Welcome to Suburbia

The streets, they lie.

Their names: Rolling Brook, Mountain Laurel, Pepper Hollow and Longview.

These are only meaningful as labels. Not descriptions.

I can hear no talking stream, smell no poignant flowers, walk in no forested depression or see no far reaching scene.

Instead the plethora of split level, 2 car garage homes is only interrupted by the carefully manicured monoculture lawns and sculpted, stone lined gardens.

The rolling brook is channelized and coddled with galvanized steel, the pavement stifling the talkative nature of the moving water.

Transformed and hybridized flowers bloom too late or too early, defying their ordinary tendencies, escaping their stony habitat

Any contoured relief is filled and tapered, defeating the natural topography and boring my eyes.

The highway bisects the longview, stunts the landscape and aches my ears.

I complain

And yet this is home.

A reminder about the power of water

The river was:

Swollen,

Pushy,

Expecting.

It forced itself across roads, through trees

And made room for itself

            Where-

                        There-

                                    Was-

                                                None.

With its exertion it carried the

Birth of its toils,

Cars, Homes, Dreams, Death

And with a final thrust,

Released them to the ocean.

the object of your affection

It’s not power.

One might believe

Your words of love, praises of beauty and awe of my intellect

Might instill within me a certain

Power over you,

But it’s not power.

Rather your flattery instigates a search within me to

Disprove your words

Because I mistakenly think that your

Admiration implies that

I am perfect.

And I know I’m not perfect.

But I’m selfish, self-conscious, and blinded enough to think that you might believe I am

So for a moment

I think I have power,

Because you are here telling me that you love me.

I don’t think I feel the same and that scares me so

It’s not power

Because you have the ability to make me think twice;

To make me nervous and apprehensive about our interactions,

To make me question my motives,

And make me wonder if I am always using you

Which I might be. 

But it’s not power I have

Instead our relationship

Reveals my insecurities and weaknesses.

If I were honest with you and with myself

I would stop telling you how evil I am

(Thinking I’m doing you a favor by warning you)

I would stop pushing you away and then pulling you back,

I would just leave.

But I can’t, because it’s not power.

my commute in a national park

I moved the mountain today and yesterday and the day before that. 
I move it every day I walk back from work and
It breathes with me.
The others don’t see it, I’ve asked and they can’t see it
But I can
Watch it move forward and back, get larger and smaller
And live. it is alive within me. 
The mountain exists.

adventure is all in the mind

I enter
And take aim to conquer the massive snow bank
The plow has so nicely left to my disposal.

I must cross the winter plain and climb the steep precipice to obtain my goal!
I do.

I take note of the valley road
In front of me
I sit patient, cat-like, and relaxed as the sun’s rays warm my exterior

And then I fall.
Backwards,
Into the cold.

I lie and follow my wandering mind as it remembers
All the ways I used to play
In The Middle.

I’m Up.
Step,
        Through
                Crunch.
Through
Never touching the ground
I make my way to the top of The Hill
My old chair
        Nestled in the arms of a sugar maple
We used to fight about who could sit where.
We broke it-
In a couple different ways and it now seems as unchanged as it was when we last
Sat upon its skinny limbs-


We killed the tree
That was sideways
        It’s likeness to a bouncing chair did it in.
And the four
        Oaks that shared the same trunk
Only Three now
The termites secretly gutted the fourth
It fell, hit the street and by then it had already died.

Jump, fall, roll.

Before the town started mowing:
There was a bramble of wild flowers- pink.
Near the bush that houses the rabbits or woodchucks
(depending on the year).
They eat-
Our garden.

But they reside to the left of the hill which we sled down.
Over the snow bank
Into the street if
We didn’t stop ourselves out of fear.

There is also a path down The Hill and through the woods,
Past the rooms and a holey tree where my brothers used to pee

Down to the house I used to keep
Whose door is now shut and whose stomach is full of

Leaves,

from the tree where I used to collect
My souvenirs from a ride on the tire swing.
Now
There are only the rusted and torn wires-
Evidence of the Great Swing which once lived.

Onto the path that led me in
I take a detour.
Waist high in snow, I pull myself out and slide back into my adult world
Knowing I never really leave The Middle behind.

ever been to a killer concert?

It's much more than

Just my sensory perception.

It might begin with a tremble and continue with a sweat,

But it is always the external

Rhythm

That controls my fluctuating heartbeat

And connects me to the other.

These vibrations:

travel through the building, air, or person:

They

Are the floor, air and people.

I become him,

Her.

Or it.

This energy is:

Movement; but not mine alone,

Music,

A happy tear,

A furtive smile,

Lust,

And perhaps even love.

All this energy and feeling

Break the linear narrative of ticking clocks.

I know because,

            I am time.

I choose to share this moment

            With every moment before and after me.

And in this sharing experience

I become privy to the

Ecstasy of the world.

Because we don't always appreciate them. . .

He reads newspapers. She reads books (fiction).

She likes to cook,

He likes to build.

He majored in engineering

She was a psychology major.

She was a bit more of hippie in college-

While he more or less resembled his black rimmed glasses: square

If he could use a vacuum to eat his food, he would.

As said before, she likes to cook and she’s good at it too, so I don’t blame her for liking to eat, Sllllowwwwwly.

He likes grape jelly-white toast of course, and butter too.

She prefers raspberry or even strawberry; he doesn't like those seeds though. They get stuck in his teeth.

Poppy seeds get stuck in hers, same place- almost every time. (Right up front, where they interrupt her toothy smile with a black speck.)  She eats them anyway.

They ARGUE. Over what?  Us- them- money-the right place to eat- all those extremely important things in life.

Yet, they both fall asleep in front of the T.V. while they try to read

And neither of them ever quite follow the recipe or directions.

They both work in schools

And they always eat together-

Because, that's what they do.

And they’ll do almost anything for us, because

We are,

What they together created.

And they love us probably more than I can even imagine. . .

Because they are our mom and dad,

And we are so lucky to have them