they come - sliding
circling low and flat
reaching for horizons
gray on gray on gray
as you watch and wait
wet warm air swells
wafts over your skin
like velvet passing
leaving you a message
you do not want
with each slow hour
breezes give way
to winds that sigh
moan as they gain
courage to howl
to rage throughout
black night to come
gathering, growing
forming twisting bands
splitting roiling clouds
with lightening, savage
blazing white on black
as if a reward, rain
slashes across panes
creeps under doorways
a truculent warning -
take cover! Hide!
too late to prepare
for wind and rain and water, water, water
Everything In The Air
All begins simply enough with two balls - dropping, chasing.
Finally, though, two balls circle in the air - again and again.
Challenge, though, comes with three. But success takes its
toll - so much time. I learn, too, that only my creativity limits
the feats I can accomplish. And I learn that three balls mock
you to try four. Without notice, you cross an invisible line,
like not translating a new language. Days tumble into weeks
and you are juggle whatever fits your hands.
You are successful when you learn to ignore a dropped ball,
especially as you pick up more. Some objects are favorites:
I cannot to drop them! Others, I pick up for display, tossing
them aside when my or my audiences' interest wanes. I use
dance and magic, mime and stories, and fancy endings. A
dropping-routine always brings laughs. And I always study
the routines of others - and how they juggle an audience.
I juggle now because I can. And I do it when alone - zealot
juggler of a sort. Often, others share my stage. We trade-off
in patterns that mimic our art, though in ways the audience
can seldom sense. Objects and their paths, their plainness or
their beauty, their size or their shape, cause viewers to lose
track of the larger pattern, the forces that allow everything to
be in motion. Even we are not always aware of our changing
rhythms until the end - the act overshadowing the details.
I juggle only two or three objects now, though it may look
like more to my dwindled number of observers. Too, at the
end of my act, I purposely let a ball drop and roll away as
that is just the way it is - now. I realize that the time is near
when I may as well drop them all - you really can't keep
everything in the air forever.
Stream
We consumed our days
easing wade-along streams,
crossing often, trying not
to make a splash. Once,
we found stair-step rapids
that ended in deep pools
with swirling back eddies,
swimming too long in some.
If immersed in reaching,
you can chill to the bone,
use too much of your span
only in one place. We are,
though, almost finished
with this stream. We see
now a far different valley -
one final course removed.
