Shoe Half Buried It is the early morning hours, when I bargain with loneliness not to hurt me too much and all my calls to Jesus return busy signals or voice mail that never receives a response. Though I've promised my soul to love myself, it is difficult in the absence of a river that knows how to reflect the sky exactly as it is. And I've learned that the small, constantly ignored pain in my spine shallows my breath and tightens my muscles, yet I remain ignorant of the greater part of who I am. It is here beneath the bridge that crosses the river, where the pigeons flock themselves into communion, that I like to sit on the mornings when the sun is too bright for my open eyes. Look, the clouds float both above and below the rusty girders and a part of the world's duality becomes as clear as the exposed shopping cart stuck in the mirky river bottom during this fifth week of draught. Somewhere in my right palm is the memory of a woman's hand, but today it is so far away - there must be a place where my hand will reach out again for another's and the river's run over the rocks speaks of mercy, instead of simply being a vehicle to float the dead fish down stream. On the far side, the bank where the running trail resides, a clot of colorful wind breakers glide the asphalt as easily as the ducks ride the water's current. My palm has that feeling of something turning over and over - a rose quartz kept as a tangible prayer rock-a-byes in my hand, as my fingers claim a rosary of one, single bead. Listen, I hear the tapping feet of the runners as they pass under the bridge, by the trees shedding their leaves, by the raspberry bushes long picked clean and the muddy beer bottle shards of the nearby school. My legs know that paradise resides in motion, so I rise from the shadows, adjust my hat and take the first step to catch up, to realize the freedom of heavy breath. Facing I want to tell the story of what happens next, but I don't know. It isn't here yet. It is not written in the stars or in the printed cards of tarot. My imagination is not hyperactive anymore. It let go of that burning desire, that constant spinning of threads that connects the planets for astrology. It doesn't matter if I hear the trumpets, Doppler's red shift approaching on the flatcar of fifteen steady notes. It doesn't matter if the sun casts my shadow fore or aft. Before there were Gods or Monsters With her new passport, Amy travels everywhere, no longer needs the poets, the prophets fevered with religion or the myth-makers to be her eyes and ears. Amy learns the path of wisdom through all her actions mislabeled mistakes. She travels to all the historic battlefields where disputed facts rumbled like the thunder that cracked the sky. Pythagoras truly did believe in former lives. Once he was a cucumber. In another a sardine. Amy's dreams tell her he is now her cocker spaniel, Jo. Amy travels to Jerusalem, for weeks sits quietly in a cafe, then heedless of the elements and insolent population travels by foot to the place where the earth melts upon the tongue of the hungry sea only to watch how the water is lapped up by the famished earth. Main Page This site sponsered by