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Time

Of all the ways that be thought of to show someone, to show something your love, to show that you care, time is the most precious. To give someone your time is to give of yourself. It is your time to give and you will never get it back. It will be gone forever.

And yet we sometimes, when we think, we we realize, when we become aware, give our time to others and think nothing of it. But to really, really give your time takes concentration and intention. It takes self awareness. Simply to be in someone’s presence is not enough. It is nothing.

Giving someone your time is to listen and to pay attention. It is to put all other things aside and to find it in yourself to care enough to forget, forget about yourself. It is a gift that is not easy to give. It is that little silence that we put aside for another day only to find that the day past us long ago.

The world is filled with people with ample time to give and perhaps they desire to give it. But it just seems like they, it seems like we, forget. It is easy to do, to lose track of time. And when we do we do not have it to give. And we say: we do not have time.

But time is something we we have all of the time. We often fetter it away, not thinking of what we are losing and why we are losing it. So why not give someone your time. YOUR time is a gift that only you can give. It is most personal and intimate gift we can give.

It is not all we have, but it is all that matters.

There are Things…

Taking Jack to the airport at 3am for a drop off was painful. I certainly shed a tear but I had hope that out west where he was going, that he would find a home. I wanted to be that home but it was not to be. I handed him over and helped into a small kennel. I put his favorite toys into the kennel and when I stood up I looked down and looked at his sorrowful eyes looking up at me.

He wasn’t making a sound and this was odd. He hated kennels. During the past few weeks he had hurriedly become a part of our household, making himself at home and irritating our old dog, Maggie. He was happy and would not let me out of his sight. He went everywhere with us and when we did have to leave him alone, waited patiently.

Jack was a foster that had a “planned outcome”, so it was called, in Utah.

I don’t make any allusions to the fact that fostering can be difficult, especially with a companion such as Jack. But fostering helps dogs out of situations that are not so good and into situations that are hopefully loving and secure. Fostering is fulfilling but be ready to leave a piece of your self with the animal that you foster. The hope is that there is enough to go around, enough for the next, and the next.

If there were issues, it was with people, not with Jack or any other dog including one we tried to foster before and simply didn’t work out. So I’ve been told by others that they couldn’t foster because they couldn’t bear thought of letting go but I cannot bear the thought of animals in need not getting the help. It is simple to do and although painful, fostering is a way to do good for an animal that often has little chance if any.

I will miss Jack and continue to do so, but I will find another to foster, to help, because there are things that are worth bearing the pain and shedding the tears for.

No Time

There are many platitudes that hide in the shadows of excuses. There are many fears disguised by procrastination. But there is no greater shame than having no time. As time goes by we become comfortable in our excuses and procrastinated plans are forgotten. A blinder replaces the blue skies of possibility.

We have time. That is all that we have. We sell our time cheaply or give it away to the shiny machinery that makes up our days or we can choose to value that which we do have. There is a chance to start but there is no way to bring back the days spent wasting precious time. Time is a one way street.

There is no time to waste. There is no better time than now. There is yet time but no time like now.

Music

There’s a magic to music. Take the time to find it. If you don’t play, then listen. Listen closely. In the pieces it can be heard. That is, the feeling of the musicians and their abilities, their willingness to listen to each other.

Music can be ignored but it cannot be dismissed. There are those times when playing, sometimes late at night on a stage to an empty club, drunks at the bar, no one paying any attention, TV’s blaring, when the magic happens. It might be between the bassist and the drummer, or the guitarist hitting a particular note at a particular time.

Music can be analyzed and understood and still be an allusive and rare species. There are many pathways to “it” but “it” changes. “It” is not a destination or a goal, just a temperamental touch of time in a passing slice of space. There are people who are musicians and there are people who are able to play music. The difference is the ability to recognize the magic when it happens, if it happens, and to be able to tell the difference.

Music is a language that takes a lifetime to learn it is one of the few things that is actually worth it.

Evil

At the animal shelter of any town or city one can see, firsthand, the final results of ignorance and greed, of those that bring down the rest of us, that take away the good in a community. It is easy to recognize and difficult to face. There is no place for cynicism or complacency. It is there, staring you in the face with frightened eyes, or anger, or defeat, and even hope.

It could be that those that create the need for these places have reasons to feel forlorn, forgotten. It could be that they themselves were or are abused. It could be many things that bring an individual to break a spirit, or to answer a hopeful look with a violent attack. It could be drugs. It could be depression. But there is one thing that it could not be; that is, it could not be a person.

A person wouldn’t create an innocent and broken spirit. A person would not cause panic and pain. A person would not do the things that it takes to create an being that no longer wants to be a part of the world that it has been thrown into. A person could not look at the faces at an animal shelter and feel nothing, feel a disconnect, or feel the need to inflict even more evil.

And that is what it is. Evil. There is no other word, no other concept. Evil is not given to humanity, it is made. It is in the faces of those that have experienced it. At the animal shelter of any town or city one can see, firsthand, the final results of evil.

The Cowboy

The cowboy’s life is sometimes a hard one. He stays up night worrying about the days.

And when the light comes over the horizon he promises himself to mend his ways.

And the years roll by like the highway beneath him and he knows he’s been trying to hide.

Hide from the truth that life is mistreating and it’ll beat you down until you cry.

He’s been taught that crying is wrong and he’s been told to lie is a sin.

He believes that there’s someone somewhere who will on day understand just where he’s been.

The cowboy knows that time is sacred and he knows that life is short.

The cowboy feels each heart that’s broken and he cries a tear.

So if your a cowboy that tired of fighting and you feel that life has let you down.

Find a road that leads you somewhere and wait for the good to come back around.

Because life’s not fair for the cowboy but life doesn’t care who you are.

Life goes on for the cowboy, but he never knows just how far.

The Motorcycle

A motorcycle is most at home on back roads, leaning into turns and switchbacks. Not sitting in the garage or chomping miles on a highway. It will do these things but will taunt the rider at every chance. In the garage it will beckon, promising adventure and excitement. On the highway each exit represents a chance to feel alive and test your endurance and moxie.

These things, these motorcycles, are cumbersome when standing still. Like a seal on beach. But give them a road to go through their gears on and they come alive, like a seal in the water. Down gear and give it gas just as the curve comes up and gun it out of the end. Swing your body over to and from to follow the jaunts and snake-like line that the road takes. The motorcycle knows that you are smiling.

Motorcycles are often called death-machines but really they are a chance to live. They take one out of the mundane, out of comfort zones, out of life spent looking at a clock or the world through a windshield. There are roads that speak a language that only motorcyclists can come to understand, and that only motorcycles can decipher. On a motorcycle it is easy to realize that comfort is your enemy.

A motorcycle is a conglomeration of gears and steel and oil and gas. But it is more than a sum of its parts. It becomes a part of one’s body and psyche if enough time is spent on it, if enough patience is given to understanding the machine and its limitations. Experience will open up avenues to adventure and a motorcycle opens adventure up to life.

Poems From a Recent Future #2

As old as the ages, the number does it no justice.  The thread is long and strings its way through the forgotten timbers and rolling dunes, sharp grass and prickly bushes and wandering winds.

There are people in this place, never met, but old friends never die.  I know them somehow and they welcome me.  Generations of them wander through the sandy hills of Raabjerg leading me astray at times and singing me to sleep in the bright sun and the light of the gods.

I’ve never met them and I know them somehow.  This is home and always has been and yet my bed is many miles away.  I come here, though, and they seem to understand, although I never will.

Stories to be told, I close my eyes on the high hill and listen to the gossip of ghosts.  This is my family, though I have never met them.  The blood that courses through my veins is not theirs, but yet we are the same.

There is solace in the thought that time is immortal, and they laugh at my foolish mumbling.  The light in their eyes still burns bright.  They have no need for hope or poets.  Just talk and beer and work.

I dreamt once of this place, no doubt a present, a gift, from the mischievous.  A joke from the jester.  And now I walk the line that is not mine.  Befriended by those never known, they are my friends and my family.

I will stop and drink with them on days walking and will stare up at the stars of the endless and glorious nights.  They never sleep as does not my mind. 

None of this makes sense, but there is comfort nevertheless.  The cold, grey, skies come but there are always the endless days and blowing sand and the sacred silence of secrets.

Poems From a Recent Future #1

The memories of that part of my life lie on the ground from long ago.  Pieces of the puzzle scattered in the sand and in the trees.  I walk around wondering about the empty places in between and what will fill them in times to come.

The well-worn path leads around the home we once had, and the sounds of machines and horns and laughter can still be heard in the wind.  Long ago gone, the white-washed walls stand, a testament of time.  The path continues, stopping after the memories wait, as I take in the pictures of my past.

The remnants of the countless repairs and a darkened doorway, oily and always open, guarded by the steel and tools and machinery, and the sweat, the consternation, and blood, and hope of a working man.  I am drawn towards it (as I always am), stopping over forgotten answers to forgotten questions.  I smile because the smiles never leave.  They linger.

There is too much here, the ghosts too numerous and so onward past to the open maw of the highway that all harvests lead to. The sand blends with the cement, slowly to dust, peaceful with the seclusion and bleating silence, it stares as it has for countless seconds to the rotten remains across the way.

Every crevice has a voice that cries out for my attention and I turn towards the hall of machines, broken and dilapidated, the wood for repairs that will never blossom, leaning against the back waiting still for a day that will never come.  The beams and gables, the supports and trusses broken and bent, giving way to the nature of life, the endless entropy.

There is the tractor before my time, moving in feet not in miles for many years sitting, covered with work, and now dust, and now time, and now stuff, buried deep, the oil in the engine black and the grey paint that was once washed has now been the roof of rain-tattered wood.  The implements, once pulled, now planted.  From iron to rust, to dirt, to dust.  The wind howls and the young memories call, catching my attention for one last time.

What is waste is wonderful.  What is trash is treasure.  The beams creak and I cry a little.  Around the corner, mushrooms.  Down the path the garden of cars, now empty and the stand of trees sway freely, unencumbered by even older memories.  Taken by the hand I am led still farther to the profit that never proliferated.  The promise of the reward that became an empty chest.  It doesn’t matter now, the room of regrets.  It had no meaning then and it has none now.  Just pain and promise and the cost of purpose posed as the beginning which was the end.  There is sadness within those walls and always has been.

The shit-stained yard though, is a paradise of life, the heart of any garden is the brown, not green and the floor of this palace has never seen the light of day.  I remember the waist deep wanderings when the chains broke, and the profanity of necessity, the dismissal of dire cleanliness and the taste of bitter pride as it was swallowed up.  And somehow a smile lifted from those lips as we wiped shit from our faces.  It worked somehow and we never wondered why.

In July of 1990 a turning point, the time I saw the face of a friend high up in the clouds, hammer in hand.  And my own face flush with naivety with the love of my life on my arm and music in my mind.  There are lessons learned there, too many to count.  Out of place it stands as a testament of hard work, not paid off, and the never-ending hope that defined so much, and still does in a way.

Another hallway beckons and the sweet smell of rotting grass and warm noses, of the fog of heat and the whirring pumps.  The place is only alive with animals, but time has long since forgotten the days of Danish Reds and hay and straw.  But I cannot forget because this became my life and is who I am.  The years cannot erase my love of the place and the memories that it holds.  They will never be replaced as long as my eyes can gaze upon this wonderland of spirits.

I know there is death and I know that the memories are meaningless to many, but there will always be new that replaces old, easy life that replaces essential toil once called craft, once called knowledge, once important to life itself.  These ghosts, these memories know as they have seen the passage of time but welcome me back with open arms and heaving breasts.  The blood of the place gone, it still lives as long as there is someone to remember the memories and regrets of a life once lived.