Testing Gravity

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Everyday you test gravity.

You charge the steep hill on your ’57 Schwinn.

You fly for awhile, Standing as you pedal, getting into it.

Cars pass you by

You pass by parked cars.

The grade  slows  you  down. And then you can’t

go anymore. You could cut across the paved hill

Weave back and forth to climb higher,

but you’re not ready for that.

Everyday you take it straight on. Get a little further.

Yesterday, the green house with the white rock lawn.

Today, the periwinkle mailbox.

You stop, astride your ride, heaving, breathing heavy

Precious sweat dripping down your face, under your shirt,

On your chest, a faint recollection.

Strength a distance memory.

A smile.

A periwinkle mailbox.

What you need.

You wonder who paints their mailbox this fanciful color?

They wonder who rides an old bike up a steep hill?

Everyday we test gravity.

 

 

 

Moving Current

When I was a kid we moved every year. Once, on my 8th birthday, we moved across the street by dolly - after blowing out the candles and eating a slice of Devil's Food chocolate. The next year we moved down the street. In 7th grade we moved three times. Later, with my own family we slowed the pace, moving every four years or so. In the country, we moved down the lane and used our riding mower - it was the great Riding Mower Move of 2005. This month we are moving to the houseboat next door in what may become known as the Great Shopping Cart Move of 2016. And now, as my old friend Stuart, the sailor who skippered charter boats with his young family for years likes to say, ' it's time to swallow the anchor."

Tongs Overboard

I was grilling chicken and green peppers when the tongs slipped out of my hand. In disbelief, I watched as they sank below the water's green surface, tho it may have been the scotch that was disbelieving. Wasn't the first time. These things happen. I've seen tradesmen drop a screwdriver and watch it sink, then fish it out with a magnet on a string. Me, I was in the heat of dinner, watching the timer on my iPhone, sipping Johnny Walker Black. Magnet-less. There was nothing to do but grab the spare tongs, save the peppers and chicken, and wait for morning's lowtide. Next day, with a mug of coffee and the net from the end of the dock, I rescued my beloved  tongs after a no-doubt long, chilly, muddy night on the bottom of the channel next to the aging finger pier. Magnets, nets on poles, & low tide. Scotch & Wrecking Ball joe. A satisfying rescue. This is the stuff of adventure, when you're afloat on a boathouse and drop your tongs.

Sunflower For Shel

Yesterday two French tourists were taking pictures on the dock. They asked me if artists live here. I said, sure, many painters, sculptors, writers, and photographers live here, though it isn't a requirement. The idea of having to be a card carrying artist, as a requirement, did amuse me, however. But this place, this way of life, clearly attract artful people- like the women who asked the question while holding cameras, like Shel Silverstein - one of my favorites, who once lived in the balloon barge behind this sunflower . . .  like the gardener who planted and nurtured the beautiful sunflower for all of us to enjoy.

Floating Self

Photo by Daralee

This photo of Ben and I (that's me on the left) floated up over Facebook from long long ago, from our old friend Dee. We were juniors at the University of Redlands studying in Salzburg and my world was changing in more ways than I ever imagined. Not yet 21, I was able to drink beer for the first time, and not just any beer but the world's best, in a bier keller 200 hundred years old, with my last name on the wall in a poem that I couldn't understand. I met my lovely wife-to-be Phyllis. Had a best friend, Kelly Cole, who ordered his dad's records  everywhere we went so that Nat King Cole's work would always be in stock - and Kelly would be my first friend to die of AIDS just a few years later. Traveling through Europe, I began to notice the bigger picture outside my own small limited world. I tasted the adventure of travel, knew there was no going back to the way I was before . . . and now, through the wonder of the internet, as the old image of myself - in those glasses, with that hair (!) floats back to me, I see my younger self possibly looking into the future, and I say "Hey, buckle up. It'll be a bumpy thrill, but you're gonna love the ride, gonna love where we land." Ah yes ~ This life afloat ~