The porcelain, freckled white from the ting, ting, tinging
Of gravel and countless stones that flecked the red from this

My most precious.

You'll find it safely hidden in the rearmost closet
High atop the tallest shelf of this place I call myself

Take it down.

Brush the dust from the lid of its corrugated berth
Gently unwrap it from the yellowed pages

Hold it and make it glow
Crimson, with sweet and candied kisses

The blooms spread across the grass
Like the splatter of a Pollack painting.
Each color striving for attention.
Each flower calling out its song.

But blades lay waste to cresting buds.
Leggy shoots wither, dumped toxic.
Colors and songs heaped in rows
Gathered and sacked.

Cast me in a favorite field behind your house
And let me bloom until I lie down tired in winter's snow.

A child.   There is nothing more beautiful than the miraclulous birth of a child.  Mine happen to be just a tad bit more beautiful than most but ....

TREEHOUSE BABY!!!!  with a dog named Puss and a color TV.

Anyone out there liked that book as much as me?

I went to a Catholic school 20 miles from my house.  Most of my friends  went to the public elementary school and it wasn't often that I had oportunity to visit their playground.    But the first season I played tackle football in the town pee-wee league, our team practiced on the public elementary school fields.  The tractor tires would always be in different spots.  Sometimes standing upright.  Sometimes laying on their sides.  I was always hopeful that my carpool would be late picking me up so I could play, even if just for a short while, on the tractor tires.  It took two people to stand the tires upright.  If you stood inside the tire with your arms stretched out, you became the spokes of a wheel rolling across the field.  A gang of boys pushing you along with speed.  Your ride was over either when the tire tipped over on its side or you fell, your arms could no longer hold you in position.  When the tire fell over we'd swarm around it, the rider would emerge from the center and we work together to righten and ready the tire for the next rider.   One by one, station wagons with wood grained sides would hasten off members of our group until, finally,  only a few  remained.  That's when we would get  a chance to play my favorite game of riding on top of the tire.  Pushing the tire forward with all of your weight, one person could get it on its way.   Then grabbing hold of the treads, the tractor tire would hoist you high above the ground.  If you stood quickly, you could ride the tire like a lumberjack riding a log in the water.  Faster and faster the tire would roll, carrying you across the field, until finally there was no choice but to jump or else  chance being swallowed up by the tire and field ahead.  A hard landing and a roll, your body would come to rest and the tractor tire game would end...the tire wobbling onto its side.  

I rode a large wooden telephone cable spool two years ago with my kids, but time was short  and we couldn't ride for long. 

I remember being about 10 years old fishing early on Sunday morning.  I fished along the shore of the Loxahatchee River in Florida.  I'd would walk down to the dock with a fishing pole in one hand and a cast net and bucket in the other.  The sun would be just peaking over the trees and houses to the east and the brackish water looked like a sheet of glass, sun and mist mixing and lifting from like incense.  Its not a particular Sunday I remember, rather 100 Sundays.  The mullets' tails would slap the water here and there.   Snook, Jacks, and Tarpon would cruise, their wakes announcing their presence.  Sometimes they'd drop down deep in the water and cause the mullet to shower in all directions in a momentary burst of violence.  I'd wade waist deep around mangroves and sneak along the seawalls and docks, hoping to cast my net over an inattentive mullet or two to use for bait for the bigger fish.   My sunrise service.   I remember arguing with my mother that I didn't want to go to church one particular Sunday morning.  My t-shirt and shorts soaked, fish scales scattered randomly about me, and my whole self smelling of the river.  "I want to worship... the water gods" I proposed, not having adequete time to truly consider a suitable argument.  I was late.  I was in trouble.   I was 10 years standing, sitting, kneeling in an uncomfortable pew as a priest rambled on and  Let There Be Peace played out.  The people in front of us turned with a snickering glare.  An unbeliever among us,  they could smell the boy in the next row.   If I had to become a monk, I'd choose to worship the water gods. 

Life.  Everything else is second hand.  You can imagine the greatest heights and lows through what someone else writes or says, but none compare to  those experiences that you live yourself.  We have a tendency to romanticize in our retelling.  Fibs...  little white lies that decorate the truth...  emphasize some elements while disregarding others.  The further you get from the source of the experiece the less truthful it becomes.  The teachers that have impacted me the most are those that caused me to experience life first hand.

A girl, a feeling.
A hundred things unsaid.
A path not taken, a lifetime ago.