Written in stone

All in 

One moment

I understood the

Buddha's parable about walking

with a stone in your shoe-.

I suddenly knew

It could happen to anyone

Anytime 

and after inspecting the painful

if minuscule annoyance

I found the stone

Made of calcified fragments, merely

Memories compressed and pushed out

like bone spurs sloughed off 

and re-attached to thought

Like a tumor.

Every step, someone else's shoes -

That was

Us

Now all that is left

is the loose stone

from the right shoe. 

Painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), 'Woman tying her shoe' in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The hardest directions are the ones we follow

Take a left, or a right?
                          Go West-toward the ocean.
So, left or right?
                          Where are you now?
I'm in your neck of the woods.
                            I think you have gone too far.
Left or right?
                            Straight-toward the ocean.
I've come around the bend.
                            Drive-thru to the dead end.
Are there any land marks? I am lost...
                            If you keep going, you will find it.




Painting by Michael Zeno Diemer (1867-1939), Pera Museum [Public domain].

(H)ours

He took all the credit for green lights and always finding just the right words,

simply sitting there waiting for him, dutifully, right

where she left them.

He had a knack, he knew shortcuts.

Her mind went both ways,

of him, to her, for him, for them and then

perhaps she never said it in the first place,

since it was always his ideas

that she will be thankful for later.

There is a debt to be repaid for a life saved,

there is monetary value in a useful thing,

and a proper place 

she had never seen,

until he showed her the way

and locked the door on his way out

expecting her to be where he left her 

whenever he returns in need

of more perspective, flavor and wit.

But one day she was gone.

He found her 

empty of all things, she was smiling

with a faraway stare

and he felt anxious about his loss

not knowing any more about keeping places and sharp turns of phrase. 

Painting by Frans Hals, 'Portrait of a Man' c. 1650 in [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Less is More, More or Less

There have been difficult times
I knew the right thing to say
and I honestly don't know how I knew
the exact words to highlight what had been hidden.
There have been less
trying times, I said
                 Nothing
not knowing right from wrong.
Between these
Ends
all the good times evade precise
meaning
over
time
the bad days try to remind us
how easily opinions change in the sun.
The only words left
spaces between.

Painting by Edward Robert Hughes [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.