“How is it I remember
knowing that I would live forever?
Isn’t it strange
how truth can change?”
- Toad the Wet Sprocket

Before I get muddled in contemplation, I want to send an acknowledgement to my mother, who, 36 years ago today, completed what probably remains to this day the most harrowing 28-hour stretch of her life. Not only that, but she did it without drugs. And at the end of that ordeal all she had to show for it was a screaming baby boy. But bless her heart, that was exactly what she wanted.

And so here I am.

I quoted the lyric at the top of this post for a reason. It’s one that’s been rattling around in my head since I first heard it over a decade ago - at a point prior to my realization that I wouldn’t live forever. Like many other people who were once young, I dreaded losing the illusory cloak of invincibility. I thought it would be so depressing to come to grips with such a passive-aggressive foe like mortality. Surprisingly, it hasn’t been.

To be honest, I’ve led a pretty charmed life. I’ve probably reaped a good bit more than I’ve sown. With the realization of life’s finite nature, I’ve been able to see this more clearly.

I’ve always been a melancholy person, but I don’t wallow like I did when I thought the world was owed to me and had the right to demand nothing from me. I appreciate more now, a trend I hope continues into the future.

I pulled into the parking lot at 10 a.m. Sunday morning. Before even getting out of the car, I noticed the bike with the fendered 26-inch wheels, old-fashioned handlebars, overstuffed seat and more improvised saddlebags than I thought a bike could hold. It occupied a good portion of the sidewalk leading to the front door of the restaurant. It was a slightly odd sight in this neighborhood, one comprising almost entirely middle to upper class residents. And within three seconds of entering the establishment, I could identify the bike’s owner.

There in the northwest corner of the place, sat a wiry, 40-something caucasian male with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and matching stubble. He wore stained khaki workpants, a greasy t-shirt, worn cross-trainers and a weak smile he flashed intermittently at the service staff as they moved between the kitchen and the dining area, shooting not so subtle glances at him. Upon seeing his smile, the thing that struck me was how straight and clean his teeth appeared to be.

It made me wonder where he’d come from - more demographically than geographically. Against the backdrop of a fairly upscale Sunday morning crowd mostly attired in church clothes, he struck me as someone who could rather easily be transformed into one of them, at least on the surface.

Was he a recent victim of the economic downturn, or was he a foreigner to this middle class world? Did he look at the rest of us, knowing what our lives were like? Did he flash that fleeting smile because he knew the restaurant service staff and patrons who seemed to look down on him were really only a few steps from his circumstance?

Being only ten years younger than him at the most, I thought about how slight a twist of fate it would take to find myself in his tattered shoes.

bathe us in your glow,
and the wisdom you allow
will be all we know.

A while back I was motivated to put together some of the haiku I’d written as a gift for a friend. I scribbled about seventy verses as legibly as I could in a pocket-sized Moleskine cahier. It was well-received, much to my delight. My friend told me I should write a book of haiku. I pointed at the one in her hands and said that I just had written a book of haiku. She said she meant a real book.

While I’m not sure there’s much demand for a book of my haiku (or anything else, for that matter), I have been flattered on occasion by similar exhortations to write a real book. On the other hand, I think it was Flannery O’Connor who, when asked if she thought the universities stifled writers, replied that they didn’t stifle enough of them. As she said, “There’s many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.” - a sentiment I’m sure she’d have about the blogging phenomenon as well, had she lived to see it.

Flannery O’Connor’s loathing aside, I stumbled across a reasonably cheap, effective way to get my little book of haiku printed. So that’s what I did, adding a bit of non-haiku poetry to the end of it. It’s mostly done for family and a few friends who’ve expressed an interest in it, but it’s there for anyone else who may be interested as well.

If you want a copy (printed or downloadable), click here to pick one up from LuLu.com.

Or, if you might be inclined to offer me your own review of the book (as flattering or brutally honest as you like), I’d be glad to send you the downloadable version of the book for free. Let me know if you’re interested.

Linford Detweiler writes a good bit of the material for a band called Over the Rhine, which I recommend heartily. The short poem below is also his work. It appears on the band’s website here.

There’s a communion wafer moon
dissolving on the blue tongue of the sky

Sometimes the whole world is nothing
So much
As an altar inviting us
To kneel

Incidentally, the admired poetry idea is borrowed from the admired poet who writes at Agitation of Hands. Strength of Words

a man of substance,
eschewing symbology,
shows love quietly.

On Father’s Day I wanted to creep back into the habit of expressing something relevant about my father.

It’s funny how most of what I admire about my father revolves around the concept of quiet expressions of love through action. Maybe it fascinates me because it goes against the grain of what I tend to do when I write. No matter what words I can manage, they will pale against the profound eloquence of those simple, often selfless actions that have been the hallmark of my father’s life as I’ve observed it.

So before I muddy it up with any more flailing attempts at eloquence, I just want to say thanks to my father, and wish all the other dads out there a great Father’s Day.

six months still jobless
and you don’t count anymore;
such are the metrics.

photo: Daquella manera

what makes you happy
is rarely the same as what
makes them think you are.

photo: Tracy O

here, we have no need for mirrors;
we are not the introspectors -
only those with fault need bother.
we change the rules, make others follow.

photo: Chuckumentary

we just ask for fish,
but You’d prefer us to learn
how to catch our own.

(Written after reading Heather’s post “Getting What You Ask For“)

photo: Mari’s Photographic Adventure

no tender mercy;
the angel who can’t see me
can’t be moved to care.

photo: kchbrown