of course, I thank God she won't let me do that.


*

When I was going to polygraph school I lived in an apartment by myself and I cleaned it twice a day and there was nothing in it except a bed and a sofa and a dining table and a big fake ficus tree in the corner.

It was as lifeless a place as you could imagine.


*

Our place is a gorgeous wonderland of art and beauty and oddness that I treasure deep in my bones. Every time I walk into the house it strikes me dumb with the beauty and love and goodness that it radiates.

Then I see my wife and my fat little bulldog and it gets even worse.

*


I have to go now. The woman wants a platter of pu-pu's and a glass of Parson's Flat Shiraz before I make her my to-die-for hot skillet pizza.


*

Namaste, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England!






May you be as blessed as I am and may it not cease for any of us.





***

The Task At Hand

*


Today I shall endeavor to live in the world.



*


And concentrate on the task at hand.




*




Namaste.




***

Juliet's Walk

*


We struggle along, doing the best we can.



*



We should be nice to each other.



*



But the guy in that house a couple of doors down, you know the one, he's probably got some child tied up in a box in the basement or somebody's mother under the floorboards.



*


I sometimes cross paths with men like that, but what's the use?

It's over, beast.



*



You don't never bring one of them back.



They've crossed over.





*


If there's a harder world than this one, I don't want to go see it.



*




And yet this is a blessed world, full of broken-hearted love and crazy tenderness. There isn't any figuring it out, you just have to let it wash over you.


*


Tonight I pray for all those who are suffering, that they might find peace.


*


Amen.



***