an hour after sunset on a clear summer evening. stars just beginning to faintly sprinkle the sky over the field where fireflies flash in the June heat. pale moon rising, shining white over the trees. almost time to look out through the sky as it turns invisible, clear as a window, into the midnight blackness of the universe.

dull steel walls within my mind echo and re-echo with the unceasing pounding noise of endless self-recrimination

"you shoulda done this, shoudn'ta done that..this, that, this, that..."

endless, endless, dull aching echo inside my head

go away

I will never be perfect enough

Roy G. Biv
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet
A way to remember the colors of the rainbow when there isn't a rainbow in sight
But watch for rainbows
Look around you, don't forget
Get outside and watch the sky
And when it drizzles and the sprinkling rain is in your hair
Don't duck your head down so low you can't see
Don't be in such a hurry to rush and get indoors
Look up
The rainbow is smiling at you

Where were you going?
Movement so slow it seemed like non-movement
Just a lump on the road
A slow-moving lump, legs like stumps
Eyes ancient, black, shiny as marcasites
Where were you going, moving so slow across the road?
Turtle, don't go!
We brake for wildlife here
This story won't break your heart
Tell a turtle to turn, really mean it
And he goes!
Glaring upwards, polished mud green box on legs turns
and disappears back into the dark under the trees.

Beneath the green of sunlit leaves the vans and tents set up and shelves are filled, corkboard walls are stocked with paintings, photos, pots and trinkets, dolls and baskets, things useful, beautiful, kitsch and clutter. Grandma in her flowered hat sits in the shade and beams content as past her slowly walk all those who hunger and thirst for love and truth. We find it in these tie-dyed t-shirts, beaded glass holders, outpouring of our endless monkey play, these colors, these new shapes and forms, forever novel, the river of time passing new banks beneath the watching leaves, the trees, our elders on this planet, patient witness to us, as we play like the children that we are, delighting each other with our beautiful toys.

perfect pearl gray blue of sky with just the barest lid of clouds diffusing light and calming brightness when too bright would hurt the eyes and nerves and brain, the just right blue gray hint of rain to come and how glorious the trees spotlit by fire of setting sun against this wall, this backdrop darkness sets them off, highlighted all in molten gold, last light, this wealth you cannot buy, you cannot spend.

bent nearly double, yellow hardhat glowing in the bright sunshine, he brings the heavy diamond-toothed saw ever so precisely to the surface of the stone slab, canted at an impossible angle, steadied only by the strength and skill of his unsupported arms, and as the sawblade bites into the smooth limestone surface, the air is filled with soft billowing clouds of fine gray powder, rising like smoke, shafts of sunlight suddenly visible in the clouds of dusty air.

interaction: cool air blowing suddenly over warm water, result: mist in the forest. Wisps of mist drift like clouds on the mirror glass of the water's surface. Resident geese float soundless and serene. This familiar spot unexpectedly strange and new, this cold and clanking century fades; the geese, the mist, the trees, the wind, transport me to a different time, and we float suspended, softly as an indrawn breath, in the shades and spaces of an ancient Chinese ink painting.

when you're waiting
in a funk
nothing's working
all is bunk
clouds of gloom descend and smother
all hope or cheerfulness or sense of humor
just stuck in limbo!
waiting!
stuck!
all movement stops when out of luck.