…To let sun reach its long fingers down and wrap me around each day, so I don’t pass by willow branches that will someday break or things that make me laugh.
To lye on the kitchen floor and let myself fall through with the other things from the garden, just to become again. To let the holes in my hat be, so that the rain can touch my face. And to tell of people I have known and those old cars I have seen, left dusted by roadside. To tell of a story I once read where an old man asked a girl to walk barefoot on his grave when he dies. He said it would help him in someway.
…To put my knees in the dirt and just dig sometimes, not to find or bury. To hand people what it is I think about. Wrapped simply. And to take what they give to me. Especially when they don’t know they are the giver.
To hear, really hear, the first night of summer and its noises and let those noises play on days to come when we think there is nothing to do.
To let the warm sea grab my feet in busy times, pull me and slow my step. And by these seas to sit in the early morning, in the wake of the sun…with no shoes and no worries.
…To carry a stone etched with the number of people I have seen whose hands are rough and worked. But to let those etch marks become a circle because that kind of beauty doesn’t need a number.
To make sure her chair faces the trees when there’s wind. Its what she likes to watch best. To remember that silence is an answer, and also that not looking for them can sometimes be the only way to get them. When I know sad people, to not try and fix it, but be there with it and know that things do pass, but only once they’re done.
…To let my hair be messy and sit with you in warm wind storms amongst leaves. To breathe. Because I have learned that on late nights that tear at me, the moon can crawl down my curtains and find the darkest, saddest corners of a heart and change it with a memory. I remember the moon from past months… the way it gives.
To breathe. Because somewhere there are kids who bring spring wind to their mother. They bring it wrapped, to her bedside in early April. Because you have to breathe through heartache. You have to drive up to heights and sit on the hood. We would watch our town.
…To wake up laughing in late mornings. To let go. To close my eyes and find all of what’s in me- the love and protection, and send it into their hands through which they touch and their bodies through which they feel.
To be open inside. For I have found writings that were folded and cutting downward into the ground, and they happened to be my best teachers. And so they were acquired, like a taste can be.
To give wholly to people I love. And to save those small folded papers that hold a world I know.
… To wonder why birds circle the hills I watch on somedays, and what they are trying to say by those rings they make. To look for meaning. Because I have rode to the desert and seen why sand can melt to glass. To look in eyes. You can’t know about them otherwise. To make sure I see the sky each day. To touch paintings and their edges. To learn. To take note of what makes me happy . and remember that it is always just simple things.
To blend my worlds that are so different at times. And show that they can be mixed.
To go around dead end signs and over fences to find what it is we aren’t suppose to see. To study rain’s journey and learn that journeys of our own may at some point take the same path. To set myself in rooms of books and word, as well as music and dance.
To think of this life I have, the things I will do and people I will know. To think freely.
To figure out why beauty is so sad of if that’s part of why things are beautiful, and if perhaps we aren’t suppose to know. To ask where things come from, and why shells let us take them from the oceans, or petals from stems.
To pull at sweaters when there’s something worth seeing, and take small hands to see exciting things. And taking hints of adventure in early evenings into late nights. To let some mysteries be and give the rivers some of our stories.
To know that the night’s same silver spears through cities that are across the world from each other…and how that can connect us and make us feel safe.
My world of running and torn paper. I have to sit still sometimes with my back against the side of the house, catching my breath and smiling as the last sun drags itself out of the yard. I’m learning I must do what it is my heart wants to.
So I let my time be with people and what they know or need. With myself and what comes from my hand. I have to make sure this body will carry me through all the years I want to see. I have to fall straight forwards sometimes and trust that hearts will be caught by hearts.
I have to sit on my faraway roof when there is iron in the rain, falling hundreds of miles away through this crooked line where the hills do meet the sky. I have to because I like those thunder storms, they look calm from far away.
And because I do things like that I don’t worry what my purpose is, but with pen in hand, I laugh, love and live…